Every year on October 29, people around the world gather to remember those who were exiled, imprisoned, or executed under the Soviet regime. Since 2007, Returning the Names has taken place every year — a living act of memory during which we read aloud the names of the victims of state terror. Today, it is also one of the few remaining safe ways for people in Russia to show resistance. In 2025, Returning the Names took place in 150 cities.
Returning the Names in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2024
Returning the Names in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2024
How to participate in 2026?
There are many ways to take part in Returning the Names — and every contribution is valuable and important.
Tell your friends and acquaintances about Returning the Names, join a public reading taking place near you, or organize your own reading of the names. You can also share our posts on social media and more. Below, we explain the different ways you can get involved.
The easiest way to take part is to join a public reading if one is taking place near you. The organizers will provide you with printed names, and all you need to do is wait for your turn and read them aloud.
Information about the time and location of readings in different countries is available in the Cities section of this website. Find your city and join others in keeping the memory alive.
If your city isn’t on the list, you can organize a Returning the Names event yourself — and we’ll support you every step of the way. You can find our recommendations in the “Organize an event” section. Please also fill out the organizer form so we can stay in touch.
Your reading can be small and intimate — just you and your loved ones — or it can be a larger public event. The choice is yours. If you organize a public reading, we’ll be happy to publish the announcement on this website and share it on social media to help you reach more people.
Record yourself reading the names on video and share it on your social media, tagging our accounts — we’ll be happy to repost it. You can get names to read using our special Telegram bot (paused until October) or choose names yourself using the Open List database.
If you’d rather not record a video, you can share a text post or a photo of a card bearing the name of a victim of Soviet terror, tell a family story, write about Returning the Names, or repost one of our publications.
If you visit a cemetery, a mass burial site, or another place of remembrance to leave flowers or light candles, take a photo and share it on social media. You can also send it to us via social media or our Telegram bot, and we’ll share it anonymously or tag your account, depending on your preference.
Don’t forget to use the hashtags #october29 #returningthenames (and in Russian: #29октября #возвращениеимен) in your posts. We’ll see and repost them.
Returning the Names on social media (in Russian): Telegram, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube.
We’re looking for music for our day-long livestream on October 29. If you compose music and would like your work to be featured in the Returning the Names broadcast, send it to us via our Telegram bot by October 18.
Our broadcast is like a patchwork quilt: different cities, different times of day, different formats of public readings. It’s stitched together with a variety of elements — teasers, transitions between segments, moments of silence, interviews, and short thematic videos — all of which need music. October 29 is a day that holds both grief and hope, so the music can take any form or genre.
For more details about the kind of music we’re looking for, see the open call on our social media: Telegram, Instagram, Facebook (in Russian).
Reading the names is far from the only way to participate. You can bring flowers, candles, and cards bearing the names of victims of state terror to a memorial site in your city. You can also restore memorial plaques, clean monuments, and take part in other forms of memory activism.
If you’re a visual artist, we invite you to join the international Inktober challenge and give it a Returning the Names focus. This annual creative marathon brings together artists from around the world to create a new drawing every day in October. We encourage you to take part and explore the themes of memory, civic resistance, and activism.
Throughout October, you can create drawings addressing these themes and, of course, share your work on social media — tag the Returning the Names accounts and use the hashtags #Inktober29 or #inktober29names. On October 29, we also invite you to make sketches based on our livestream — capturing a face, a gesture, or an emotion in your drawings.
Returning the Names would not be possible without the help of our volunteers. They answer questions, monitor the livestream, help run the broadcast, create social media posts, keep track of the names being read, and much more.
If you’d like to join the Returning the Names volunteer team, send us a message via our Telegram bot. We’ll be happy to hear from you and answer any questions you may have.
Join our 12-hour livestream on October 29 — here on our website or on YouTube. It will bring together live segments from cities around the world and video recordings of readings that took place before October 29. You can watch the livestream with family or friends, or make it part of another event, such as an evening of writing letters to political prisoners.
Stay tuned for updates — we’ll be sharing announcements about readings scheduled in cities around the world.