Today, on the third Sunday of May, Ukraine commemorates the victims of political repression by the Soviet government. The event was initiated by presidential decree in 2007, UNN reports.
From the 1920s to the mid-1980s, the Soviet authorities brutally dealt with those who opposed communist ideology, criticized, or did not support the Soviet government.
People were arrested, tortured, executed without trial, sent to concentration camps and exile, and placed in psychiatric hospitals.
To this day, Ukrainian scholars cannot accurately calculate the exact number of victims of the communist regime. The largest number of them occurred during the "great terror" of the late 1930s.
According to various estimates, at least 150,000 Ukrainians were shot or tortured to death in the basements of the NKVD.
In 1937, the USSR issued an order that set limits on the punishment for "anti-Soviet elements." Sentences under category I meant "execution," and under category II - imprisonment in camps. While the initial limit for the Ukrainian SSR under category I was 26,150 people, in January 1938 it was increased to 83,122.
From the late 20s to the early 50s, almost three million so-called dekulakized peasants and their families were evicted from Ukraine.
According to various sources, more than one million people were arrested during the Soviet era as part of political repression, of whom more than 50% were ethnic Ukrainians.
According to some researchers, if we take into account the Holodomors and the deportation of Crimean Tatars, the number of victims of political repression in Ukraine since 1918 could reach 10 million.
The largest mass grave site in Ukraine for victims of the "Great Terror" of 1938-41 is the Bykivnia Forest. According to various estimates, between 15 and 100 thousand people were buried here. They were either shot or tortured to death.
The first remains of victims of the communist regime were found here in 1941, when the Germans entered Kyiv. After the Soviet regime returned, those buried in the Bykivnia forest were declared victims of fascism. However, a 1989 commission clearly confirmed that they were victims of Stalinist repression.
So far, more than 15 thousand people from the Bykivnia burial site have been identified.
Today, a memorial complex is located in the Bykivnia Forest, near which mourning events are held annually on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression.
Additionally
According to some historians, Ukrainian dissident human rights activists spent 550 years in Soviet camps, colonies, prisons, and undergoing compulsory treatment in psychiatric hospitals.
According to official data, about 200 Ukrainian political prisoners are currently imprisoned in Russia.