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Whilst Moscow authorities began preparations on instructions from President V V Putin for creating a special monument to victims of political repression, the KPRF pressed for re-establishing monuments to the man who more than anyone else was responsible for setting the machine of reprisals in motion… I V Stalin. Earlier this month, the newspaper Novye Izvestiya reported that the KPRF created on its own or supported the creation of groups of activists for erecting monuments to Stalin at least in eight territories of Russia. In Kirov, the KPRF even launched a fund-raising campaign. Once they collect the money, the regional KPRF office will ask the local authorities for a plot of land. The Communists and their followers advanced similar initiatives for commemorating Stalin in Oryol Oblast, Tula, Tyumen, Vladivostok, Saratov, and other cities,.
Repression in the USSR peaked in 1937-38. Some historians call this period the Great Terror. Over less than two years, the Soviets shot 680,000 “enemies of the people” and another 300,000 died in labour camps. The personality of the Soviet leader of the first half of last century, whose policies claimed millions of Soviet people’s lives, these days, 62 years after his death, still causes turbulent and controversial emotions in society, which remains largely split over the issue. Stalin’s admirers… mostly Communists and leftist and nationalist groups… tend to see him as a historical personality who steered the USSR towards a triumphant victory in World War II. They praise his managerial talent and give him credit for building a major industrialised power. His opponents and critics recall mostly the mass terror against his own people.
Of late, as economic problems in the country keep mounting, speculations about “iron hand rule” and about “another Stalin” have been ever more frequent in the media space. An article on the website of the KPRF Moscow City Committee, timed for the 135th anniversary of Stalin’s birth 21 December noted, “These days, interest in the personality of Stalin in Russia is growing, mostly with the loss of the country’s previous foothold on the world scene and profound economic and social problems inside the country”. KPRF leader G A Zyuganov said at a wreath-laying ceremony at the tomb of the “the leader of peoples”, “Stalin … was a genius. Today, his policy knocks on our door and I hope that the country hears it”. A Levada Centre poll, held on the eve of the 60th anniversary of Stalin’s death, revealed the following changes in public sentiment… those who were generally positive about Stalin’s role in history was up from 27 percent in 1994 to 49 percent in 2013, whilst that of those who offered “generally negative” comments shrank from 47 percent to 32 percent. As for the 19 percent who failed to reply, most were young people having very little idea of their own country’s history.
Sergei Markov, the director of the Political Studies Institute, told TASS, “Many people say that they like Stalin mostly because, for them, he’s largely a synonym for a strong country, of a ruthless struggle against corruption, an architect of a powerful industry with reliance exclusively on internal resources, and, lastly, a symbol of victory in the war with Hitler’s Germany”. In contrast to many of his colleagues Markov, a political scientist whose grandfather, he said, died in a Stalinist labour camp, sees nothing terrible about this trend, observing, “It doesn’t mean that people really want a comeback of Stalin and his policy of repression. In this way, rather, they send a message on what sort of qualities they would like to see in politicians today. It’s a hint to the authorities to adjust their policies accordingly”.
25 December 2014
Lyudmila Aleksandrova
ITAR-TASS
http://itar-tass.com/en/opinions/769240
Voices from Russia 
Many of Those Condemned in the Trials of the 1930s WERE Guilty
Tags: 1917 October Revolution, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, Christian, Christianity, Eastern Orthodox Church, Federal Security Service, Federal Security Service (Russia), FSB, Great Purges, Iosif Stalin, Josef Stalin, Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Moscow Patriarchate, Orthodox, Orthodoxy, political commentary, politics, repression, Russia, Russian, Russian history, Russian Revolution, Soviet Union, Stalin, Stalinism, Stalinist repressions, Trotsky, USSR, Vsevolod Chaplin
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Some of the “best people”, that is, our intelligentsia, turned on the FSB’s director because he pointed up that some of the people convicted in the trials of the 1930s were actually guilty, as they wish to do nothing more than condemn what they call the “crimes” of the Bolshevik authorities. What he said was:
Are you telling me that all the repressed Old Bolsheviks were innocent? On the other hand, is it just because a part of the intelligentsia sees these people as their historical predecessors, and is afraid of a similar verdict by the court of history and in the verdict of the people? In fact, the only true innocents were those few people who didn’t betray the tsar and their faith, who suffered for their allegiance to them. Many of the New Martyrs were amongst them. However, the collective sins of many Russian classes are obvious to me… as is the justice of the punishment that struck them. By the way, only Protestant rationalists, contrary to Scripture and Tradition, believe that sins can only be personal.
Was the peasantry, who seized land from the manors, perfectly innocent? Who was innocent amongst the clergy, who only protested when it affected their corporate interests… or, the aristocracy, many of whom donned red cockades… or, the Duma Deputies, industrialists, and party leaders who plotted against the tsar in wartime… or, the Red commanders who shot down their own people? The Lord God isn’t mocked. True is His justice. He metes out according to our just desserts. This isn’t just about the past.
24 December 2017
Vsevolod Chaplin
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