The year 1937 is only one symbolic marker in the continuum of revolution and violence that gave birth to the Soviet state. Untold horrors predated and followed it, but no other period singed the nation like the purges unleashed in 1937. At once methodical and random, small-minded and all-encompassing, the Great Terror swept the country and spared no one it deemed a threat to the Bolshevik regime - from the lowliest pen pushers to the highest ranks of the Red Army.

As Russia observes the 70th anniversary of the start of Stalin's campaign, the country is divided and distracted, farther than ever from a public consensus on the political, historical, and moral import of 1937. One deplorable thing is clear: the muted reaction so far has signaled forgetfulness that borders on indifference.

At a roundtable at the Gorbachev Foundation, held in late September in Moscow and called "1937-2007: Memory and Responsibility," the participants sought out the contemporary implications of the tragedy and the reasons for why the public historical awareness is slipping away. Arseny Roginsky, chairman of the Memorial human rights center, says the problem has less to do with historical amnesia than the shift from a public, nationwide remembrance of the events to a more private memory preserved inside the families.

"Do we remember these people? Certainly, the memory is alive among the families," Roginsky said. "But public memory needs to be secured with the lists of the victims, the names of the perpetrators, the uncovering of the places of execution and burial, the presence of monuments, memorial plaques and museums. This is how memory is imparted to future generations."

President Vladimir Putin made clear the mix of casual remorse and absentmindedness that has come to define the government's response, or lack thereof, to memorializing the Great Terror. Speaking in June at a televised meeting with social studies teachers, he sounded defensive about a historical awareness of the crimes that comes at the expense of national pride. "Let us recall the events since 1937, let us not forget that. But in other countries, it has been said, it was more terrible," Putin said. "No one must be allowed to impose the feeling of guilt on us. Let them think about themselves."

The president then briefly outlined where he thought Stalin's purges stand on the 20th-century pantheon of evil: "We have not used nuclear weapons against a civilian population," he said. "We have not sprayed thousands of kilometers with chemicals, (or) dropped on a small country seven times more bombs than in all the Great Patriotic (War). We had no other black pages, such as Nazism, for instance."

Leaving aside the claim of coercive pressure by "them," Russia seems to have greeted the somber anniversary with a shrug. Reproachfully citing the appalling figures - the hundreds of thousands killed, millions deported, tortured and dispossessed - does not seem in itself to make a compelling case to the Russian public. And the reason may be the very scale and omnipresence of the tragedy.

According to a survey conducted last year by VTsIOM polling agency, 27 percent of Russians said they or their relatives suffered during the Stalin-era political repressions. At the same time, the Foundation for Public Opinion (FOM) determined that 64 percent believe mass media devote enough or too much time to the subject. A remarkable 12 percent say the people who suffered were in fact guilty. What is also missing is a sense of shared responsibility that extends beyond those who decreed the persecutions. Findings by VTsIOM show that 41 percent blame Stalin, 30 percent accuse the security services, and 17 percent point the finger at the upper echelon of the Communist party.

Russia, it seems, is a nation with skeletons in the closet -figuratively and literally. The latest haunting reminder of that came in early October, when the remains of 34 people were found in a mansion's cellar in central Moscow. In all likelihood, they were victims of an execution carried out in the 1930s, who were then buried on the premises. Although the human toll of the many colossal infrastructure projects of the Stalin era is well known, even in Moscow much of the grand construction at the time employed slave labor of camp inmates, while interrogations and killings were taking place inside the capital.

But 1937 stands out in the sweep of Bolshevik terror as the apogee of a planned campaign of extermination that was both violently paranoid and obsessively deliberate. NKVD, the Soviet secret police, issued the infamous order No. 00447 on Aug. 5, 1937. Unlike the carnage of the Civil War, the mass famine during collectivization and some of the high-profile arrests in the spring and summer of 1937, the new policy introduced mass repressions that spanned all social classes and ethnic groups.

In an eerie adaptation of the rules governing the planned state economy, the NKVD order drew up advance quotas of "anti-Soviet elements" singled out for persecution. It set out the initial target figure of 268,950 persons, divided by regions, of which about a third were to be executed. Four months were allotted for the murderous spree. Eventually, more than a million were arrested and over 700,000 killed, with the campaign continuing until October 1938. And this was not the end. Repressions resumed in earnest during the last years of the Second World War and continued until Stalin's death in 1953. Thousands more were locked up for alleged political crimes throughout the remaining decades of Soviet rule.

