Vladimir Putin joined an annual commemoration of victims of Soviet terror for the first time yesterday, but offered no acknowledgement of the role of the secret police in the murder of millions of Russians.

Mr Putin, a former KGB agent, took the last opportunity of his eight-year presidency to attend a ceremony marking Russia's Day of Memory for Victims of Political Repressions. This year's event had added significance as the 70th anniversary of Josef Stalin's Great Purge in 1937, when more than 700,000 people were killed and 1.5 million imprisoned.

Mr Putin said that such tragedies occured when "ideas that seem attractive but prove to be empty are placed above fundamental values: human life and the rights and liberties of Man".

He added: "For our country this is a particular tragedy. Its dimensions are huge, hundreds of thousands, millions of people were exterminated, people who had their own opinions and were not afraid to express them — the cream of the nation."

Mr Putin led the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB and the Stalin-era NKVD, before entering the Kremlin. He has surrounded himself as president with former KGB allies, prompting accusations that he is reviving authoritarianism in Russia.

Mr Putin, who has also openly professed his Orthodox beliefs, joined Patriarch Alexiy II for a prayer service at a former NKVD firing range at Butovo in southern Moscow, where almost 21,000 political prisoners were executed in 1937-38.

The field was the scene of state-sanctioned murders until 1953 and is one of hundreds across Russia containing mass graves of victims of the Soviet regime. Viewing a display of photographs of victims, Mr Putin declared: "It seems incredible, madness."

He down-played Stalin's Great Purge in June, however, telling history teachers that it was terrible "but in other countries even worse things happened". He claimed that Russia's history had "no other black pages".

Mr Putin has sought to revive respect for the security services during his presidency, despite their history of persecution in the Soviet era. He has also described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th Century.

Critics were unimpressed by his decision to join this year's memorial service. Some said that he should have attended another ceremony to victims in the square outside the Lubyanka, the notorious KGB headquarters that is now home to the FSB.

Grigory Yavlinsky, the leader of the liberal opposition Yabloko party, said: "When he takes Stalin out of Red Square, then we'll have something to talk about."

Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a former dissident who leads the Moscow Helsinki Group, told Ekho Moskvy radio that Mr Putin had visited Butovo as part of the campaign for parliamentary elections on December 2. Mr Putin heads the list for the pro-Kremlin United Russia party.

Arseny Roginsky, the director of Memorial, which has sought to catalogue the victims of Soviet repression, welcomed the president's visit, however.

"Whatever is behind this trip — whether an attempt to respond to public sentiments on the 70th anniversary of the Great Terror, a sincere desire to pray for innocent victims or some political ideas — at any rate, this is a symbolic and positive event," he said.

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