The peoples’ deputies of the city council write an essay about the subject: „Why I love Stalin?“
As you already know, the best people of the city of Krasnoyarsk, 16 in all, signed an appeal addressed to the governor of the region, Valeriy Revkuts, – requesting him to assign a place in Krasnoyarsk for the erection of Stalin’s bust.
Here are the names of the deputies-stalinists: the residents should know, who their heroes are: Vladimir Anatolevich Pyastolow,Genadiy Gregorevich Torgunakov, Ivan Aleksandrovich Serebryakov, Vyacheslav Igorevich Gordeev, Tatyana Yevgenevna Rykunova, Vladimir Vladimirowitsch Vladimirov, Valeriy Gennadevich Bykov, Yuriy Vassilevich Turov, Vladimir Vladimirowich Yegorov, Arkadiy Sergeevich Volkov, Sergey Nikolaevich Surtayev, Vladimir Terovich Kondrashev, Nikolay Ivanovich Shevchuk, Nina Ivanovna Mikhaleva, Irina Removna Antipina, Valentina Venediktovna Sheveleva.
It is awfully funny to elect a city council with deputies from the Communist Party, in order that the parliament then collects 16 signatures for the erection of Stalin’s bust - including two autographs from members of the party “A Just Russia” (a banker and the owner of a big construction company) as well as someone from the citizens’ forum (owner of a huge construction company, billionaire).
All these dignified chosen ones of the people realize their activities at the expense of the budget of the city of Krasnoyarsk. I, personally, would really like to know, what actually induced them to put their signature under the appeal in question. Concerning this matter I made an official written inquiry to each of them – with the following text:
„I request your information about whether you signed the appeal requesting the assignation of an adequate space for the erection of Stalin’s bust. In case that you actually signed the document in question, I kindly ask you as deputy with discernment to answer a couple of questions.
As you should be aware of from the course of Russia’s history, as well as from any other publicly accessible sources, they carried out at the time of Stalin’s government the collectivization and expropriation of the population. As shown in an official document of the GULAG / OGPU Department of special resettlement, 381026 families with a total number of 1803392 individuals were sent away by force for special resettlement in 1930 and 1931. Between 1932 and 1940 another 489822 dispossessed people arrived in special settlements. Hundreds of thousands lost their life in exile.
Mass repressions were the main form of handling state and society at Stalin’s times. From 1936 until 1938 alone Stalin and his close combatants from the Politbureau of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) personally signed lists for the sentencing of 43768 people – in most of the cases the sentence was „Death by a firing squad“ -, these lists were designated as „Stalin’s execution lists“. During the Great Terror the head of the NKVD, Nikolai Yezhov, used to present Stalin with assignment lists for every region for appraisal – including specifications about the number of executions to carry out or the quantity of people to be exiled, to be sent to the GULAG, and Stalin then determined a detailed statistic plan for the „purge“.
In Soviet history 4,5 to 4,8 millions of people were sentenced for political motivation, about 1,1 millions of them were shot, the remaining got into the GULAG; not less than 6,5 million were subject to deportation; about 4 million were deprived the franchise according to the constitution of the RSFSR of the year 1918 and the resolution of 1925; approximately 400-500 thousand were repressed based on different decrees and enactments; 6-7 million people starved during famine in 1932-1933 um; 17 million 961 thousand people became victims of the so-called workers’ decrees. Thus, according to statements of the „Memorial“ organization, depending on different calculation methods, between 11 und 12 up to 38-39 million people became victims of the Great Terror.
In 1937-1938 extensive political persecutions were carried out with regard to the managerial staff and the commanders of the Workers‘ and Peasants‘ Red Army (RKKA) as well as the Workers‘ and Peasants‘ Red Fleet, which are marked by historic researchers as phenomenon of the policy of the Great Terror in the USSR.
Stalin’s repressions against the RKKA did considerable damage to the efficiency of defensiveness of the country and, together with other relevant factors, led to substantial losses of Soviet troops during the initial phase of the Great Patriotic War.
During these years three out of five marshals of the Soviet Union, 20 commanders (first and second rank), 5 flag officers of the fleet (first and second rank), 6 flag officers (first rank), 69 corps commanders, 153 divisional commanders, 247 brigade commanders.
In the spring 1940 members of the NKVD USSR shot 21857 Polish prisoners. A multitude of peoples in the USSR was subject to total deportation – among them Koreans, Germans, Finns, Ingrians, Karachay-Cherkessians, Kalmucks, Chechens, Ingush people, Balkarians, Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks.
Based on all these confirmed historical data – what do you think: is it right to put up the bust of a man, who organized all these mass executions? Do you not think that this will is an insulting act against hundreds of thousands of people murdered during Stalin’s rule?
I kindly ask you to please reply to these questions as detailed as possible“.
I hope that each of the named deputies will find time within his compact working plan to put down in writing his replies to the given appeal – in form of a short essay. Subject: „Why I love Stalin“. In accordance with the regulations of the Federal Law dated the 02.05.2006 N° 59 „About how to treat appeals from citizens of the Russian Federation“ „Letters forwarded to the city council are to be replied to within a term of 30 days after their they have been registered “received”. Taking into consideration the functioning of the mail service the first essays of deputies-Stalinists could be read by the end of April 2015. I consider it my duty to publish them in sequence of their receipt.
It is a well-known story that, in fighting for the felicity of the veterans, the veterans themselves have been buried in oblivion since long. The less they become in number, the bigger becomes the temptation to making use of their heroic deeds for one’s own political aims. The more one tries to focus one’s efforts to raise, to glorify Stalin as a symbol of mass repressions, a symbol of the GULAG.
War and repressions affected every single family in the country, and it is the duty of today’s generation to remember those times, to remember the people who fought and were persecuted, who were killed at the front and died in camps. They have all gone through a horrible tragedy and shared the fate of our home country.
These people have done a really heroic deed, and we should not forget about them. It is quite plausible that the efforts of those elected by the people should aim at the improvement of life of the war veterans, the commemoration of war participants, instead of befouling commemoration to the victims of repressions.
Denis Saprygin
MK-Krasnoyarsk, 25.03.15