Out of the shadows

A public recognition of the Great Terror may be perestroika's most lasting contribution to Russia's civic conscience. Revisionist historical studies and open discussion of the crimes amounted to an indictment of the Soviet regime. In 1990, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev ordered an official rehabilitation of the millions who suffered from the repressions. For a time, Stalin's name became publicly synonymous with absolute evil.

But perhaps those years of national atonement planted the seeds for today's widely shared apathy. Boris Dubin, who heads the department of socio-political research at the Levada Center polling agency, says that society did not frame questions about the terror in moral terms. Shifting the blame on to the crumbling Soviet system, the public never probed deeper. And without a broader moral issue at stake, the historical awareness has started to dissipate with time. "The significance of the events was seen as closely tied to the former regime, disregarding the reasons and the attitudes that allowed them to happen in the first place," Dubin said.

Many observers believe the government has been complicit in taking a passive line since the mid-1990s. The issue of honoring the victims was delegated to public organizations and the few concerned individuals. To this day, with the sole exception of the Solovetsky stone on Lubyanka Square, central Moscow lacks any memorials or commemorative plaques that recall the political repressions.

Without institutional backing at the highest level, the historical period receded in importance for the vast majority of the population. Irina Flige, head of Memorial's St. Petersburg branch, says that without any physical reminders, public memory has become abstract and unfocused. The situation may be marginally better farther away from Moscow, where the tragedy is still keenly felt, but a sense of lackadaisical neglect extends across Russia. "What is needed is a political will to promote the awareness," says Roginsky. "As it is, without any tributes in city centers, public memory is being marginalized, pushed out to cemeteries or former burial sites."

No one to blame

Whereas Stalin-era repressions against the native population may have become excessively politicized in other post-Soviet states, the general silencing of memory in Russia has made the country seem, perhaps unfairly, as still complicit in the events. But recent statements by Russian political leaders, as well as controversial new history textbooks, which understate and partly rationalize the horrors, create a more sinister impression. Nikita Sokolov, editor of the respected Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine, notes a qualitative change in the historical treatment accorded to the Stalin period, with the emerging consensus encouraging a vision of a besieged Russia where the ends justify the means.

"Memory does not form and change by itself," Sokolov said. "What we see in the new textbooks is justification of the repressions as an instrument for shaping the new elite, part of the necessary and successful modernization of the country."

For all the dismayed sentiments and drumbeat of negativity accompanying the anniversary, one major Russian institution has stepped into the public void. The Russian Orthodox Church was the force behind a two-week religious procession in August that transported a 12-meter (40 feet) tall wooden cross from the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea to the former Butovo shooting range in southern Moscow, the site of some of the first mass executions in 1937. Over 20,000 people were killed in Butovo between Aug. 8, 1937 and Oct. 19, 1938. The victims included some of the highest-ranking clergymen left at the time.

The FSB transferred the site to the church authorities in 1995. A small wooden chapel was put up by 1996, and earlier this year, construction ended on a majestic stone church, which was sanctified during a ceremony that included a delegation of the Russian Orthodox Abroad after its official reconciliation with the Moscow Patriarchate.

Archpriest Kirill (Kaleda), deacon of the Butovo Church, says the political repressions which peaked in 1937-1938 were indiscriminate, but one of their objectives was the physical extermination of the entire clergy, a task that was nearly accomplished. Nonetheless, the memorial complex in Butovo honors all victims, regardless of their religious convictions. "To those of us here today, everyone who died carries a remarkable power to unify," Father Kirill said. "Paying our respect can become a force that brings together our fragmented society."

The mass graves in Butovo have become one of the most sacrosanct sites for the Orthodox church. Over 200 clergymen shot there have been canonized. For Father Kirill, in blessing their martyrdom the church has taken a critical public stance. By investigating the details of the events and the lives of the victims, honoring their memory and raising a temple as a tribute to their suffering, the church contributes to the nationwide recognition of what has happened.

Although the number of visitors to the complex has increased, with people coming both to show respect and to inquire about the fate of their relatives, attendance is still woefully low. And local officials are not always eager to support the basic maintenance of the facilities. "Society has not yet properly embraced the historical memory," Father Kirill said. "And the attitude of the authorities simply reflects the disinterest on the part of society at large."