Political Repression

The 29 percent of respondents who answered positively to the proposal is actually down from 2005, when 42 percent of Russians wanted to see a leader like Stalin ruling the country.

Accordingly, opponents of Stalinist methods of governing also rose to 58 percent from 52 percent four years ago.

However, the number of Russians who had difficulty deciding how to respond (13 percent up from 7 percent in 2005) and those who were apathetic towards the dictator (28 percent up from 13 percent in 2001) both rose significantly.

More Russians responded positively than negatively to Stalin on the whole, 37 percent versus 24 percent.

A similar majority approved of Stalin’s leadership skills, with 31 percent judging them as “average,” 19 percent as “above average,” and only 14 percent as “below average.”

Thirty-five percent of Russians supported the characterization of Stalin as a cruel tyrant who annihilated millions of people, while just as many lauded his prominent role in achieving victory in World War II.

There was a rise in the number of Russians who considered Stalin to be a “wise manager,” up to 21 percent from 16 percent in 1998.

The poll comes at a time of increased conflict over the legacy of Stalin in Russian society. In what became an exchange that demonstrated polarization on Stalin’s legacy among Russians, President Dmitri Medvedev condemned the dictator in an October 30 statement: “I’m convinced that no development of the country and none of its successes or ambitions can be reached at the price of human grief and loss, and there is no justification for oppression.”

Just weeks later, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin responded to what he called the “subtlety” of the question of whether he considered Stalin’s activities to be positive or negative by saying: “One cannot, in my view, make a judgment on the whole.” Putin then proceeded to praise Stalin for successfully changing Russia from an agricultural to an industrial country and said that victory in World War II was Stalin’s achievement.

At the same time, he continued, these positives “were nevertheless reached at an unacceptable price.”

At the end of summer 2009, a recently refurbished metro station in central Moscow shocked residents with the restoration of two lines from an old version of the Soviet hymn engraved near the ceiling: “Stalin brought us up on loyalty to the people / He inspired us to labor and to heroism!” The move was condemned by rights advocates and praised by communists and others, and responded to by authorities by adding an additional couplet from the hymn overnight in late October: “Through tempests shined on us the sun of freedom / And the great Lenin lit us the way.”

The case against Professor Mikhail Suprun and Police Colonel Aleksandr Dudarev had elicited a strong public outcry, prompting the investigation. According to the Investigative Committee (SKP), Suprun received a grant in 2007 from the German Red Cross and a German historical research society to work with forty thousand archival documents located in Arkhangelsk. He then built an electronic database of five thousand settlers of German and Polish heritage, repatriated from German territory to the Arkhangelsk oblast at the end of World War II.

“The information collected by Suprun contained biographical information, the composition of family ties, facts and grounds for moving…and information about service in the German army,” the statement says. It claims that Colonel Dudarev provided Suprun with “unhindered access” to the archives, with “the possibility of copying materials without the agreement of people about whom information was gathered, and their relatives.” Additionally, investigators believe that Suprun was “planning to transfer the information abroad.”

Suprun had been using the archival materials to compose a “Book of Memory” of repressed Russian Germans in the 1940s, as well as to research the fates of prisoners of war in northern camps of the USSR.

Police intercepted Suprun’s car on September 13, when he was taken by officials from the Federal Security Service (FSB) to an investigator. There, the professor was told that someone had informed the FSB of their reluctance to see their relatives’ information in the “Book of Memory,” and that the FSB suspected Suprun of distributing personal information from the archives.

An official search was conducted at the homes and places of work of both Suprun and Dudarev, and all personal archives in possession of the professor were confiscated. He called the search “shameless” and said that officers “told me to say thank you that we’re not breaking up your floorboards.” He also said that officers took “in general everything that was written in foreign languages,” and said that he had not been shown any court order allowing the search.

In an open letter to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on October 14, German politician and human rights advocate Marianne Birthler accused Russian authorities of intentionally hindering Suprun’s work. She said the work “sheds light on the dark times of Stalin” and called for all confiscated materials to be returned to Suprun.

The “Book of Memory” has already been published throughout Russia for the past decade. According to Yan Rachinsky, co-chairman of the human rights center Memorial, “various power structures (including the police and the FSB) participate in the preparation of these books.” The prosecutor, he said, is obligated to allow the work to go on despite any objections from relatives.

