This article was originally published in Slovo Magazine in June 2023. Global Voices has permission to re-publish an adapted version of the text. Imagine a giant monument at a landmark location of a capital city, and yet, practically no one knows about it. Passersby are as puzzled as the guides on a city tour bus who apologetically say they cannot help when questioned about the structure. The monument itself is only open one day of the year and remains locked for the other 364 days. Searching for the monument on Google Maps shows only a silhouette of the memorial, missing a name as well as a description. The monument known as the Cascade Memorial to the Victims of Political Repression was designed by Jim Torosyan, Yerevan's chief architect, between 1971 and 1981. At the time, its construction aligned with the government’s agenda of de-Stalinization in a period of relative thaw and was dedicated to Armenia’s victims of Soviet repression. The monument formally opened in 2008. The Cascade Memorial sits at the top terrace of Yerevan’s Cascade complex — a landmark stairway that connects Yerevan’s downtown center with Victory Park above the city. It stands next to an obelisk that is visible from afar. The Cascade’s broad limestone band, over 300 meters long and 50 meters wide, marks the city’s north-south axis that runs through the pedestrian Northern Avenue and the imposing Opera building, the focal point of Yerevan’s culture. Like the history of the Soviet repressions itself, this Cascade Memorial remains largely neglected, which is something a handful of Armenians are now trying to change. They see proper commemoration as a step Armenians must take on their path to democracy. And so, for a few years, on June 14, the local activists, led by the researcher Gayane Shagoyan with some support from the Eurasia Partnership Foundation, have been organizing a ceremony to remember the victims of purges and deportations of the Soviet period. In Armenia, June 14 marks the “Day of Remembrance of the Repressed.” The scale of the repressions remains staggering: several thousand were executed, and tens of thousands were deported. The Cascade Memorial, designed in the shape of a rectangular box with a slit as a window, resembling a bunker, provides the commemoration ceremonies an evocative setting — containing and preserving a painful memory in a brutalist style that accurately conveys rupture. In 2022, about 25 people gathered at the Cascade Memorial to remember the victims of these deportations and purges. Participants read the names of some victims, following an approach of remembrance by the well-known Russian human rights organization, Memorial Society. Memorial Society launched this “Return of the Names” in 2007, which involved reading out the names of people who were unjustly prosecuted under the Soviet Union. As a ritual, this approach reasserts people’s individuality in the face of totalitarian erasure. This year, the activists were back at the Memorial, where they laid flowers and also attended a talk by Hranush Kharatyan, an ethnographer and former deputy mayor of Yerevan. The event was organized within the framework of an Armenian-US conference on the Soviet Experience and its aftermath. In her talk, Kharatyan highlighted that genocide survivors were particularly targeted in Soviet repressions, as many of them had relatives outside the Soviet Union. The commemorative events are a rare moment when the Cascade Memorial opens; otherwise, it remains locked. It is an orphaned monument covered in dust. Even people who regularly pass it do not know what the big concrete building stands for. That the Monument is only accessible one day a year is, in many ways, symbolic. As scholars and activists have pointed out, major parts of the Soviet past remain neglected. As they argue, in the absence of redress or at least acknowledgment of the wrongs done through the state authority, it will be hard to build a society that respects the rule of law. This nexus between the past and the present is a particular emphasis for Gevorg Ter-Gabrielyan and Isabella Sargsyan, who work at the Eurasia Partnership Foundation. They think that the past needs to be more directly faced to create opportunities for genuine change. Their view is shared by historians such as Gerard Libaridian, who has argued that an “evaluation of the impact of Soviet rule on the economy, political culture, morals, and intellectual health of the society” is overdue. In its landmark setting, the Cascade Memorial can help recover the marginalized memory of Soviet repression — but more needs to be done. Even basic information remains buried. For instance, much of the recollection of Torosyan’s creation of the Cascade Memorial remains personal.