Voices: Elena Rusakova on Returning the Names

An icy autumn wind, darkness, and rain… Yet thousands of people stay in line, slowly moving toward a stone glowing in the light of countless candles. Over Lubyanka Square, voices follow one another — male, female, children’s, young and old. Each person speaks only a few words. What are those words? A name, a simple profession: accountant, driver, worker, priest, editor — and then: executed… executed… It is the feeling of blind evil devouring people indiscriminately.

It all began with a date.

In 1974, USSR political prisoners in the labor camps and dissidents proposed October 30 as the Day of the Political Prisoner. In 1990, also on October 30, at the initiative of Memorial Society (an international human rights organisation founded in Russia during the fall of the Soviet Union to study and examine the human rights violations and other crimes committed under Joseph Stalin's reign. – Dialogbüro Vienna’), a monument to the victims of political repression Solovetsky Stone was placed on Lubyanka Square in Moscow as a monument to the victims of political repression

In 2007, seventy years after the Great Terror’s mass executions, a discussion began — how should the commemoration at the Solovetsky Stone be held? The decision was simple: to read aloud the names from the execution lists. Thus, the action “Returning the Names ” was born. In 2025, it will take place for the 18th time.

By tradition, these commemorations are held on the eve of October 30 — still the Day of the Political Prisoner.

Over the years, the action has drawn more and more participants. For example, in Moscow in 2017, 5,286 people came. Most arrived in the evening after work. They stayed despite the cold and the warnings that they would not reach the microphone before the event ended at 22:00. That year, only 1,227 people managed to read at least one name. Eventually, the event began to conclude with a collective approach to the Solovetsky Stone. People took home the slips of paper with victims’ names and later posted them on social media. Gradually, the action became a networked, decentralized movement. The geography expanded rapidly — more and more cities began holding their own “Returning the Names” events.

In 2020, the event was denied official permission due to COVID, and since then the bans have continued under the same pretext (even as nearby mass official gatherings are still allowed on those very days). But the tradition is stronger than the prohibitions.

In 2024, “Returning the Names” took place in 109 cities and 39 countries, with thousands joining online. People read names from the endless lists of those executed — in Russia, despite bans; around the world, despite distance and separation from their country.

From the very beginning, participants often added something personal: some spoke the name of an executed relative; others mentioned today’s political prisoners; others simply said, “Freedom for political prisoners!”

The war against Ukraine gave the event a new, protest dimension. The culture of remembrance is not only about the past — it is also about how we respond to the present.

And yet, it is the act of speaking the names of those long gone that carries the deepest meaning. By preserving memory, we affirm a principle: a person is not expendable material for the state machine, but an absolute, immeasurable value. The fates and personalities of individuals — that is the true history of a country, not the succession of rulers or military “victories.”

It is no coincidence that Memorial today has joined Ukrainian human rights defenders in launching the initiative “People First”. Its essence is to make the release of people detained as a result of the war the top priority in any future peace negotiations.