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INFO-RUSS: POLITICAL PRISONERS DAY (fwd)
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Subject: INFO-RUSS: POLITICAL PRISONERS DAY
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Reprinted from RIA-Novosti
which adopted it from
Rossiiskiye Vesti, October 30
OCTOBER 30: POLITICAL PRISONERS DAY
On October 30 Russia marks the Day of Memory of the
Victims of Political Persecution Campaigns. We must
admit that we lost the fervour with which we denounced
the political butchers in the early 1990s, and the
sympathy we felt for the victims of the Bolshevik
regime. We tend to repeat the phrase which was popular
in Brezhnev's time: "Persecution campaigns were evil,
but not everything was plain black or white then." Why
do we do this? Who is responsible for this drawback of
public conscience? Our analyst, Anatoly GUBANOV,
discusses this problem with famous scientist and
politician Alexander YAKOVLEV, Chairman of the
Presidential Commission on the Rehabilitation of
the Victims of Political Persecution Campaigns.
Question: The attitude to persecution campaigns has
changed in society and in some other terms. For example, on
October 30 the staff of the State Duma decided to hold
celebrations, with a concert and expensive gifts, to be given
above all to those who were responsible for the storming of the
city hall and the Ostankino TV centre. What kind of day of the
victims of the Bolshevik regime is that?
Answer: There is nothing new in this. I remember that in
Soviet times, when the rehabilitation of the victims of
political persecution campaigns was barely launched, acts of
crawling sabotage were staged in the Politburo.
Question: We are approaching the 80th celebration of the
October revolution. What will happen on that day?
Answer: Instead of commemorating victims and repenting
sins, many people will "celebrate the red-letter day." Why?
Because nobody has provided a clear-cut and unambiguous
assessment of the past yet. I have spoken about this problem
before. I understand that this is difficult to accept, but
there was no revolution, not to mention a great socialist one.
What happened then?
The power was lying on the autumn sidewalk. Nobody
governed the country. The army was ruined. The shop shelves
were empty and the people held demonstrations and plundered
bread and wine shops. A group of Bolsheviks entered the Smolny
Palace. Antonov-Ovseyenko arrested the ministers of the
Provisional Government.
There was no resistance, just as there was no salvo from
the Avrora cruiser. Some shots were fired, but only into the
ceiling of the Smolny Palace. Later the storming of the palace
was presented as something heroic, following the scenario used
for the storming of the Bastille, which was not stormed since
nobody resisted its occupation. At that time there were only
seven prisoners in the Bastille - several crooks, two madmen
and one pervert. They were guarded by a group of invalids.
Question: Does your commission encounter any difficulties
in its work? Can you answer this question honestly?
Answer: Honestly? We submitted to the President two draft
decrees on the children of the Gulag and activists of socialist
and other similar parties, exterminated by the Bolsheviks. They
have been shelved. Not long ago I met with Valentin Yumashev,
head of the Presidential Administration, and asked him about
the fate of these drafts. He showed certain interest in the
problem, but it turned out that nobody had reported to him on
it. I know that bureaucrats, taking cover behind the idea of
accord and reconciliation, are prepared to gladly forget about
any crimes of the past.
Our bureaucrat is a very interesting person. He trims his
sails to the wind: when there is no demand for something, he
will do nothing. Besides, a bureaucrat has a natural liking for
dictatorship. As a result, we get a terrible thing:
dictatorship by bureaucrats.
There are also problems with archives. The law is the law,
but practical matters are something different. For example, our
commission is still waiting for the Office of the Prosecutor
General to provide the verdict on the case of Beria. They use
different pretexts to bide their time. We will have to
translate from English some so-called secret documents, since
they have long been sold abroad.
4Russia in Facts and Figures 5
In the first few years after the Bolsheviks came to power,
they persecuted peasants who took part in anti-governmental
action, workers who went on strikes, Cossacks, members of
socialist parties and anarchist organisations, the clergy, and
the seamen who took part in the 1921 Kronstadt "revolt."
