Several years ago I noticed some heartbreaking and empathy-evoking stumbling stones in Berlin. That project was called “Stolpersteine” and it started in 1996 with 60 stones. Now there are more than 60,000 such stones all over the world because it went viral.
Russia has its own project about repressed people. It’s a hard topic but it’s needed to remember the past in order to not repeat it.
You might notice small memorial plaque in St.Pete, in Moscow or even in other countries (see the map on their website).
Every memorial plaque is dedicated to one person. It’s paid off the pocket of people who remember this person (donations), it’s positioned on the wall of the building where that person lived before the arrest.
The project is an initiative by Moscow and St.Petersburg historians, civic and civil rights activists, journalists, architects, designers, and writers. It is based on the law “on the exoneration of victims of political repression” adopted in Russia in 1991. The thought behind the process is to remember regular people, not only VIPs. (See more in the Wikipedia article.)
For example, this plaque is dedicated to a forester who was arrested and executed in 1938 and acquitted in 1958.
One name, one life, one sign.
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