According to the Law of the Russian Federation about the Rehabilitation of victims of political repressions (18.10.01), we, the rehabilitated persons, are legally entitled to the installation of a domestic extension telephone at reduced charge. In January 2001 I submitted a corresponding application to “Elektrosvias” (ranking forth on the waiting list). In February I received the official reply that our house, unfortunately, is not fitted with the required GTS network (GTS = municipal telephone company; translator’s note), so that it would not be possible to set up a telephone line in my apartment.
The proposed to contact “Sib-Challenge-Telekom”. And this is what I actually did. On February 26 I sent another application directly to them; in April 2001 the general director of this company replied that neither federal nor local means had been budgeted for any telephone providers enabling them to offer and finance special services to rehabilitated victims of Stalin’s repressions.
In May 2001 I directed myself to the head of the Krasnoyarsk administration, asking him for financial support with regard to the setting up of a telephone circuit. I received an official reply letter in which I was given the advice to contact the Social Assistance Office of the district in which I am living. There they offered me financial support in the amount of 15000 rubels, while actual costs for the installation of a telephone circuit (carried out by “Sib-Challenge”) amount to 8200 rubels.
I am not going to specify all the other troubles, stresses and strains I had to learn the hard way; no matter, who I addressed to, starting from the regional administration, ending with the political machinery of Vice Prime Minister Valentin Matvienko …. It was all in vain, because all applications from different levels of power were rejected by “Sib-Challenge”, on the grounds that “neither federal nor local means had been budgeted for any telephone providers enabling them to offer and finance special services ….. For this reason it is impossible to set up a telephone circuit in your apartment”.
This is how they adhere to the Federal Law about the Rehabilitaton of victims of political repressions in our region, although I can prove having been sent into internal exile together with my father twice: he had refused to become a member of the kolkhoz farm. My father was executed on the 12 December 1937. I was twelve years old at that time. Father left me behind with my blind mother, and the two of us were to bear such a lot of misery, so many privations – fate has been very unkind to us, innocent, slandered people. Like all adolescents during the war I was working for the victory, by the sweat of my brow, somewhere in the rear. I am in possession of a medal “For heroic labour” as well as a certificate awarded to me for being a “Veteran of labour”.
It is a very abasing and offending fact that the regional administration and the responsible persons of the municipality are unable to provide ill, weak people with a telephone circuit.
Isai NEMILOSTEV, City of Krasnoyarsk
“Krasnoyarsk Labourer”, 20.09.2002