Belarus: Opposition commemorate victims of Stalin's Great Terror
- 6 years ago
Over a hundred Belarussian protesters waving the traditional red and white flags of the republic marched through Minsk on Sunday (November 5).
At the Kuropaty area in the capital’s suburbs they commemorated the thousands of Belarussians who were executed and buried by the Soviet-era NKVD secret police from 1937 to 1940.
Joseph Stalin, who succeeded the Soviet Union’s founding father Vladimir Lenin, started a series of purges in the 1930s that became known as the “Great Terror”.
The NKVD security service, the predecessor to the KGB, or today’s FSB, killed hundreds of thousands of people many based on forced confessions obtained through torture, to consolidate the authority of Joseph Stalin.
At the Kuropaty area in the capital’s suburbs they commemorated the thousands of Belarussians who were executed and buried by the Soviet-era NKVD secret police from 1937 to 1940.
Joseph Stalin, who succeeded the Soviet Union’s founding father Vladimir Lenin, started a series of purges in the 1930s that became known as the “Great Terror”.
The NKVD security service, the predecessor to the KGB, or today’s FSB, killed hundreds of thousands of people many based on forced confessions obtained through torture, to consolidate the authority of Joseph Stalin.