In St. Petersburg, 34 “Last Address” signs were removed from homes

In St. Petersburg, 34 “Last address” plates with the names of the residents of the house, who became victims of repressions during the Soviet era, disappeared from the House of Specialists on Lesnoy Prospekt, Kommersant reports.

The plates, in particular, mentioned the engineer and director of “Sevkabel” Yefim Kovarsky, who was shot in 1937, and employees of the “Red Dawn” telephone plant, accused of “participation in a counter-revolutionary Trotskyist organization that carried out subversive activities at the plant.” Among them are the head of the mechanization office of the plant, Friedrich Schneider, the head of the technical department, Vladimir Dmitriev, and the head of production, Ivan Sivachenko. They were all shot.

Sota reported that the signs were removed by the management company. The reasons for this are unknown.

“The Last Address” is a memorial project, the purpose of which is to “perpetuate the memory of compatriots who became victims of political repression and state arbitrariness during the years of Soviet power.” On the facades of houses, on the initiative or with the consent of the residents, commemorative plaques the size of a postcard with the names of the repressed residents of the house are installed. One plate – one name.

Recently, reports have been received from different regions of Russia about the dismantling of memorial signs to victims of political repression. In particular, plaques of the “Last Address” memorial project began to disappear in Moscow – the plaques disappeared from houses on Bolshoi Polyanka, Novokuznetskaya Street and the writer’s house in Lavrushinsky Lane. In Yakutsk, plaques with the names of the victims of deportations of the 18th-19th centuries and mass repressions of the 20th century were dismantled from the monument to the memory of the Poles.

In 2020, 16 plaques with the names of repressed residents of the city were dismantled from the “Dovlatovsky” house at the Rubinstein address in St. Petersburg, Sever.Realii reminds. The residents of the house removed the signs allegedly due to the lack of agreement of the author of the “Last Address” project with the owners of the apartments.