Memorial sought for Stalin purge victims

MOSCOW, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Names of the 30,000 people killed in Stalinist purges were read in a solemn Moscow ceremony in hopes of a monument to their deaths, Russian officials said.

On the eve of Thursday's Day of Victims of Political Repressions, the human rights group Memorial and its supporters met to salute the dead at the former secret police headquarters. The list was comprised solely of Muscovites who died in 1938.

The first reader, ombudsman Vladimir Lukin, urged creation of a national memorial, The Moscow Times reported.

"It is good that we frequently recall the heroes of World War II," he said. "But, remaining in the shadows is a no less enormous, monstrous layer of victims of political repressions."

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Memorial head Arseny Roginsky suggested that a monument or museum be erected at Moscow's Butyrsky prison or near the Moscow-Volga Canal.