English

Activists accuses authorities of doing nothing to commemorate Stalin-terror victims buried in Kurapaty

A civil society activist and historian has accused the Belarusian government of doing nothing to commemorate Stalin-terror victims who are believed to have been executed and buried in Kurapaty, a woody area just outside the Minsk Beltway, in the 1930s and 1940s.

On January 18, 1989, the Council of Ministers of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic adopted a directive providing for measures to commemorate the people.

"This is the only government directive that has ever been adopted for the purpose of commemorating Stalin-terror victims," Ihar Kuznyatsow told BelaPAN.

"It envisaged the creation of a memorial, the National Academy of Sciences was tasked with carrying out a study into the matter, while publishing house Belaruskaya Entsyklapedyya (Belarusian Encyclopedia) was told to publish a book reflecting the period. It is a disgrace to the government, which has not implemented a single provision of its own directive during 25 years."

He suggested that the present-day government copied many traits of the repressive Soviet government, hence its reluctance to put up a Kurapaty memorial.

"But this is the country's history and today's government has no direct responsibility for what happened in the past," he added. "But it does bear the direct responsibility for failure to implement its directive and hiding the truth about the executions."

The historian predicted that developers would be eventually allowed to continue controversial construction projects close to Kurapaty.

Mr. Kuznyatsow said that he pinned his hopes on Metropolitan Pavel, the newly Russian Orthodox patriarchal exarch to Belarus who has publicly condemned Joseph Stalin and his policies. "I wonder whether the Russian Orthodox Church will pay attention to the problem," he said.