The commemorative date was established by Presidential Decree of May 21, 2007, to honor the memory of the victims of political repressions of the communist regime.
The number of victims of political repression in Ukraine is still impossible to count. Tens of thousands of people were shot, hundreds of thousands were imprisoned, exiled, in camps, and forcibly underwent psychiatric treatment.
All segments of the Ukrainian population went through terror and repression: from the scientific and creative intelligentsia to the peasants. The Soviet authorities tried to hide the traces of their crimes. Burial places became KGB regime objects, the area was leveled with bulldozers, and access to the relevant archives was prohibited.
After the large-scale Russian invasion, terror and political persecution became a terrifying reality for a huge number of Ukrainians, whose cities and villages were occupied by the aggressor's troops. Torture, extrajudicial executions of innocent people, forced deportations, filtration camps, mass persecution for political reasons - it seemed that all this would forever remain in history with the fall of the Soviet system. But the ideological heirs of the USSR in Putin's Russia have once again brought mass political repression to Ukrainian soil.
Today, Ukraine demonstrates to the world its extraordinary efforts in the fight against the ruthless aggressor, in the liberation of the entire territory of our state from racists. It fights so that Stalin's methods of the Great Terror are not an instrument of politics in the 21st century. Relying on the help of foreign friends and partners, Ukrainians are defending not only their country, but also fighting for peace in the whole world.