The authorities in the western Siberian city of Tomsk have dismantled a recently erected memorial bearing the names of Soviet-era victims of repression, regional television channel TV2 reported on Thursday.

The memorial pillars were removed on Wednesday after the Tomsk authorities issued an injunction on 28 September for the memorial to be taken down, according to independent news outlet Govorit NeMoskva.

“Nothing helped. Neither letters from victims’ relatives, nor requests from ordinary Tomsk residents to leave the memorial where it was,” a source told TV2.

Activists erected the memorial on Mount Kashtak on 22 September, with its five pillars featuring the portraits and biographies of 30 of the roughly 9,000 people who were shot on the site by the Soviet secret police in the 1920s and 1930s.

“This was the first attempt to give the place meaning for visitors. To turn … anonymous victims into people with their own destiny, their own story,” local historian Vasily Khanevich told TV2.

Commenting on the memorial’s removal on Thursday, the Tomsk mayor’s office stressed that it was “forbidden to erect any structures” on the site without official approval, though it did add that it was prepared to hand over the monument to those who had erected it and help them select a site where it could be placed in accordance with the regulations.

Holes in the ground mark the spot where memorial pillars had once stood on Mount Kashtak. Photo: TV2 / Telegram