Victims of Stalin’s Great Terror were taken to the three-storey court building on Nikolskaya Street, near the Kremlin to be told of their fate.

Alexei Nesterenko was 25 days old when the secret police arrested his father, Georgy, and took him to the building. A year later, on September 20, 1938, he was sentenced to death in a summary trial and executed that day.

Hw was exonerated in 1956, three years after the dictator’s death.

Mr Nesterenko wants the court turned into a museum in honour of Stalin’s victims.

“This building bears witness to the terrible crimes that took place there,” he said.

He added: “Young people passing by should know that the leaders of our country were criminals. In Germany they have gone through this process but in Russia we are just beginning. We still hush up the past.”