In order to rehabilitate all those unhappy people, we will need another 200 years, - believest Aleksei Babiy, the chairman of the Krasnoyarsk „Memorial“.
Krasnoyarsk, March 11th, - „Arguments and Facts on the Yenissey“. On the 9th of March the Krasnoyarsk „Memorial“-Organization commemorates its 25th anniversary. Hundreds of thousands of names of people who disappeared in camps and perished, have been restored in history; 11 volumes of the Book of Memory have been published so far. This is an outstanding balance, even though nothing more but an interim result. „Not less than one million victims of repressions are closely related to the Krasnoyarsk Territory. In order to restore the names of all of them, we will have to stay alive and work for another 200 years“, - says “Memorial’s” head“, Aleksei Babiy.
Replaying to the question of how society and he himself have changed while working in the special archives, the chairman of the „Memorial“-organization said: „Did I ever start to love my home country less? No – I didn‘t! Quite the contrary. But my attitude towards the regime and our state has changed for the worse.
As far as society is concerned, the people on the whole have not learned their lessons from history. When we were collecting signatures against the erection of a Stalin memorial in Krasnoyarsk, it became obvious that 50% of the inhabitants were willing to go back into those times, although every second inhabitant of Krasnoyarsk is a descendant of an exile or a victim of political repressions…. I believe that in Russia at any time the development might have an unintended effect, a backfire into the past“.
Margarita Baranova
„Arguments and Facts on the Yenissey“, 07.03.2013