Every year, a small group of locals travels the 550 kilometers northwest from this Siberian city to Nazinsky Island, in the middle of the Ob River, to place a wreath at the foot of a wooden cross. It is a gesture of remembrance for the victims of the horrific events that unfolded there in the summer of 1933.
“Every year in June, we place a wreath at the cross that was placed on the island in 1993,” Valeria Shtatolkin told RFE/RL. “But this year, we couldn’t go. The water was too high, and the island is almost entirely flooded.”
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Their dedication to the pilgrimage is part of an effort to remind fellow Russians of an experiment in social engineering and self-sufficiency that went tragically wrong for many of the “settlers” lured by Soviet authorities under Josef Stalin — whose brutal excesses have frequently been downplayed under Russia’s current leadership in favor of a more forgiving historical interpretation of Stalin’s three-decade rule…
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