Russia was quick to reprimand the insensitive Estonians for moving a monument to a Soviet soldier from the center of Tallinn to a military cemetery, but it looks like the power learned a thing or two from the incident. It is noteworthy that the Russian government has never put up a monument to the millions of victims of Stalin’s NKVD terror. The Solovetsy Stone was brought to Moscow at the initiative of the “Memorial” NGO from the site of one the the first outposts of the GULag, the Solovki Islands, and placed on Lubyanka Square in front of KGB headquarters, where a mighty statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky once stood. This simple stone has become a sacred place where people come to honor the memory of loved ones who disappeared in the middle of the night and perished during the purges and whose final resting places will never be known. Now, the authorities want to move the Stone, ostensibly to construct an underground power station for the metro. The Stone will be put in a place with restricted public access. Temporarily. Or so the authorities say. The very idea that the paranoid FSB would allow civilian underground construction so close to its headquarters already seems suspicious. And what is to keep this temporary construction project from becoming permanent, as so often happens in Russia? What if the authorities decide that they actually prefer the new inconvenient location of the Stone and don’t return this eyesore and reminder of the excesses of the organs back to its rightful place in front of their headquarters? Such a scenario is very possible in today’s Russia, and would represent a deep affront to the memory of the millions of innocent victims of the organs in years gone by. But the organs don’t want people to remember, because they’re intent on restoring the GULag system to its full glory by filling it once again with imaginary spies and “enemies of the people”. After the jump, a translation from the Russian press on this story.