“Nothing can be valued above human life” – Medvedev

October the 30th is the Day of remembrance for millions of ruined lives. For people executed without trial or record; for people exiled and sent to concentration camps, deprived of civil rights for having the “wrong” occupation or the infamous “social origins”. The label of “enemies of the nation” and their “abettors” was applied to entire families. ..the sheer scale of terror that swept across the country, peaking in 1937 and 1938. “The Volga of people’s grief” was Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s term for the endless flow of repression victims at that time. Over the 20 pre-war years, whole sectors and classes of our nation were exterminated. Cossacks were practically liquidated. The peasantry was dispossessed and depleted. Political repressions swept across intelligentsia, workers, and the military. Followers of all religious confessions were prosecuted. Medvedev said:

Let’s just think about it: millions of people died because of terror and false accusation. They were deprived of all rights, even the right for humane burial.

Yet even now we can hear voices saying that those numerous deaths were justified by some supreme goals of the state. I am convinced that no development of a country, no success or ambitions can be achieved through human grief and losses.

Nothing can be valued above human life, and there is no excuse for repressions.