How teenager gave a street concert and was caught up in Russia's repressive past

2 hours ago Share Save Steve Rosenberg Russia Editor in St Petersburg Share Save

BBC Tens of thousands of Stalin's victims are buried in this wood outside St Petersburg

In a wood on the edge of St Petersburg they're reading out a list of names. Each name is a victim of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's Great Terror. In this part of Russia there are thousands of names to be read. Thousands of lives to remember on Russia's annual Remembrance Day for Victims of Political Repression. Buried in the Levashovo Wasteland are believed to be at least 20,000 people - possibly as many as 45,000 - who were denounced, shot and disposed of in mass graves; individuals, as well as whole families destroyed in the dictator's purge in the 1930s. Nailed to the trunks of pine trees are portraits of the executed. Standing here you can feel the ghosts of Russia's past. But what of the present? Today, Russian authorities speak less about Stalin's crimes against his own people, preferring to portray the dictator as a victorious wartime leader. What's more, in recent years a string of repressive laws has been adopted here to punish dissent and silence criticism of the Kremlin and of Russia's war in Ukraine. Kremlin critics might not be denounced as "enemies of the people" like under Stalin. But increasingly they are being designated "foreign agents".