The World - News from Jan. 29, 1989

An independent anti-Stalinist movement was founded in Moscow with a mandate to expose Stalin Era repression and ensure it is never repeated. After several hours of interruptions and haggling over procedures, the charter of the Memorial Movement was approved by 500 delegates from more than 100 Soviet towns and cities at the two-day founding meeting. “Finally this day has arrived,” veteran human rights campaigner Andrei D. Sakharov told the gathering. The aim of the movement is to set up monuments to the millions of victims of repression under dictator Josef Stalin and to make available archival material from the period covering the 1930s to Stalin’s death in 1953.