Controversy over Memorial’s decision to publish the names of those responsible for Stalinist purges
The NGO, recently branded a 'foreign agent’ by Russian authorities, posted online a database with about 40,000 names of agents who took part in Stalin’s Great Terror. The descendants of some perpetrators have apologised to those of the victims; others, fearing revenge, want the database blocked. For one analyst, Russia has to undergo “a third wave of de-Stalinisation” since this page of history cannot be turned without repentance.
Moscow (AsiaNews) – The human rights group Memorial published online a database with the names of more than 40,000 members of Stalin’s feared security forces, the NKVD, which carried out his orders during the ‘Great Terror’ (1935-1939). This, in turn, has sparked various reactions among Russians.
Human rights activists praised the initiative, but some descendants of the police officers called for the website to be blocked.
Writing in Gazeta.ru, Andrei Kolesnikov, a political scientist with the Levada Center, says that "Russia will not move forward unless it undergoes a third wave of de-Stalinisation, after Nikita Khrushchev’s thaw and Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika”.
“Memorial has been doing tremendously important work in identifying and commemorating thousands of victims and now naming their butchers,” says Tanya Lokshina, Russia programme director for Human Rights Watch.
“Until now, if anyone mentions the victims, it’s as though they were killed by a natural disaster like an earthquake or a tidal wave,” says Yan Rachinsky of Memorial.
“I will leave this issue without comment. The issue is very sensitive,” Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was quoted as saying. In his view, “Opinions differ and positions are diametrically opposed. Both sides have their arguments.”
What arguments is Peskov talking about? Kolesnikov says in his article," killing on the basis of false accusations, applying a plan to destroy one’s own people are no valid moral or historical arguments."
"There are only political arguments because the legitimacy of today’s power holders is now being nurtured by a 'glorious' history and in this history there may not be any dark pages, "he writes, referring to the Kremlin’s uncritical use of the Soviet past.
Whilst Memorial posted the list of the material agents of Stalinist repression, a resident of Tomsk, Denis Karagodin, found on his own the name of the man who execute his great-grandfather, who was arrested and shot during the Great Terror.
Karagodin said he was contacted by the granddaughter of the NKVD officer shooting, who asked for forgiveness. He thanked her for her courage and honesty. Calling for "civil reconciliation”, he said this is needed to wipe the slate clean of the past.
Still, not everyone has chosen the path of apology and forgiveness. A few days ago, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported that some descendants of NKVD agents in Memorial’s database wrote to President Vladimir Putin, asking him to block access to it.
The newspaper explained that the petitioners fear that the "grandchildren, great-grandchildren or children of the victims of repression might seek revenge for their relatives".
"This story is not over, because there was no repentance,” Kolesnikov writes, and “Because the state protects and praises those who carried out mass killings, and persecutes those that preserve the memory of the Gulag".
Memorial is a human rights organisation that focuses on preserving the memory of repression. Recently, Russian authorities designated it as a 'foreign agent', a term applied to spies in Soviet times.
Meanwhile, a poll by Levada, an independent polling organisation, found that in 2016, 26 per cent of Russians would justify repression out of political necessity; in 2007, the proportion was 9 per cent.
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