Day of Remembrance

On October 30, 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin paid his respects to millions of people killed under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and called for the country to unite to prevent a repeat of its tragic past.

Putin marked Russia's annual day of remembrance for the victims of Stalin's purges with a visit to Butovo, a military training ground near Moscow where tens of thousands of people were executed by firing squads.

The victims included priests and royalists but also huge numbers of people who were simply caught up in an indiscriminate spiral of killing.

This year Russia marks the 70th anniversary of the bloodiest period of the purges. Putin attended a memorial service with Patriarch Alexiy II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, after passing a field of mass graves.

It is estimated that between 20 million and 40 million died during Stalin's rule, tearing families apart and creating a climate of fear that haunted the Soviet Union.

Dozens of mainly older Russians laid flowers at a stone memorial outside the headquarters of the former KGB (now known as the Federal Security Service) to remember Stalin's victims. Stalin, who succeeded Vladimir Lenin, started a series of purges in the 1930s that became known as the Great Terror.

The NKVD security service, the predecessor to the KGB, killed hundreds of thousands of people on trumped up charges. Butovo was just one of hundreds of killing grounds. More than 20,000 people are known to have been executed there between August 1937 and October 1938 alone, though local priests say the figure could be as high as 60,000.

The Communists Speak Out

On September 22, 2007, Russia's Communist party vowed to re-nationalise "strategic" industries as opponents of President Vladimir Putin on the left and right set out their pre-election stalls.

Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov kicked off the party's annual congress at a farming village outside Moscow with an indictment of Putin's rule and a promise to restore some methods from the Soviet past.

Since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, "wild, bandit capitalism has been established," Zyuganov declared from a podium featuring a statue of the Soviet Union's founder, Vladimir Lenin.

Outlining plans to re-nationalise key industries and reunite Russia with ex-Soviet neighbours Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, Zyuganov said that stability had been achieved for just five percent of the population under a government of "bureaucrats, oligarchs and bandits."

The event was one of two taking place over the weekend ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections and followed the surprise appointment of new Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov earlier this month.

The Communist party, which was due to approve candidates for December's election Saturday, has remained a significant grouping, regularly getting its views across in the pro-government media.

A host of theories have emerged about next year's handover, with some suspecting that Putin could remain as the power behind the throne, perhaps becoming leader of the pro-Kremlin United Russian party, or that he will install a weak figurehead so as to return as president later.