Moscow plaques to commemorate victims of Soviet repression

Historians, designers, journalists and human rights activists have met this week in Moscow to develop Final Address, a new project to commemorate the victims of Soviet oppression. At a workshop at the Strelka Institute for Architecture, Media and Design on Sunday, experts came together to discuss how best to remember the “ordinary” victims of persecution as well as more prominent figures. The end result of Final Address will be the installation of many thousands of identical memorial plaques at the final addresses of victims of political exile or murder during the Soviet Union.

Individual citizens will be encouraged to propose memorials for specific people at specific addresses; they will be given access to the searchable database of over 2.5 million names compiled by human rights group Memorial, who have long campaigned for recognition for the victims of the Soviet state.

Proponents of the project include Eugene Asse, founder of the Moscow School of Architecture; activist Sergei Parkhomenko, a key figure in the anti-government protests of 2011 and 2012; and Sofya Gavrilova, an artist and geographer whose work focuses on post-Soviet spaces and landscapes.

The initiative took its inspiration from German artist Gunter Demnig’s Stolpersteine memorials to the victims of Nazi oppression. Since 2009, Demnig has been installing brass plaques in the pavement in front of victims’ houses in Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Norway and Ukraine.