This is not the first time Russia’s federal authorities have confiscated historical documents. In a raid last December by the same committee now investigating Suprun’s case, armed and masked men broke into Memorial’s St. Petersburg office and confiscated its entire archive. Many of the materials contained unique information pertaining to victims of the Stalinist repressions, and noted historian Orlando Figes said the raid “was clearly intended to intimidate Memorial.”

The source of Aushev’s fears was backed by colleague Musa Pliev, aid to the Ingush president and representative of the family of another slain oppositionist. According to Pliev, the current murder investigation must change its focus to consider a political motive. The five possible motives outlined by authorities, which Pliev called “absurd and baseless,” include criminal associations, promises of aid to demonstrators who faced possible prosecution, and an extramarital affair. Pliev asserts out that Aushev was never associated with any criminals, and that the demonstrators Aushev supposedly promised to help have long since been freed. The woman he is accused of having an affair with is a cousin, and was a passenger with Aushev when their car was sprayed with machine gun fire on Sunday.

Ingush President Yunus-bek Yevkurov blames the murder on the republic’s security forces. In an October 26 interview on the Echo Moskvy radio station, Yevkurov said that he took the news of the murder “with severity,” that the crime aimed to destabilize the republic, and that it had been directed against him personally. The president has pledged to put all possible resources behind the investigation.

According to Yevkurov, the leaders of the republic had nothing to do with the murder.

While Aushev supported Yevkurov’s efforts, he had lost faith in the president months before he was killed.

According to Aushev’s writings, President Yevkurov “has fallen under the influence of the security forces, which have continued these six months [since he assumed power] to abduct, torture, and kill people…not a single time did he speak of how the tyranny of the security forces was inadmissible, but with their own actions they made clear who was in charge.”

Tatyana Lokshina, Deputy Director of the Human Rights Watch Moscow bureau, agrees that the murder calls into question Yevkurov’s ability to protect the pluralism in the republic that he supports. She stated that citizen activism had become “practically a form of suicide” in the Northern Caucuses, and called on the Kremlin to act.

The Kremlin installed Yevkurov as president of Ingushetia after removing grossly unpopular Murat Zyazikov a year ago this week. Zyazikov and his family face personal and financial ruin if the Prosecutor General decides to bring criminal charges of embezzlement.

Aushev’s murder marks at least the fifth activist killing in the Northern Caucuses this year alone, in a region plagued by government corruption and violence. Security forces in charge of controlling the insurgent violence spilling over from neighboring Chechnya are widely accused of abductions and extrajudicial killings that remain largely uninvestigated. As of July of this year, 170 persons have been kidnapped in Ingushetia, and while abductions have recently lessened, murders have increased. Magomed Yevloyev, former head of Ingushetia.ru (since changed to Ingushetia.org) and close ally of Aushev, was shot and killed by security forces while detained on August 31, 2008.

Maksharip Aushev’s car was shot with approximately sixty bullets as he and cousin Tauzela Dzeitova drove through the Kabardino-Balkaria territory in the Northern Caucasus on October 25. He died in his car of bullet wounds, while Dzeitova was hospitalized and has undergone several operations. He had been the victim of a failed kidnapping attempt on September 15 shortly after leaving a meeting with government authorities.

Aushev was a prominent businessman in the Russian republic of Ingushetia who turned to activism after his son and nephew were abducted in 2007, which he blames on the republic’s security forces. He had been determined to form an opposition that would use all lawful methods to stop bloodshed in the troubled North Caucus region. More than two thousand people attended his funeral on October 26.

The new web page is a joint project of the Other Russia coalition and the Nizhny Novgorod-based Foundation to Support Tolerance, as well as several Russian NGOs and human rights organizations.

The main goal of the web page is to collect information on repressions against Russian political and social activists, journalists and human rights defenders. Many of them have been subjected to various forms of harassment because of their political views and activities this year. There have been cases of people being killed and beaten. Many people have been taken into custody under false charges. There have been cases of people subjected to forced psychiatric treatment. Unlawful detentions and searches are becoming routine practice.

The project is aimed at attracting attention to such incidents in particular and to the practice of repression against dissidents across Russia. The site plans to raise public awareness and to launch public campaigns to support endangered activists.

For further information, visit www.hroniki.info, or send an email to: o.chelysheva@yahoo.com