Cross to commemmorate Russian dead

Via BBC News:

The Great Memorial Cross passes the Moscow Kremlin on 6 August

Giant cross to mark Stalin terror

A giant cross commemorating the victims of Stalin's terror 70 years after the worst of the purges has reached Moscow after a journey from northern Russia.

It was taken by boat from the Solovetsky Islands, site of a prison camp, and will be erected at a former execution ground outside the capital.

An estimated 20,000 people, 1,000 of them Christians, were executed at the Butovo range between 1937 and 1938.

The Siberian cedar cross is 12.5m (41 feet) high and 7.6 (25 feet) wide.

"Here's a new regime that wants heroes, not victims"

Tatyana Voronina
researcher at the Russian human rights organisation Memorial

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