Such a simple thing, and yet it makes you see it so differently right away.
It’s one thing when it’s just a surname and a date of death. A black-and-white photograph. But put them in a modern context, and it hits you emotionally at once.
Kozma Grigoriev was just like you. Except he was executed at 21, and in his short life Kozma barely got to see anything at all.
Or take Raisa. She worked as a typist. She was probably in love with someone. Probably wondered where to get some more fashionable clothes and cosmetics.
She was making plans for her life, and life was beautiful, but she was executed at 20. They declared the poor girl a spy and killed her. There was no cosmetics, no nice clothes, no love in her life.
Today in Moscow, at the Solovetsky Stone (a memorial to victims of Soviet repression), the annual “Returning the Names” event is taking place. I try to go every year. Today I’m speaking in Tambov, so I won’t make it to the Solovetsky Stone. If I have time, I’ll go to the monument to the Tambov peasant — the one who was poisoned with chemical weapons and then held in a concentration camp.
And you, if you can, go to the Solovetsky Stone. Read a couple of surnames aloud from a sheet of paper. That’s what we can do for Kozma and Raisa.