“The rehabilitation of Stalin can’t be allowed”, – members of society express their resentment.
Russian society is insulted by the decision of the councils of many towns of the Russian Federation to place a monument to Stalin. A lot of representatives from the Russian scientific and liberal intelligentsia wrote, to no avail, a letter to Mr. Putin to not allow the placement of Stalin´s monument anywhere in the Russian Federation. (09-MAY-05)
This event was timed to Victory Day on the 9th of May as an unveiling of a monument to the grate strategist, Stalin, without whom the Soviet Union couldn´t have won. The plan was decided on by the town councils of Volgograd, Mirni, Belogorod region, Krasnoyarsk,Vologda, Cheliabinsk etc. On the 9th of May there will be an unveiling of a monument to Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, made by Zurab Tseritelli, near the museum-panorama of the battle of Stalingrad in Volgograd. The director of the Volgograd museum, Boris Usik, said the idea for the placement of the monument was given by the local council of veterans. The final decision was made by the Committee for City Construction and Architecture of Volgograd.
The representatives of the Russian intelligentsia believe that this is a bad cover-up for the rehabilitation of Neostalinism. Members of Russian society insist that Stalin was one of the most tyrannical criminals of the XX century and the author of the politics of terror in the Soviet Union. The politics of the collectivization and expulsion of the kulaks in the 1920`s was criminal, which led to the death of some 6-10 million soviet people. Not long before the Second World War the politics of repression murdered 700 thousand innocent people. The division of Poland and the annexation of the Baltic countries, in a secret agreement with Hitler, was illegal. The execution, by shooting, of thousands of officers, around 80% of those who were serving in the Soviet army, at the end of the 30`s seriously weakened the security of the Soviet Union. The representatives of the Russian intelligentsia consider the placement of a monument insulting the memory of those killed, and their descendants.
The arguments for a monument, by Stalinists, are based on the activity of Stalin during the Second World War as Commander-in-chief of the army which led the Soviet Union to Victory. But Stalin was responsible for far more appointments. It was because of Stalin’s short-sighted policy that he misjudged the invasion by Hitler’s army, resulting in enormous losses in the first months of the War.
It was Stalin who betrayed the soviet people who were captured. Stalin publicly renounced the captured people and did nothing to help them. As a result 3 million Soviet people were lost in Nazis camps. Stalin cynically used the victory of the soviet people over Nazism to strengthen his own personal power over the Soviet Union and expand it on many countries of Eastern Europe.
There is only one winner of the War – the millions of soviet people who, not thanks to Stalin, but despite Stalin’s failures, mistakes and criminals, had won the Second World War. It was the great feat of arms of ordinary Russian people which defended their Motherland and home.
The placement of Stalin’s monument lessens of the role of the soviet soldier and is insulting the memory of the dead who died during the War.
An unveiling of a monument to Stalin is rehabilitation of Stalinism, the criminal regime of terror. The placement of this monument is like if German people placed a monument to Hitler. This would have been considered as a rehabilitation of fascism, a regime as blooded as Stalin’s repressive regime. We find it sad to see that, in some countries there is a movement towards a rehabilitation, by some of the population, of fascism by the placement of monuments.
We join the representatives of the Russian scientific and liberal intelligentsia who are against the placement of Stalin’s monuments in the Russian Federation. There is no place for Stalin’s monument, particularly on Victory Day, anywhere in the Russian Federation.
Photo: www.hro.org
