Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions

On the third Sunday of May independent Ukraine annually pays homage to millions of innocent people whose life was cut short by the Soviet repressive totalitarian machine that destroyed our people with marked cruelty in the 1920s-1950s.  

In Kyiv, the Memorial Day is annually observed in the horrible Bykivnia Forest, the place of last repose of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, Poles, Russians, Jews, people of other ethnic groups who were condemned to death by the tyrannical Stalinist government, often in retaliation for their desire to think like free individuals. According to historians, up to 100,000 people killed by the Soviet authorities are buried in the Bykivnia Forest.

In the 1930s-1940s, Ukraine was inflicted heavy losses. The Stalinist repressive machine destroyed all who attempted to resist it. Anyone - a peasant, schoolteacher, engineer, worker or scientist - could fall prey to it. The most famous victims of the Stalinist regime are writers Valerian Pidmohylny, Mykola Voronyi, Mykola Kulish, Mykola Khvylovy, Yevhen Pluzhnyk, Mykola Zerov, Ostap Vyshnya; director and actor Les Kurbas, poet Ivan Bagryany, literary critic and academician Serhiy Yefremov and many others. Most of them were sentenced to death, some managed to survive in concentration camps and prisons. 

Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions is a day to honour all those who have sacrificed their lives for our future. These people fought for one common idea - a free independent Ukraine, where everyone has the right to their own opinion and self-expression, where people do not die for their desire to be free and to create freely. We, modern Ukrainians, should not only remember those horrible times but also do our utmost to prevent such tragic events from taking place in the history of our country again.