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Armenia has no national day to commemorate the victims of the repressions by Soviet leader Josef Stalin, although the Red Terror also affected Armenia, an Armenian literary critic said Tuesday. 

“The fact that the worship of Stalin returns to Russia is obvious. Attempts are made to improve his image, arguing the crimes committed by Josef Stalin had a collective nature. However, I am convinced we must mark the Stalinist genocide as we commemorate the Armenian Genocide. I guess that day was August 9, 1939, when mass arrests were carried out. Moreover, in 1937-1938, one person was executed every 57 minutes in the Soviet Union,” Davit Gasparyan told a news conference in Yerevan.

Speaking about the exhibition titled “Eclipse” dedicated to the victims of the Soviet-era repression, he expressed regrets overs its hasty closure at Tumanyan House Museum, finding it difficult to point out who was behind its shutdown.

The literary critic qualified the absence of a Stalinist repression victims museum in Armenia as the country’s negligence.