As Part of Its War against Ukraine, Moscow Seeks to Erase Popular Memories about Mass Repressions in Soviet Times

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 13 – Not only is Moscow planning to revisit the rehabilitations of some victims of Soviet repressions thus allowing the Kremlin to reverse specific findings (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/moscows-plan-to-revisit-rehabilitation.html), but it is eliminating from the list of such repressions many of the greatest Soviet crimes.

            This summer, the Russian government released an amended concept of its policy document on memorializing victims of political repression to erase in an Orwellian manner popular memories about those events (forbes.ru/forbeslife/520462-iz-koncepcii-o-pamati-zertv-politiceskih-repressij-ubrali-upominania-rada-repressij).

            The new edition of this concept paper drops the declaration that “Russia cannot fully become a state governed by the rule of law and assuming a leading role in the world without perpetuating the memory of the many millions of its citizens who became victims of political repression.”

            It also drops all references to the persecution of religious groups and representatives of the pre-revolutionary elite who remained in the Soviet Union, collectivization and the famine associated with it, the Great Terror and the GULAG and the peoples who were deported in whole or in part. 

            The new document also fails to say that these and other repressions were illegal and that those who were victims have a right to rehabilitation. Moreover, all data about political repression has been removed as have the characterization of Soviet repressions as having a mass character.

            Irina Shcherbakova, one of the founders of the Memorial Society, says that it is clear that the Kremlin now wants to send a message that “the state is stronger than the individual and htat anyone who does not agree with this is either crazy or an enemy or both” (svoboda.org/a/ochenj-podlaya-istoriya-v-rf-stirayut-pamyatj-o-massovyh-repressiyah/33117449.html).

            She adds that this latest Moscow action is part of the Kremlin’s “propaganda war against Ukraine” and is intended to “show our population once again that the Soviet government was good and that all those who opposed it” – including the Ukrainians – “were always Nazis” who must be destroyed.