The authorities "neutralised" 16,000 rebel peasants,
confiscated about 500 homesteads and burned down 250 peasant
houses when crushing the revolt of the Tambov peasants in June
1921. Similar "measures" were taken when the Bolsheviks put out
other revolts of peasants, which rocked the Don, Western
Siberia, the Volga Region, Karelia and other regions of the
country in 1918-22.
in 1921 through 1953, the VChK, OGPU, NKVD and MVD
agencies persecuted 4,060,306 people for political reasons.
Their fate was sealed outside courts. As many as 799,455 were
sentenced to capital punishment (shooting). The tidal wave of
persecutions swept the country in 1937-38, when 1.3 million
were sentenced to hard labour under the notorious Article 58
("counterrevolutionary crimes"), and more than a half of them
(682,000) were shot. At least 40 million were sentenced to
different prison terms in 1923-53. As many as 2.6 million
languished in prisons in 1950, and another 2.3 million lived in
special settlements (data of the late 1940s).
Persecution Campaigns in the Countryside
Over 500,000 peasants were persecuted in the late 1920s
and early 1930s. In 1930-31, a total of 1.8 million members of
peasant families were herded into special camps guarded by
special garrisons, without the right to leave them. In all,
over 1 million peasant homesteads were recognised as belonging
to kulaks (well-off peasants) during the collectivisation
campaign, and nearly 5 million peasants were sent into exile.
Persecution of the Clergy
The year 1918 was marked by the execution of 3,000
clergymen. Another 500-odd were shot in 1928, and 2,500 in
1930. As many as 136,900 Orthodox clergymen were persecuted in
1937, 85,300 of whom were shot. In 1938-41, the church lost
another 38,900 men, 36,400 of whom were executed. The
persecution of the clergy continued well into the 1970s. By
1976, the number of dioceses in the country dropped to 7,038
(there were 48,000 in 1918). In all, about 200,000 clergymen
suffered at the hands of Bolsheviks since the 1917 revolution.
Persecution of the Military
The trial of Tukhachevsky, Yakir and other military
leaders in June 1937 marked the beginning of mass persecutions
in the army, which affected over 40,000 servicemen. In all, the
army was "cleansed" of 45% of commanders who were accused of
political disloyalty. Those who had been unfortunate enough to
be encircled or taken prisoner during the 1941-45 war, and
repatriated Soviet citizens were severely persecuted during
the war and in the first few years after it. In all, 994,000
servicemen were persecuted during the war, 157,000 of whom were
shot.
Ethnic Persecution Campaigns
The forceful movement of whole ethnic groups began before
the 1941-45 war. Poles, Kurds, Koreans, Buryats and other
ethnic groups fell victim to them. Since the mid-1940s to 1961,
a total of 3.5 million members of ethnic groups were
persecuted. The Germans were forced to leave their homes in the
Volga Region, Moscow and Moscow Region and other areas at
gunpoint. The Ingush, Chechens, Kalmyks, Crimean Tartars and
other ethnic groups were deported. In all, 14 ethnic groups
were deported fully, and 48, partially.
The slightest signs of anti-governmental sentiments were
mercilessly crushed after the war, for example the workers'
demonstrations in Novocherkassk in 1962, when the workers
protested against price rises and simultaneous cuts in their
wages.
Dissidents were the main victims of persecution campaigns
in the 1960s-1980s. In 1967 through 1971, the KGB "revealed"
over 3,000 groups of "politically dangerous nature," with
13,500 members of these groups persecuted. Since the mid-1950s,
the KGB widely used psychiatrists to combat dissent. According
to the 1986 information, 5,329 dissidents were the inmates of
the Kazan, Leningrad, Orel, Sychevka, Chernyakhovsk and
Blagoveshchensk psychiatric clinics of the USSR Interior
Ministry. The number of "mental cases" in the Leningrad
hospital of the Interior Ministry went up from 324 to 1,181
in 1956-86.
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