Macon.com | BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA | August 8, 2007
MOSCOW –Russian Orthodox priests consecrated a wooden cross Wednesday at a site south of Moscow where firing squads executed thousands of people 70 years ago at the height of Josef Stalin’s political purges.
Created at a monastery that housed one of the first Soviet labor camps and brought by barge to Moscow along a canal built on the bones of gulag inmates, the 40-foot cross has been embraced as memorial to the mass suffering under Stalin.
The ceremony at the Church of New Martyrs and Confessors, built recently at the Butovo site, is one of a series of events planned throughout this year to mark the 70th anniversary of the Great Purge of 1937, when millions were labeled “enemies of the state” and executed without trial or sent to labor camps.
Hundreds of people, most of them women wearing colorful headscarves, laid flowers and lit candles under the cross. The crowd, led by priests carrying icons, continued to the execution and burial site for a service. Some of the women were crying.
There were no representatives of the government, which has shown little interest in the anniversary of the Great Purge. This is in keeping with efforts by President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, to restore Russians’ pride in their Soviet-era history by softening the public perception of Stalin’s rule.
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One of the most important roles for the Church is to act as the conscience of the nation. A large part of that role requires prompting the people to never forget the horrors of the past but to learn from those mistakes so as to never repeat them again
Joseph Stalin is one of the most monstrously evil persons in all history. 700,000 people died at the one concentration camp mentioned in this article, but probably ten to twenty million Russians perished as result of his policies in total. Personally cruel and sadistic, Stalin deliberately created a pervasive climate of fear designed to terrify every single Russian into servile obedience. Identifying oneself as a Christian alone, was an invitation for abuse and persecution.
The current Russsian leader and the Orthodox Church have a much more warmer and symbiotic relationship. The support of the Church gives Vladmir Putin legitimacy in the eyes of the people. Putin’s support has allowed the Russian Orthodox Church to begin recover from 70 years of oppression and begin growing again as an important force in Russian society. As the regime of Vladimir Putin shows signs of becoming more authoritarian and dictatorial the Russian Orthodox Church is going to be placed in an ever more difficult position, however. At some point, however, as critics of Putin are silenced and jailed, the Church is going to have to speak up or else risk laying the groundwork for the next Stalin.