October 29 – Day of Remembrance for the victims of Stalinist repression. Holding this day of unauthorized actions by local authorities in Haradok was stopped by police after twenty – twenty-five minutes from the beginning. The action was conducted by the Chairman of the Vitebsk regional organization of the Belarusian Popular Front party, Leonid Avtukhov.
The event was held in the city center, opposite the City Council, in a park near the monument to the literary hero Taras polesovschiku product of Constantine Veronitsyna "Taras on Parnassus." At the foot of the monument in memory of the repressed Belarusians Leonid Avtukhov lit a few candles and unfolded a white-red-white flag, and then began to read from a prepared text, which tells about the events of 30-ies.
The action started at 17 o'clock, just at a time when people were returning from work. But no one except the familiar Leonid Autukhou Elena Radkevich, to stay with him and did not dare. The obvious interest in the shares showed a group of teenagers to stay which, however, did not allow a woman to accompany them. In a short time, probably due to a phone call no one person attentive to picket approached two police officers, which brought Mr. and Mrs. Elena Leonid local police station.
Unable to find a translator in the city, which would have a good command of the Belarusian language, about an hour after the arrest, law enforcement officials released the activists without a protocol.
Said Leonid Avtukhov about the conduct of their shares:
"Today is a landmark date for every conscious Belarusian. Black date. On the night of 29 on October 30, 1937, Soviet invaders destroyed in one night more than a hundred representatives of the Belarusian elite: scientists, writers, public servants ... Nation has suffered irreparable loss, which responds to this day. Every Belarusian should remember and honor this day as the Jews remember and honor the Holocaust. Therefore, I consider it my duty to remind people here and the local authorities about this black date as recent public through the media imposed by the nostalgic mood of the times of the Soviet Union. And it's horrible, because a terrorist, gangster regime in world history did not exist. But today's generation about it knows almost nothing. Returns ago should not be, so I'm here standing: let the people know, think, and let the climb to the Internet to find out what the event is now revered. Here, in the Haradok, a lot of people with the same as I do, convictions, but well-known reasons of which I did not invite here."
Vitebsk Spring
