Wall of Grief: Putin opens first Soviet victims memorial

President Vladimir Putin has uncovered Russia's first landmark to individuals executed in political restraint under Communist dictator Joseph Stalin.

No less than 750,000 individuals were executed and millions ousted or detained under Stalin's lead from the 1920s to the 1950s in the Soviet Union.

Mr Putin said seeing the period plainly would help "prevent it being repeated."

However, faultfinders blamed him for proceeding with political suppression and "squashing common opportunities".

Mass of Grief: Russia recalls casualties of Soviet restraint

A gathering of dissenters from the Soviet time kept in touch with a news site that they viewed the occasion as "inauspicious and pessimistic".

Stalin's casualties

Millions kicked the bucket under Joseph Stalin, who managed the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953

Casualties passed on in extraditions, starvation, constrained collectivisation, executions and in jail camps

No less than 750,000 individuals were executed amid Great Terror of 1937-38

Millions were sent to Gulag work camps

The craftsman behind the Wall of Grief piece, Georgy Frangulyan, told the BBC that the remembrance was not "ordinary, agent workmanship" but rather "an outflow of sentiments, of dread and caution".

The work is comprised of barbed human structures without any countenances, and molded like a grass shearer.


The bronze memorial alongside Moscow's central ring road has been created by artist Georgy Frangulyan

At the opening service, Mr Putin stated: "An unequivocal and clear appraisal of the suppression will forestall it being rehashed."

"This repulsive past must not be eradicated from our national memory and can't be supported by anything."

A year ago, the UK Foreign Office revealed a "crackdown on common society" in Russia. A representative for Russia's remote service said the report was not objective.

In June, President Vladimir Putin cautioned that Russia's adversaries were "belittling" Stalin too much.

Under his lead, the Soviet triumph over the Nazis has turned out to be fundamental to another belief system of Russian significance.