In the days around October 30, Russia’s Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression, at least 160 gatherings have been planned to commemorate and support prisoners of conscience.
Most will bring people together, often after public readings of the names of victims of Soviet repression, to write to today’s political prisoners, of whom around 1,800 have been formally recognized, though the true number is closer to 5,000. The evenings will span Russia from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, with events abroad in places as diverse as Seattle and Seoul.
Organizers represent a broad range of communities, including supporters of murdered opposition leader Alexei Navalny, regional branches of the liberal Yabloko party, a feminist anarchist collective and a grassroots educational initiative which writes to jailed students and scientists.
Solidarity with political prisoners has become a powerful shared cause for Russians in exile and those who remain in the country, drawing people into collective action, as documented in a CEPA report in June.
Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, letter-writing evenings have become one of the most widespread forms of regular in-person civic activity. Inside Russia in particular, they offer a way to meet like-minded people who oppose the war while taking part in a relatively safe act with political meaning.
CEPA identified 4,579 letter-writing evenings and combined events between January 2022 and September this year, including 1,394 across 48 Russian regions — nearly three-quarters of them outside Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Exiled civil society representatives interviewed for the report said solidarity fundraising marathons for political prisoners foster a sense of connection and shared purpose and are encouraging examples of their organizations’ impact.
Such campaigns also bring human rights groups and independent media together for online broadcasts. Four marathons held between 2023 and 2026 raised around 90m rubles ($1.1m) in small donations, alongside another 150m-200m rubles raised through platforms such as Zaodno.
The Kremlin sees any independent collective action as a threat to its authority and has intensified pressure on organizers. It has pursued two tracks: discrediting the cause ideologically and dismantling the groups and spaces that sustain it.
The ideological campaign casts doubt on victims of political repression, beginning with the Soviet past. Russia’s October 1991 rehabilitation law condemned state terror, cleared victims’ names and restored their rights, explicitly exonerating those convicted of “anti-Soviet agitation” or spreading “false claims” about the USSR.
This receded under Putin, and the Prosecutor General’s rehabilitation department was closed in 2005. While the law’s core principles survived, in June 2024 the government rewrote its commemoration policy, dropping references to mass repression.
By September 2024, prosecutors had overturned more than 4,000 rehabilitation decisions, reported to include those for anti-Soviet speech. By portraying past victims as deserving of punishment, the Kremlin sought to erode sympathy for today’s dissidents, whom it has branded “foreign agents” and prosecuted for treason or “discrediting” the military.
Another intervention that reinforced this ideological pressure was at Moscow’s Gulag History Museum. In November 2024, it was closed on “fire-safety” grounds; then its director was dismissed, and in June the museum’s exhibition was replaced with one on Nazi atrocities, redirecting attention from state repression to the crimes of an external enemy.
Authorities have also targeted the organizations and places that enable gatherings.
This began before the invasion when Memorial, co-founded by Soviet-era dissidents and central to Russia’s reckoning with repression, was designated a “foreign agent” in 2016 and ordered to liquidate its office in December 2021.
Attacks intensified in 2025 and have continued since. Raids on letter-writing gatherings in different regions have been followed by a crackdown on venues where cultural events brought democratic-minded people together, including in solidarity with political prisoners.
Closures have included Revolt Center in Syktyvkar, Black Square in Irkutsk, Open Space in Moscow and St. Petersburg and, most recently, Prostranstvo Politika groups across six cities.
Memorial was designated an “extremist organization” in April, followed by OVD-Info, a leading monitor of political repression. The designation carries a penalty of 10 years in jail for activists and has forced solidarity groups to adapt and curb their public activity.
Whether because of this, or for other reasons, there has been a contraction in activity since 2024.
Organizers have adapted. Between 2023 and this year, the share requiring advance registration rose from 12% to 39%, fewer used the words “political prisoners” in communications, and venue addresses were increasingly shared privately to reduce the risk of police raids.
Small grassroots groups, which can more easily escape official scrutiny, now account for 27% of recorded events, up from 14% in 2023, and they are playing a greater role in sustaining gatherings as established hubs disappear.
The adaptations suggest there is still demand among a sector of the population seeking ways to express opposition to war and censorship. Even if the Kremlin makes letter-writing evenings and similar formats untenable, the “habit” of expressing solidarity can support other forms of collective action, such as helping displaced Ukrainians and sustaining independent education.
Connections preserve the trust and shared experience that allow new initiatives to emerge and stop dissent from being a solitary experience. For those under pressure, knowing that others share their commitment can help counter the isolation and fragmentation the Kremlin is seeking to impose.
The October 30 Coalition, launched by the National Endowment for Democracy and partners to support political prisoners worldwide, aims to make that wider solidarity visible, reminding Russians that their cause resonates across the globe.
Mikhail Komin is a fellow with the Democratic Resilience program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
