Commemoration of the victims of Soviet repression was first announced in October 1961 at 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. However, when Nikita Khrushchev's program of De-Stalinisation ended in 1964, political dissidents were repressed again during the post-Khrushchev era. The idea persisted among the Soviet dissidents during the 1970s. In the 1980s, during the Perestroika reforms, the policy of democratization and relaxed censorship finally allowed open discussions of the previously forbidden topic of state terror. At the end of the 1980s, the 'Memorial' society was established. One of its major tasks was to commemorate the victims of political repressions, at first only in Moscow, but since 1988 the St. Petersburg branch actively integrated into the society's work.