The press conference by Mikhail Gorbachev held on 4 June in Interfax was not an ordinary one. The matter is that he wants to follow through on the thing he started. It was with him that during Perestroika and glasnost times a wide process of rehabilitation of the political repressions victims was renewed (it was started at Khrushchev). However, in 1991 everything was stopped. Thousands of innocent people have not been exonerated so far.    

And still we don’t have a national memorial to the victims of the state terror and to heroes of resistance to the totalitarian regime. This is what Mikhail Gorbachev talked about. As usual, he proceeded from the feeling matured in the society. The main reason for the press conference was an open letter by the public appealing to the state to disclose the archives related to repressions and to help commemoration of all the victims.    

Prominent writers, poets, businessmen and public figures signed the letter. 

The publication of that letter and the following press conference caused a wide public response. It’s only on the first day that tens of messages came from Novaya Gazeta readers wishing to sign the letter above. Russian and foreign media covered the press conference widely. 

One of beside points was asking Mikhail Gorbachev to give his opinion about what should be done to the Lenin’s mausoleum and other graves near the Kremlin’s wall. He answered he is convinced that soon or late Lenin would be buried beneath the ground, as it was his own will. And other Kremlin’s burial places would be eliminated too.  

Mikhail Gorbachev also answered in a competent way to other sharp questions about the great starvation in Ukraine in the 30’s last century, about executions made in Katyn... Some explanations were made by Arseny Roginsky, the head of the public movement “Memorial”. Alexander Lebedev, the shareholder of Novaya Gazeta, narrated about plans and problems of arranging a Memorial Museum Complex at the premises of Butyrskaya Prison.   

The Russian Orthodox Church supported the initiative of making the memorial dedicated to victims of Stalin’s repressions. “Necessity of commemorating those fallen to the state machine of the soviet union of the Stalin’s epoch is what many members of the Russian Orthodox Church have been talking about for many years” said Georgy Ryabykh, the acting secretary of external relations at the Moscow patriarchate.  

The speaker of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov also supported the idea.  

P.S. Yet it was only declaration of intentions by the society and the state. Society is not going to change its intentions. We do hope that the state will not change it either. The Butyrskaya Prison appears to be a very proper place for making a Memorial Museum Complex on it, the territory for repentance.