April 20 19:00
In Tomsk, a monument to victims of political repression – the Stone of Sorrow – was dismantled. According to RIA Tomsk, the Memory Square where it was located was fenced off.
The official reason is the threat of collapse of a garage on the slope of a ravine in the area of Novosobornaya Square. The mayor's office assured that the memorial was transferred to the Department of Road Activities and Improvement for storage.
The Memorial and Memory Square were founded in 1989 in the courtyard of the former NKVD prison. Pits characteristic of mass graves were found on the territory. The official opening took place in 1992. The inscription on the stele read: “In memory of those killed on Tomsk land during the years of Bolshevik terror, this Stone of Sorrow was installed.” Later, memorial signs to the repressed peoples – Kalmyks, Poles, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians – appeared nearby.
The memorial was vandalized more than once: paint was poured on it, a swastika and Stalin’s profile were applied. On the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression on October 30, the “Return of Names” event was held annually at the Stone of Sorrow – Tomsk residents read out lists of those repressed. In 2023, the authorities canceled the action, and in 2024 they refused to allow it to be held at the memorial. The museum also did not hold the event in 2025.
The NKVD Investigation Prison Museum is located in the same building where the internal prison was located from 1923 to 1944. It opened in 1996, and the first visitor back in 1994 was the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
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