30th of October is the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Political Repressions. President Putin visited the place of mass executions accompanied by the Head of the Russian Orthodox Church, made a speech... and I remembered this day 1988, when I went to Lubyanka Square (the headquarter of OGPU-NKVD-KGB) together with maybe another hundred of people to have a candlelight vigil. This was the time of Perestroika, new vision, democracy, Mickhail Gorbachev. We were trying to become citizens, we were learning how to be one. We were holding candles, the weather was typical for Moscow in October, a humid and cold evening. People would come to us and ask us what we were doing there. When asked, I would say that I was representing Vorkuta, a place in the Arctic, where I came from, a notorious GULAG labour camp of Stalin era.
After about 30-40 minutes we saw the special forces police unit coming in full gear. They forced us into a small narrow street wth cars parked all over, leaving a very narrow passage. The police started running and clubbing us. People started screaming, everyone was running. I was scared that I could fall on the slippery asphalt, and would be killed by running people. Someone stepped on the bumper and took a picture. Immediately the police rushed into the crowd, they grabbed the guy and started ferociously beating him up. He screamed that he was a journalist, but this made the police even angrier. The commanding officer was without the head gear. He was a tall and strong man. He smashed the camera on the asphalt and then grabbed the man by the neck, put him back first on the hood of the car and started choking him. We tried to jump and free the man, but they started smashing us with the clubs with such hatred, it was unbelievable.
There were old people and women, and everyone were running until there was nowhere to run, we were surrounded by the riot police and they were methodically beating people. It was dark, you could not see much, people were crying, someone grabbed me by the had and pulled me, and I followed. We squeezed between the cars, then were running through tick bushes scratching ourselves, and then ran through the entrance of an old Moscow building, which had an exit into another street, and I was free. Beaten, ashamed, terrified, but free.
Am I happy that the President is now paying tribute to the victims? Not sure. But I know that he was a KGB General. Same KGB that carried out all these executions.
People do not change. KGB has not changed. The past is not gone. 
Jon Zolsky, your Daytna Beach Connection
www.BeautifulFlorida.com
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