Amid 'Quiet Rehabilitation Of Stalin,' Some Russians Honor The Memory Of His Victims

On a recent Sunday morning at 11 o'clock, a dozen people, mostly elderly, gathered in front of an elegant apartment building on a sun-dappled street in central Moscow.

Ksenia Polunina stepped up to remember her father Sergei Polunin, a scientist who was hauled from the building, her childhood home, on a February night in 1938 — and then shot by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's secret police.

"I was seven years old. Everybody thought that I was sleeping, but I heard everything," Polunina told the small crowd. "He came to my bed, made the sign of the cross and kissed me. I pretended that I was asleep."