Last Address

The Last Address (Russian: Последний Адрес, Posledniy Adres)[1] is a civic initiative to commemorate the victims of repressions in the Soviet Union. The essence of the initiative is that ordinary people deserve to be commemorated, not only "VIPs" which typically receive memorial plaques. A small commemorative plaque (palm-sized) is installed on the houses known as the last residential addresses of those arrested. Every commemorative plaque is dedicated to one person only, with the project operating according to the motto "One name, one life, one sign".[2]

"Here lived Yekaterina Mikhailovna Zhelvatykh, typist, born in 1905, arrested 11/01/1938, executed 04/05/1938, rehabilitated in 1957"

Description
This project is important for such things not to happen again. Those who know nothing about repressions will ask questions when they see the signs. Those who had witnessed them will remember them one more time.

Alexander Brodsky[3]

The project is the initiative of Moscow and St. Petersburg historians, civic and civil rights activists, journalists, architects, designers and writers.[4][5][6]

The project initiative had originated with journalist and publisher Sergey Parkhomenko, who saw in Germany the stones of the European Stolpersteine project to commemorate the victims of Nazism.[7] Within the scope of that project, over 50,000 memorial stones were set up in Germany and other countries of Europe. The organizers of "Last Address" intend to install a comparable number of plaques across Russia.[8]

The memorial sign is a stainless steel plaque 11x19 cm with the information on the repressed person: his or her name, profession, date of birth, date of arrest, date of death, date of exoneration. The design of the memorial plaques is by architect Alexander Brodsky. The hole in the plaque symbolizes the missing photo.[9][7]

The project is based on the law “On the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Repressions” adopted in 1991. The law treats the period of political repressions in Russia and USSR as starting on 25 October (7 November) 1917. The official representative of the project is the noncommercial entity Last Address Foundation for the Commemoration of Victims of Political Repression (Russian: Фонд увековечения памяти жертв политических репрессий «Последний Адрес») founded by the Memorial Society and a number of individual persons[4] through voluntary contributions from private citizens and organizations.

On June 15, 2018 "The last address" received a German Karl Wilhelm Fricke award. Its monetary part will be sent to the Ukrainian project "Ostannya Addressa", in order to avoid the status of a "Foreign agent".[10][11]

Installing memorial signs in Russia

The first Russian cities to install memorial signs became Moscow and Saint Petersburg. On February 7, 2020, the thousandth memorial sign was installed in Russia: in the city of Gorokhovets, Vladimir Oblast.[12] By that moment the plaques were also installed in the following cities: Yekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don, Perm, Taganrog, Barnaul, Krasnoyarsk, etc.

Presented below are some Russian cities where memorial plaques of "Last Address" have been installed.

In Moscow

The first memorial signs of “Last Address” project were installed in Moscow on Human Rights Day, 10 December 2014.[7] Some of the signs were made in response to applications of the residents of houses where repressed people had lived.

The next batch of signs was installed in February–March 2015. By January 2015, over 500 applications for the installation of memorial sign had been submitted. Since 2016, the installation of memorial signs is being performed usually 2 times per month, see for example a story of a sign installation: Last Address: Nikolai Yushkevich (Russian Reader, May 9, 2018).

In St. Petersburg

The first 12 memorial signs on the houses of Saint Petersburg were installed on 21–22 March 2015;[13] 80 more applications were submitted to St. Petersburg “Memorial” office. At the initiative of Anna Akhmatova Literary and Memorial Museum, two plaques were installed on the wall of the “Fountain House” commemorating the poet’s civil partner, art historian Nikolay Punin, and his daughter’s husband, worker Genrikh Kaminsky.

In two cases, the applicant was a resident of the house who decided to install plaques for all those for whom that house had been a last address. These are the houses at Pushkinskaya ulitsa 19 (three signs) and Fontanka Embankment 129 (five signs). The installation of the memorial sign at Ulitsa Rubinshteina 19 was attended by a relative of the repressed person who came from Kiev specifically for that purpose. Sergey Parkhomenko says that the emotional reaction is easy to understand: “Last Address” is often the only place where the name of the deceased is commemorated, because most of those repressed were buried in mass graves.

The second batch of memorial signs installed on six houses on 25–26 July 2015 included such names as artist B. Malakhovsky, outstanding literary scholar G. Gukovsky, as well as scientists, engineers, and people who were not famous or outstanding in any way, such as the family Belenkiye-Bodganovy (an accountant and a housewife) arrested as “Polish spies.”

In Perm and Perm Krai

“Last Address” was launched in Perm in February 2014.[14] The first four plaques were installed on 10 August 2015. The project founder Serguei Parkhomenko came from Moscow to Perm; in an interview to Zvezda magazine he talked about the ways to launch an initiative group, what the cases of the repressed were telling us and whether it was necessary or advisable to install signs commemorating the organizers of repressions.

