Last Address

Within the framework of the project, a small, palm-sized, minimalist metal memorial sign of rectangular shape is installed on the house that became the last lifetime address of the victim of state arbitrariness.

The main source of information on victims of political repression for the project is the multi-million name database collected by Memorial since the 1990s.

Since 2017, the project went beyond Russia and became international: its signs began to be placed in the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Germany and France.

At the same time, the authors and researchers note that the goal of the "Last Address" is not the installation of millions of signs "on every house", but the memory and reflection that arise as a result of the initiative.

According to researchers' estimates, during the existence of the Soviet regime millions of people suffered as a result of political repression, hundreds of thousands of them were killed.

In their work to create the memorial, civil activists rely on the 1991 Russian law "On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression".

In the framework of the project, an important moment for memorializing a person is his or her official legal rehabilitation, which demonstrates the illegality of the state's persecution of him or her.

The memorial sign is placed on the wall of the house that became the last lifetime address of the victim of political repression: the person was taken from it and never returned.

If several commemorative signs are placed on a house, project designers develop a special artistic solution for their arrangement on the wall.

For example, in the fall of 2017, a memorial sign of orientalist Richard Fasmer was unveiled on the facade of the Hermitage Museum (Palace Embankment, 32),[16] in the winter of 2018, the sign of accountant Alvina Peterson appeared on the wall of the chamber stage of the Bolshoi Theater (Nikolskaya Street, 17),[9][17][18] and in the summer of 2019, the Novgorod Kremlin honored the memory of art historian Boris Shevyakov.

Unlike the usual territorially localized monuments, its plaques are part of everyday material culture, being scattered in many places in many cities.

[8][27][28] According to the idea of the authors of the project, the individual character of the memorial signs humanizes the "dry" and "faceless" statistics about the millions of victims of repression, the abstract nature of which does not arouse emotions.

[29][30] The reference to profession serves to emphasize the idea that not only political figures were subjected to repression, but also the most ordinary people, be it a barmaid, a conductor, a historian, an engineer or an artist.

[33] The authors of the project note that the graves of many repressed people are still unknown, making the Last Address plaque the only place where the memory of the deceased is preserved.

According to the idea of the project initiators, perpetuating the memory of the victims of political repressions of the past contributes to recognizing the value of life, human rights and freedoms in the present, as well as to preventing the repetition of the tragedies of state terror and totalitarianism in the future.

[22][8][37] Activists from other countries, such as Poland, Latvia, Romania, Belarus, and Armenia have also expressed their desire to join the project.

After all organizational issues have been resolved by the project team, he or she also makes a targeted donation for the production and installation of the memorial sign.

[8][43] Another important aspect of the project the Last Address is that it is not implemented as a state program, but is actually a mass public initiative and commemorative practice[3] around which a whole civil movement has been built.

Then the project participants conduct additional research in state archives to clarify information about the circumstances of the murder.

In the course of negotiations with the residents of the house, the project volunteers conduct a lot of educational work among them: they tell about the history of political repressions, about the fate of specific victims who used to live at this address, about the importance of preserving the memory.

If the owner refuses, the memorial sign is not placed on the building, as respect for rights and lack of coercion is a significant principle of the project.

The project is the initiative of Moscow and St. Petersburg historians, civic and civil rights activists, journalists, architects, designers and writers.

The official representative of the project is the nonprofit entity Last Address Foundation for the Commemoration of Victims of Political Repression (Russian: Фонд увековечения памяти жертв политических репрессий «Последний Адрес») founded by the Memorial Society and a number of individual persons[46] through voluntary contributions from private citizens and organizations.

The memorial sign was installed on 11 August 2015 on the façade of the house that was the last residential address of peasant Valentin Startsev, declared by investigators “an active participant of the liquidated counterrevolutionary insurgent organization.” Investigators claimed that Startsev was “conducting counterrevolutionary defeatist agitation among kolkhoz members, trying to prove the inevitability of the fall of Soviet power,” “praising the old Tsarist regime and proving unprofitability of kolkhozes”; as a result, he was sentenced to capital punishment in the form of execution by a firing squad.

The first country outside Russia became Ukraine, where a separate project "Остання адреса – Україна" based on Russian "Last address" started working.