Controversial excavations at the Sandarmokh Clearing in Northern Russia of the mass graves of thousands of Russian, Ukrainian and other victims of Stalin’s Terror are facing another legal challenge, this time directed against the local prosecutor and the Prosecutor General who refused to react to the effective desecration of the site. The excavations are part of a mounting offensive against both historical truth about the crimes of the Soviet regime and against historians exposing them, and appear to have high-level support. While this means that any legal challenges are likely to fail, the publicity has at least resulted in a partial retreat from plans to change the status of Sandarmokh.
OP-ED
Halya Coynash: Russia turns mass grave into ’sightseeing location’
A picture taken on August 5, 2018 shows a grave of a person killed in 1937 in the Sandarmokh, a memorial site in a pine forest in the Karelia region, at the Russian and Finnish border, where mass graves from the 1930's and bodies from 1940's have been found.
