(25 Jul 2007) SHOTLIST
Moscow - July 25, 2007
1. Mid of Solovetsky stone
2. Mid of speaker announcing a minute of silence
3. Pan left of people listening
4. Mid of former Stalinist camp prisoner Irina Kalina standing, holding a portrait of her father, also imprisoned during Stalin's reign
5. Close-up of portrait
6. SOUNDBITE: (Russian) Irina Kalina, former Stalin camps prisoner:
"I think that of course they were terrible repressions, and I hope this will never happen again, and it cannot happen again because this was absolute lawlessness."
FILE:
Location unknown, 1920's (specific date unknown)
7. Mid of train transporting people to a Gulag camp
8. Train passing by
9. Mid of people inside train
10. People descending from train
11. Wide of people descending from train
Moscow - July 25, 2007
12. Wide of people laying flowers
13. SOUNDBITE: (Russian) Mikhail Popov, son of political prisoner:
"We should not go back to the old times, they executed so many people. We cannot go back. We have such a wonderful life now, I am 80 years old and I've seen such variety of food and goods in the shops. And we shouldn't go back to the queues in the shops and to standing on our knees begging for bread."
14. Mid of people walking with flowers
15. Close-up of people lighting candles
16. Mid of woman crossing herself; pan to woman bowing before the monument
17. Close-up of flowers; tilt up to former KGB building on Lubyanka square
STORYLINE:
Former prisoners of Gulag labour camps (Soviet labour camp system) and the children of victims of former dictator Josef Stalin's political repressions remembered one of the darkest pages of Russia's history at a memorial in Moscow on Wednesday.
Several hundred people laid flowers and lit candles at the "Solovetsky Stone", a monument to victims of Stalin's regime.
The event marked 70 years since Stalin's Great Purge of 1937 when millions were labelled "enemies of state" and executed without trial or sent to languish in Gulag camps.
The anniversary, however, comes amid signals from the Kremlin that it wants to soften the public perception of Stalin's rule as part of President Vladimir Putin's policy to install a sense of patriotism among citizens.
Putin said in June that though the year 1937 was one of the most notorious episodes of the Stalin era no one should try to make Russia feel guilty about it because "in other countries even worse things happened."
The Russian government has in recent years moved to control how history is taught at academic institutions, including by assigning the publication of Kremlin-approved manuals and pulling out of use manuals that deviate from the official line.
In 2003, authorities banned a history manual that was critical of Stalin's tyrannical rule and also included an assignment asking students to discuss whether Putin can be considered an autocrat.
79-year-old Irina Kalina came to the Solovetsky Stone holding a framed photograph of her father Ignatiy Kalina, who had been arrested in 1938 by the NKVD, the predecessor of the KGB, as a spy.
Ignatiy Kalina, who at the time of his arrest served as Belarus Soviet republic's foreign minister, died in jail several months later from suffocation, authorities told the family.
Kalina, then 25, was sent for five years to a labour camp in Kazakhstan.
She said attempts to hush up the full horror of Stalin's crimes were unhealthy for Russian society.
"I think that of course they were terrible repressions, and I hope this will never happen again, and it cannot happen again because this was absolute lawlessness," Kalina said.
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