Each year, on the third Sunday of May, Ukraine commemorates the victims of political repressions. In 2026, this day falls on 17 May. It was established by a presidential decree on 21 May 2007, to mark the 70th anniversary of the Great Terror. Since then, it has been more than just a date on the calendar; it is a reminder of one of the darkest periods in Ukrainian history, when the Soviet regime systematically destroyed people based on their background, views, profession, or even accidental suspicion.
The most extensive wave of repressions occurred in 1937–1938. This period is known in history as the Great Terror, initiated by the USSR leadership led by Joseph Stalin. Formally, the repressions were explained as a fight against “enemies of the people”, but in reality, it was about total control, societal intimidation, and the destruction of anyone the authorities considered dangerous or disloyal.
In those years, people were arrested without evidence or a fair trial. For this purpose, so-called troikas were created — extrajudicial bodies that passed sentences in a matter of minutes. People were deprived of the right to defence, tortured during interrogations, and forced to sign false testimonies. Often, the only “evidence” was denunciations by neighbours, colleagues, or acquaintances. Fear and distrust reigned in society: people were afraid to speak aloud, afraid of one another, and lived with the understanding that they could be next.
Repressions affected almost everyone. Scientists, writers, artists, priests, military personnel, teachers, and farmers were all targeted. In just two years of the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine, nearly 200,000 people were convicted. Over 120,000 of them were executed. Others were sent to GULAG camps, prisons, or exile. Some people were forcibly placed in psychiatric hospitals. Families of the repressed were a separate target: wives and husbands of “enemies of the people” were arrested, and children were sent to special orphanages or deported along with their families.
The Great Terror struck Crimea with particular cruelty. Among the main targets of the repressions were the Crimean Tatar intelligentsia, party figures, and military personnel of the Black Sea Fleet. The terror affected not only opponents of the Soviet regime but also those who had worked in the Soviet system for years and were considered loyal to it. People were mass-accused of “counter-revolutionary activities”, “nationalism”, or “espionage”.
Among those executed were artist, ethnographer, and historian Usein Bodaninsky; philologist, writer, and archaeologist Osman Akchokrakly; poet, philologist, and educator Abdulla Latif-zade; civic leader, educator, and writer, former People’s Commissar of Education Asan Sabri Aivazov; civic leader and theatre critic, former People’s Commissar of Education Mamut Nedim; Chairman of the Union of Writers of Crimea Ilyas Tarkhan; Chairman of the autonomy government Abdureim Samedinov — and many other representatives of the Crimean Tatar people.
In Crimea, the Crimean Tatar political and cultural elites, who had already been repressed in the late 1920s following the Veli Ibrahimov case, were effectively destroyed. In parallel, mass “purges” continued among military sailors. In 1937–1938 alone, over a thousand commanders and officers were removed from the Black Sea Fleet. Some were executed, while others were sent to camps. Among the repressed was the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Ivan Kozhanov. The repressions so thoroughly undermined the system that chaos, distrust, and fear spread throughout the fleet: commanders were afraid to make decisions, subordinates did not trust the leadership, and denunciations became part of daily life.
Bykivnia Forest near Kyiv became one of the main symbols of the Great Terror’s crimes — it is the largest mass burial site for victims of political repressions in Ukraine. From 1937 to 1941, the bodies of people murdered in Kyiv prisons and NKVD torture chambers were brought here almost every night. According to various estimates, between 15,000 and over 100,000 people are buried in Bykivnia.
The territory was completely classified and guarded. For decades, the Soviet authorities concealed the truth about this place. After the Second World War, the official version of the USSR held that the victims of the Nazis were allegedly buried in Bykivnia. Only in the late 1980s was the regime forced to admit: these are the burials of people murdered by the Stalinist regime.
Among those buried in Bykivnia are writers Mykhail Semenko and Mike Johansen, artist Mykhailo Boichuk, poetess Veronika Cherniakhivska, Metropolitan of the UAOC Vasyl Lypkivskyi, as well as scientists, artists, and thousands of ordinary people whose names often remained unknown for years. Many of them became part of the generation now called the “Executed Renaissance” — the Ukrainian cultural elite that the Soviet authorities effectively destroyed.
Bykivnia was not the only site of mass burials. Such sites exist in Kharkiv, Donetsk, the Luhansk region, Odesa, Vinnytsia, Chernihiv, and other cities. A separate tragedy occurred in Sandarmokh, Karelia, where in the autumn of 1937, over a thousand people were executed, including hundreds of Ukrainians and Ukrainian cultural figures — such as Les Kurbas, Mykola Kulish, Valerian Pidmohylnyi, and Mykola Zerov.
After Stalin’s death, some of the repressed were rehabilitated, but the process was limited and incomplete. Only after restoring independence did Ukraine begin to speak openly at the state level about the crimes of the Soviet regime. In 1991, the law on the rehabilitation of victims of political repressions was adopted, and in 2015, the law on condemning the communist and Nazi totalitarian regimes.
Today, this memory resonates particularly sharply, as many things from the past have once again become reality. Russia, which calls itself the successor to the USSR, is again using the same methods — abductions, torture, filtration camps, political persecution, fabricated cases, and intimidation in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories, including Crimea. There, Crimean Tatars, journalists, activists, and everyone who openly supports Ukraine have been persecuted for years. Searches, arrests, and political sentences have become tools of pressure — just as during the Stalinist terror, when they tried to destroy or silence the Crimean Tatar intelligentsia and all “unreliable” individuals.
The Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions is not just about the past. History once again shows that terror and violence return where the crimes of the past remain unexamined. That is why the memory of the victims of the Great Terror today is also about the fight for freedom, the right to speak the truth, and the refusal to allow fear to become the foundation of the state again.