The first village with a “Last Address” sign was the village Kupros of Yusvinsky District, Komi-Permyak Okrug. The memorial sign was installed on 11 August 2015 on the façade of the house that was the last residential address of peasant Valentin Startsev, declared by investigators “an active participant of the liquidated counterrevolutionary insurgent organization.” Investigators claimed that Startsev was “conducting counterrevolutionary defeatist agitation among kolkhoz members, trying to prove the inevitability of the fall of Soviet power,” “praising the old Tsarist regime and proving unprofitability of kolkhozes”; as a result, he was sentenced to capital punishment in the form of execution by a firing squad.

In Taganrog

The first commemorative sign in Taganrog was installed on 31 May 2015. The ceremony was attended by project founder Serguei Parkhomenko, the deputy of Oblast Duma Oleg Kobyakov, president of the Council of the regional branch of the Russian National Society for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments Alexander Kozhin, residents of neighboring houses and numerous journalists.

Installing memorial signs in other countries

The first country outside Russia became Ukraine, where a separate project "Остання адреса – Україна" based on Russian "Last address" started working.[15] On 5 May 2017 the first three commemorative plaques were installed on three houses in Kiev.

On June 7, 2017, on the day of political prisoners, signs of the Last address appeared on the facades of four houses in Prague.[16][17][18]

On August 2, 2018, the Ultima adresa project was launched in Moldova:[19][20] the first two plates of the “Last Address” appeared in Chisinau.[21]

On October 5, 2018, the Georgian project "უკანასკნელი მისამართი. საქართველო" ("Last Address, Georgia") officially started.[22][23][24]

On August 30, 2019, the first commemorative plaque appeared in Germany, in the Thuringian city of Treffurt.[25][26]

References
  1. Posledniy Adres website
  2. "'Last Address' Project Aims To Honor Victims Of Soviet Repression". Radio Liberty. 26 November 2014.
  3. «Последние адреса» репрессированных: москвичам напомнят об их истории // «Москва 24»
  4. Мемориальный проект «Последний адрес»
  5. "Humble Memorials for Stalin's Victims in Moscow". New Yorker. 13 December 2014.
  6. "I put up plaques for victims of Soviet repression". Financial Times (Paid content). 28 August 2015.
  7. "Последний адрес: имена жертв репрессий на стенах московских домов", dw.de, Russian edition (in Russian)
  8. Sergey Parkhomenko (7 March 2018). "Russia has yet to recover from the trauma of the Stalin era". The Guardian.
  9. "Russian Project Honors Stalin's Victims and Stirs Talk on Brutal Past". The New York Times. 20 September 2015.
  10. Verleihung des Karl-Wilhelm-Fricke-Preises 2018 // Die Stiftung, June 15, 2018
  11. Проект о жертвах репрессий "Последний адрес" получил немецкую премию // Radio Liberty, June 15, 2018
  12. "Последний адрес: Тысячная табличка в России (часть 1)" (in Russian). blnews.ru. 13 February 2020.
  13. Живые с мертвыми. Для бога мертвых нет. // Novaya Gazeta, 22 March 2015.
  14. Памятники обычным людям. В Перми стартовал проект «Последний адрес», Arguments and Facts Prikamye, February 3, 2015
  15. "Last Address: A Civic Initiative to Commemorate Victims of Soviet Repressions". Free Russia. 10 June 2018.
  16. Poslední adresa
  17. Last Address project marking communism victims launched in Prague // Prague Daily Monitor, 28 June 2017.
  18. "Last Address" project commemorates victims who were executed or whose deaths were hastened by Communist regime // Radio Prague, 27 June 2017.
  19. Ultima Adresă
  20. "Proiectul "Ultima adresă" a victimelor represiunilor politice staliniste va fi lansat la Chișinău" (in Czech).
  21. "В Молдове начинает работу проект "Ultima Adresa"" (in Russian). Ava. 1 August 2018.
  22. ერთი სახელი, ერთი სიცოცხლე, ერთი ნიშანი
  23. В Тбилиси «Последний адрес» впервые установил мемориальный знак жертве политических репрессий // Новости-Грузия, 6.10.2018
  24. "უკანასკნელი მისამართი - თბილისში რეპრესიების მსხვერპლთა ხსოვნის დაფები გაჩნდება" (in Georgian).
  25. "German victims of Stalinism get recognition with Last Address initiative". Deutsche Welle. 3 September 2019.
  26. "Gedenktafel erinnert an Unrecht durch Militärtribunal" (in German). Thüringer Allgemeine. 2019-09-18.
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