Solovetsky Stone

The Solovetsky Stone (Russian: Солове́цкий ка́мень, romanized: Solovetsky kamen’) is a monument on Lubyanka Square in Moscow to the victims of political repression. It is in close proximity to the Lubyanka Building, headquarters since 1918 of various Russian security services, from the Cheka to today's FSB. The monument is made up of a large boulder brought from the Solovetsky Islands in the far northern White Sea, where the first permanent camp of the Soviet penal system, the Solovki prison camp, was set up in 1923. The boulder rests on a granite plinth inscribed "To the victims of political repression". The monument was erected in 1990 to honor victims of political repression in the Soviet Union. Since then it has been the focus of annual and occasional gatherings and ceremonies: in particular, the Day in Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression from 1991 onwards on 30 October and, since 2007, "Restoring the Names" on the day before. It has been the focus of tributes since 16 February 2024, when the Federal Penitentiary Service announced that activist and opposition leader Alexei Navalny had died at the prison in Yamalo-Nenets in Western Siberia.