Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the construction of a memorial in Moscow to commemorate victims of Soviet political repression. Funding for Georgy Frangulyan’s Wall of Sorrow will come from the federal government, the city of Moscow and public donations. The sculptor’s design was chosen from more than 300 entries submitted to Moscow’s State Museum of Gulag History by a panel of culture officials and human rights activists. Last month, Putin called the repression “one of the most bitter and most difficult pages of our country’s history”. In a radio interview, Valentin Gefter, the director of the Institute of Human Rights in Moscow, described the monument as “worthy” but said that Putin should also focus on what his state is doing so that “elements of Stalinism” do not resurface.
