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Muscovites hang plaques on homes of Stalin victims

Moscow (AFP) - They are small, grey, barely noticeable, yet the plaques unveiled on Moscow buildings Wednesday are the first tribute paid to victims of Stalin's purges to mark their former homes.

The mostly crowd-funded project called "The last address" comes nearly 80 years after the worst wave of arrests and executions ordered by Joseph Stalin in the late 1930s.

In a commemoration modelled on Germany's Stolperstein or Stumbling Block, which lays cobblestone-size memorials to mark the last address of a Holocaust victim, metal plaques were placed on two apartment buildings in the Russian capital Wednesday.

More than 40,000 people were shot in Moscow alone, according to the Memorial rights group.

Standing in the snow holding back tears after four plaques were hung on her apartment building, at No. 5 Dolgorukovskaya Street, artist Marina Natapova said she funded one plaque to "help people remember."

Among the four victims remembered there were Abram Matison, who worked in the trade mission in Persia before he was arrested in June 1939, and German Push, who headed a laboratory at an agriculture institute.

Both were shot for alleged espionage.

"There are of course many more than four (victims of Stalin purges) in our building ... I think there were at least 200," she told AFP.

"My mother remembers almost everyone, because they were parents of her classmates ... the children would come back home from school to find the front door sealed. Then they lived on the streets before disappearing somewhere."

Many other residents were arrested while travelling or after divorcing and moving out to protect their families, she said.

Once a prestigious address housing Soviet trade mission workers, the looming building just north of the city centre became one of the most terrifying landmarks of Stalin's terror and was reportedly known as the House of Widows.

Memorial has compiled a list of 80 residents of the seven-story building who were arrested during the 1930s and 1940s Stalin purges, most of whom were executed.

- Remembrance 'complicated' -

The building -- where secret police moved into the flats of victims only to be themselves arrested and shot a few years later -- illustrates the complexity of commemorating the purges in Russia, where state terror has been little discussed and reconciliation never attempted.

"There are many victims of repression who stood at the forefront of these repressions," said Sergei Parkhomenko, a journalist and one of organisers of the project.

"The attitude toward this is complicated," he said. "Many young people today say that the repressions were a great idea, they got rid of enemies."

Organisers chose to use metal placards and place them on walls, because of Moscow's climate. Placing the memorials on the ground would have left them covered by snow and dirt for much of the year, he said.

Though the project was conceived before Russia's annexation of Crimea and the rise of increasingly militant rhetoric, "the militarist ideology today makes it more difficult," Parkhomenko added.

"The message goes against the political line in Russia now," he said, as people placed red carnations beside the plaques. "We'll see if there is vandalism."