Boris Vishnevsky’s blog post, 29.09.2023

I have received a response from the acting Public Prosecutor of the Pskov region to my appeal, in which I asked to dismantle the [recently erected] monument to Stalin in Velikiye Luki, as violating laws, humanism and common sense.

Stalin’s repressions were recognised as a crime by decisions of the highest bodies of power of the USSR and Russia.

Two kilometers from the place where the monument was erected (in front of the entrance to the Mikron plant), on the territory of the Velikiye Luki fortress, there was an NKVD prison before the war, through which hundreds, if not thousands of innocent Soviet people passed through at the behest of Joseph Stalin in the years of the Great Terror and ended their lives in execution ditches and camps.

Nevertheless, the monument [to Stalin] was erected [there] – and this is a direct insult to the memory of millions of victims of the repressions carried out under the leadership of Stalin, who sometimes personally signed the “execution lists”.

However, the Public Prosecutor’s Office widely turns a blind eye to all this, citing the fact that the site where the monument stands is owned by the AO Mikron Pilot Plant, and is built with private funds, and, therefore, the owners do not have to coordinate the placement of the monument with the authorities.

We should also note here that the monument is not located on the territory of the plant, but in front of the entrance – in a publicly accessible place. And citizens passing by (as well as factory workers) see, whether they like it or not, the monument to the executioner and dictator.

At the same time, the Public Prosecutor’s Office calls the 8-meter tall monument a “small architectural form”, reporting reports that the local self-government bodies of Velikiye Luki adopted no legal acts on its installation.

Certainly, this is a runaround reply.

We will appeal it.

BORIS VISHNEVSKY

is Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko Party, member of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee and Bureau, and an MP of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg