Stalinist Purge Victims' Names Released

Yahoo News ^ | March 24 2004 | MARIA DANILOVA/AP

[knighthawk]

MOSCOW - Russia's leading human rights groups released a list Wednesday of more than a million of people who fell victim to Josef Stalin's purges — an attempt to draw public attention to the Soviet dictator's crimes in a society still divided over his legacy.

The 1,345,796 names, compiled on a CD-ROM along with brief biographies of the victims, represent only a small portion of those who suffered in the purges, but are all the cases that activists have been able to document so far.

Stalin came to power after the death of Soviet founder V.I. Lenin in 1924 and began a reign of terror that lasted nearly three decades, ending only with his death in 1953. An estimated 20 million people were executed, imprisoned or deported to other parts of the former Soviet Union. Altogether, 10 million are believed to have died.

"This list is intended to help people search for their relatives who suffered repressions," said Arseny Roginsky, chairman of the Memorial human rights group. "But it also is a warning to the society and the authorities about what happens in a country where power is unchecked by the society."

The CD contains the names of those on the so-called "Stalin's lists" — some 44,000 people tried for political offenses on Stalin's personal orders, the majority of whom were executed.

It also has maps and statistics about the Soviet gulag, or labor camp system, and the location of monuments to victims of Soviet repression.

Alexander Yakovlev, an ex-member of the Communist Party Politburo and a key architect of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's democratic reforms, said the project was "an important sign of the penitence of the society."

"Unfortunately, a part of our society would like to forget about this terror, while another part doesn't know about it or doesn't believe it," said Yakovlev, who now heads the presidential commission for rehabilitation of victims of repression.

A recent poll conducted by the independent ROMIR agency found 45 percent of respondents saying that Stalin played a largely positive role in Russia's history. Also, Stalin was named the second most successful Russian leader since the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, ceding first place only to President Vladimir Putin.

The nationwide poll of 1,500 gave its margin of error as 2.6 percentage points.

Yury Samodurov, head of the Moscow's Sakharov museum, named after the late Soviet dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, complained that the project received no help from the government either financially or in terms of access to state archives.

The state "is not striving to acknowledge the fact that this (repression) was a crime," he said.

[knighthawk]

Ping

[Lion in Winter]

I wonder how many were Russian Orthodox Clergy? I know one poster on FR wrote that there were thousands of clergy murdered by stalin.

[Puppage]

Russia's leading human rights groups released a list Wednesday of more than a million of people who fell victim to Josef Stalin's purges

Gee, I wonder how the commies in Berkeley, CA feel about this?

[RussianConservative]

More like tens thousands...burn all traces of Soviet union to ground, now.

[aimhigh]

Another tribute to the best atheism has to offer.

[blowfish]

As someone who was born and raised in Berkeley, I feel sorrow for the people who were killed by Stalin. I actually think you'd find very few people in Berkeley who'd defend Stalin's actions. What prompted your remark, if I may ask?

[Blood of Tyrants]

No, keep the evidence for all to see. The socialists in this country would like nothing more than to be able to deny the murders of tens of millions of people under totalitarian regiemes because of lack of evidence.

[skinkinthegrass]

Gee, I wonder how the commies in Berkeley, CA feel about this?

s/ STALIN WHO? /s...UNCLE JOE?...just like in the 1950s.

or the shrillary excuse: "He just didn't do It right/correctly."..as an answer.yada..yada..yada.

[Puppage]

What prompted your remark

Sarcasm Fish. Plain ol sarcasm.

My apologies if I offended you.

[blowfish]

My apologies if I offended you.

Accepted.

[skinkinthegrass]

No, keep the evidence....because of lack of evidence.

ibid... :/

[JimRed]

Gee, I wonder how the commies in Berkeley, CA feel about this?

You can bet that if they took over, our names would be on their list 50 years from now...

[skinkinthegrass]

Plain ol' sarcasm...

...in David Horowitz's, Radical Son & Whittaker Chamber's, WITNESS...they discuss, how "disturbed they were (the communists)" at these stories/revelations of "Uncle Joe" STALIN from the 1930s thru 1950s.

...@ Berkeley & Oakland, CA. HA!HA!HA!...a real lonely place for a conservative..NOW!

[Blood of Tyrants]

?

[millefleur]

this was the Christian holocaust, not as publicized as another holocaust. Many Ukrainians starved to death alone on their farms when all their animals and produce taken.

[what's up]

Lefties claim to be horrified by Stanlin's actions, yet no lefty movie moghul has stepped up to the plate to churn out the major motion pictures which show the man in nearly the same light as Hitler.

Where's the Steven Spielberg Communist equivalent of "Saving Private Ryan?"

[skinkinthegrass]

?...sorry, Ibid, "referring to the statement before"..used in footnotes, back of book. :)

[Calvin Locke]

I watched some of the History Channel's piece on Stalin. Some of the gulag survivors related how they wrote to Stalin to
tell him what happened to them (gulag) and to please right that obvious injustice, not realizing that "Uncle Joe" gave
the orders to incarcerate them.

[Reactionary]

Let's make copies and send them to all of our favorite liberals. After all, liberals love themselves. They love feeling good about themselves. They love having all of the correct opinions, and they still believe that any form of inequality (whether economic or moral) is simply a sin.

Liberals could certainly stand a reminder that what they believe is inhuman and evil and that true equality only exists in the gulag.