INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The mayorâ $ s workplace of the Siberian city of Tomsk eliminated makeshift memorials commemorating victims of Soviet-era repression less
than a month after a group of local historians installed them.In late September, historians in Tomsk put up 5 wooden posts with the names
and images of 30 people who wereexecuted and buried in the cityâ $ s Kashtak ravine in the 1920s and 1940s
Around 9,000 victims of Soviet totalitarian Josef Stalinâ $ s Great Terror are thought to beburied in Kashtak, where regional authorities
installed a memorial complex in the early 2000s to honor their memory.But officialsdemanded that the current makeshift memorials be
11 because they had actually not been licensed with the authorities, according to the local broadcaster TV2.On Thursday, local
mediapublished pictures of 5 holes on the premises of the memorial complex where the columns used to be, stating they were gotten rid of a
day earlier.â $ Nothing helped, not letters from family members asking to leave the columns, not demands by common Tomsk homeowners, â $
TV2 quoted a confidential source as saying.The occurrence comes after the Moscow Mayorâ $ s Officedenied a demand to hold a ceremony
occasion honoring the victims of Stalinâ $ s terror for the fifth consecutive year, while authoritiesblocked the occasion organizersâ $
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