Russians came in dribs and drabs to lay flowers on Monday to the victims of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's purges, on an official day of remembrance largely shunned by an establishment keen to blank out reminders of Russia's troubled past.
Natalia Anafonova came to St. Petersburg's Levashov Cemetery to honor her great-grandfather.
"It was a tragedy for our family," she says. "Our (great-)grandmother, when her husband was shot, was left alone with four children. She was expelled to Uglich (about 740 kilometers from St. Petersburg).