A giant cross commemorating the victims of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s rule by terror has been erected outside Moscow after it was transported from an island monastery in Russia’s far north. The 41-foot high cedar cross was placed at the Butovo range yesterday, where more than 20,000 people were executed between August 1937 and October 1938, state broadcaster Vesti reported on its Web site.

The cross was built at the Solovetsky Monastery, one of the first Soviet camps for enemies of the people, on islands of the same name in the White Sea off Russia’s northern coast. It began its journey to the Russian capital on July 25.

The head of Stalin’s secret police, Nikolai Yezhov, ordered the destruction of “anti-Soviet and socially dangerous elements” in the country 70 years ago. This triggered arrests, imprisonments, and executions of state officials and civilians as Stalin took control of political life. Yezhov was shot in 1940 on the order of his successor, Lavrentiy Beria.

Part of the cross’s route was along the White Sea canal, where thousands of political prisoners and convicts died of disease and hunger in the early 1930s building the infrastructure to showcase Stalinist socialism.

Stalin, who died in 1953 after leading the Soviet Union through World War II, was denounced for these crimes by his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, in a speech to Communist Party officials in 1956. He was also condemned by Mikhail Gorbachev during his “glasnost” period before the Soviet collapse in 1991.

Since that year, the Russian Orthodox Church, whose priests and believers were among the millions persecuted by Stalin, has enjoyed a revival in Russia.

The cross was driven around Moscow three times early Monday as part of an Orthodox tradition and erected at Butovo yesterday to mark the date the executions began at the range.

President Putin has called Stalin a dictator, while adding that he retains an important place in Russia’s history as the leader of the Soviet Union during World War II.