Speaking in south Moscow, where over 20,000 were executed in the late 1930s, Putin said: "Political disputes, battles, exchanges in ideas and struggle are crucial for a country's development, but they should be constructive, not destructive, and the political struggle should remain within a cultural and educational framework."
Putin's visit to Butovo, the former firing range - the first by a Russian leader - came as the country is gearing up for parliamentary elections, due on December 2. The president, a former KGB officer, is heading election lists of the ruling party United Russia.
Talking to reporters after a service at the Church of New Martyrs and Confessors, which opened in Butovo this year, Putin said millions of people, "who were not afraid to express their opinions, the elite of the nation," had been killed in political purges under Joseph Stalin.
According to declassified Soviet archives, between 1926 and 1939 anything up to 20 million people perished in the Stalinist purges, including many of the Soviet Union's greatest poets and writers. Following the collapse of the U.S.S.R. numerous mass graves were discovered.
Butovo, which in Soviet times was outside the capital, is the burial place for over 20,700 people, including priests, who were shot in 1937-38.
October 30 was declared in 1991 Day of Victims to Political Repression after a first wave of hunger strikes and protests swept the country's political prison camps in 1974. This year also marks the 70th anniversary of the Great Terror of 1937, the pinnacle of purges under the dictator.
Putin said no idea could be valued more than human lives. He said tragedies like Stalinist reprisals "occurred when attractive, but shallow ideals were placed ahead of human lives, rights and freedoms."
