Returning the Names 2025. Chronicle

Since 2020, the organizers of “Returning the Names” have increasingly faced refusals to hold the memorial action. In Moscow, the central readings are effectively banned — formally due to ongoing COVID restrictions. In 2022, Russia’s Supreme Court ordered the final liquidation of Memorial International. Amid growing state pressure on initiatives dealing with historical memory, and the practical impossibility of mass gatherings, activists are searching for new ways to hold the event legally.

“Returning the Names” is an annual commemorative action during which participants read aloud the names of those executed during the Great Terror. Since 2007, on the eve of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression, thousands of people have taken part across Russia and abroad. In Moscow, participants traditionally gather at the Solovetsky Stone on Lubyanka Square, opposite the building that has housed the state security services for over a century.

This year, in Moscow — where access to Lubyanka has for several years been limited largely to foreign diplomats — the readings take place on different days and in various locations: during historical walking tours or in forests at mass graves of the repressed. Despite minimal publicity, fear, anxiety, and the risk of prosecution, dozens of residents continue to take part, and their number is slowly but steadily growing each year.

Documentarians from the independent studio raz/rez present a chronicle of the 2025 “Returning the Names” action in Moscow.