Press Release, 31.10.2023

The Novgorod branch of Yabloko organised a rally on 30 October, the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression. The rally participants read out loud the names of Novgorod residents  who were shot during the years of Stalin’s terror, as well as excerpts from the letters of the current political prisoners.

Anna Cherepanova, Chair of the regional branch of the Yabloko party, and deputy of the City Duma of Veliky Novgorod:

“Political repression, one way or another, affected millions of people, millions of people were innocently convicted, millions died, their loved ones were forced to live with the stigma of “enemies of the people”, and were subjected to deprivation and discrimination. However, even after the collapse of the Soviet system, the state never gave a final assessment of Bolshevism and Stalinism as a system of terror. As a system based on two anti-human principles: “the end justifies the means” and “man is nothing, he is trash”. Stalinism and Bolshevism remained an unlearned lesson in the public consciousness, which means that what should never have happened again did happen again.

We again see political trials, arrests for political reasons, “Stalinist” imprisonment terms for politicians opposing the Putin regime, mass-scale criminal and administrative cases for convictions, for political stance, for words. State media incite one part of society against another, the terms “national traitors”, “the fifth column”, “foreign agent”, the analogues of Stalin’s “enemies of the people”, are heard again.

A State Duma deputy from [the pro-government] United Russia party, Andrei Gurulyov, publicly, broadcasted for an audience of millions of people, calls to eliminate 20% of the Russian population who do not agree with Vladimir Putin’s policies. Isn’t this a call for mass repression, incitement to hatred based on political enmity?

The State Duma Ethics Committee hypocritically calls this stream of hatred “a figure of speech” and “figurative expressions,” to which the deputy has every right. Deputy Chairman of Yabloko Boris Vishnevsky appealed to the public prosecutor’s office with demands to conduct a check on Gurulyov’s words and bring him to criminal liability, but we all understand that this will not happen.

The state has stopped trying to overcome Stalinism and Bolshevism and preserve the memory of the victims of repression. The Memorial human rights society has been liquidated, its leaders are being repressed, and monuments to the victims are being attacked. A wave of vandalism has swept across Russia – memorials are being damaged, the “Last Address” signs are being dismantled en masse from the houses [which were the last addresses of the victims].

But the most monstrous thing is that in parallel they have begun the process of perpetuating the memory of Stalin, the organiser and ideologist of mass repression. The most noticeable monument to the “leader of the peoples,” eight meters high, appeared in our neighbouring city, Velikiye Luki. Yabloko deputies Boris Vishnevsky and Artur Gaiduk were the only ones who contacted the public prosecutor’s office and demanded its dismantling. To no avail.

30 October is not just a day of commemorating victims of state terror, but also a day of solidarity with political prisoners, the number of whom is growing in Russia every month.

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Ksenia Cherpanova, a member of the Regional Council of the Novgorod branch of Yabloko:

In the 1990s, we thought that the times when people were imprisoned for words, a different point of view, or disagreement with a political course were irrevocably over. And we were happy about it, and did not think that all this could happen again.

Today at a rally organised by the Novgorod branch of the Yabloko party, we talked, in addition to returning the names of the victims of Stalin’s terror, about political prisoners in modern Russia and read out loud excerpts from their letters. The unlearned lessons of the past have returned. We tried to make sure that all could hear the words of our imprisoned contemporaries, so that they were heard, these people were not forgotten and supported.

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The organisers of the rally expressed their gratitude to all the Novgorod citizens who participated in the action.