Activists of the right parties, who attended the yesterday’s rally near the Solovetsky Stone, Moscow, don’t doubt the political repressions in Russia are only beginning. Elderly women hold portraits of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former chief of YUKOS and today's prisoner.
Photo: Dmitry Kostyukov
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Throwing Solovetsky Stone at the State
Russia marked the Memorial Day for Political Repressions Victims. All of a sudden, President Vladimir Putin called on the government to remember the victims of political terror “so that no one would ever have the slightest wish to repeat even some elements of the past.” The elements are being played again and Russia has political prisoners already, the activists of the rallies claimed.
Yesterday afternoon, about 1000 people came to the Solovetsky Stone to attend the official meeting staged by the Moscow authorities and Moscow Association of Political Repressions Victims. But the participants didn’t speak much about actual victims of political crackdown. Their concern was lashing out at authorities, including for replacing the benefits by cash payments for elderly people.
The survivors of political repressions “are half-starving in time of the Putin’s NEP [new economic policy],” said Sergey Volkov, president of the Association of Political Repressions Victims. Volkov vowed the meeting activists don’t want Putin’s successor to become Russia’s president in 2008. “Our candidate is Mayor Luzhkov, or Moscow Region’s Governor Boris Gromov,” Volkov specified. “They are the fathers! They are able to stand for us!”
As to President Putin, he also mentioned the victims at the yesterday’s meeting of cabinet. “I appeal to all members of the government … to help and do everything in power so that no person, no victim of political repressions would remain unknown, unidentified and so that the society would always remember about it, remember and be aware, and so that no one would ever have the slightest wish to repeat even some elements of the past either today or tomorrow,” Putin said. According to a high-ranked source in the Kremlin, the passionate rhetoric of the president surprised both the ministers and his speechwriters.
But today’s Russia has political prisoners already, right advocates insist. Among them are YUKOS former top managers and employees Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev, Alexey Pichugin and Svetlana Bakhmina, as well as scientists Valentin Danilov and Igor Sutyagin, lawyers Vasily Aleksanyan and Mikhail Trepashkin and 14 members of the National Bolshevik Party condemned for capturing state buildings.
So, the activists of public organizations, Union of Right Forces and Yabloko staged their own rally near the Solovetsky Stone yesterday. The event gathered around 300 participants, while the slogans were: “Won’t allow reviving 1937,” “Two terms of Putin and Khodorkovsky’s verdict are eight years lost for Russia!”
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 31, 2006
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