Press Release 8.11.2024

Based on the discussion in the Yabloko Bureau on 31 October, 2024

On 31 October, Yabloko held an open meeting of the Federal Bureau of the party, timed to coincide with the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression. The topic of the large discussion was overcoming Stalinism. The following experts joined the discussion of the problem of studying the crimes of the Soviet state against citizens, as well as developing ways to overcome the growing popularity of Stalinist ideas in our time: lawyers Mikhail Biryukov and Marina Agaltsova, sociologist and Director of the Levada Centre Denis Volkov, co-founder of the Memorial group Viktor Kogan-Yasny, and human rights activist, son of a repressed person Alexei Nesterenko. Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov, Deputy Chairman of Yabloko Boris Vishnevsky and head of the Yabloko Analytical Centre Ivan Bolshakov also made speeches.

Full transcripts of the speeches, which will be included in the new issue of the book “Overcoming Stalinism”, are here

Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov said in the opening of the disucssion, “As a political party, as an important part of our society, we must do everything to prepare the foundation that will help us move away from these [Stalinist] practices in the future, form an opinion in society that will forever make it impossible to glorify and worship these times. How can we achieve this? This is what our discussion should be about.”

Borish Vishnevsky Yabloko Deputy Chairman noted that the discussion was timely, as the general vector of what was called state policies in commemorating victims of political repression had been clearly shifting from perpetuating the memory of victims of repression to reversing decisions on their rehabilitation.

Denis Volkov, Director of the Levada Centre, spoke about the attitude to Stalin’s repressions today: “I would say that after 2014, and we wrote about this, it looked as if the floodgates were opened: what could not be said before 2014, before the conflict with the West, became possible to say, and after that, they began, from the very top, writing and saying such complimentary words about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, that all this was correct, necessary, etc. And if such things come from the very top, then, of course, this encourages grassroots initiatives to justify Stalin, which has increasingly manifested itself in erecting all these monuments to him. That is, what was previously impossible, inconvenient, wrong, is now correct, convenient, possible and good.”

Lawyer Mikhail Biryukov stressed that selective disregard for law and norms, disregard for common sense, an attempt to intimidate activists was a very typical technique that current law enforcement officers borrowed not from Stalin’s times, when there were mass repressions and whole classes were destroyed, but from the late 1970s, very recent examples, when blows were struck at iconic, key figures in order to intimidate and demoralise activists of various organizations. “This is, unfortunately, a very typical feature of current criminal cases and current criminal prosecution,” he said.

His colleague, lawyer Marina Agaltsova said that when a window of opportunity suddenly opens, information about the repressed of the past should be made absolutely open, and here a concept of real actions should be worked out, so that not to repeat the situation of the 1990s when there was a political will to open archives, but this work was sabotaged in every possible way: they said that there was no possibility to accept archives from the KGB, they said that this information was used by different countries in order to harm the interests of Russia, there were various pretexts, so the work was slowed down.

Alexei Nesterenko, human rights activist, son of a repressed person and a Yabloko member, noted that the Yabloko party had proclaimed de-Stalinization as one of its main tasks since 2009. “It was clear that Yabloko was dooming itself to an aggressive attack from the outside. We must know where we live. We now really see that this overcoming of Stalinism is still a long, long way off. But this does not mean that we should stop, because this path must be taken at all costs. I would like to say that we must show that there are people who talk about this. And after the present troubled times pass, we will continue what we have been doing. And we will be engaged in the rehabilitation of “foreign agents”, the rehabilitation of the Memorial group and the Sakharov Centre,” he said.

Viktor Kogan-Yasny, co-founder of the Memorial group and advisor to the Chairman of the Yabloko Political Committee, noted that probably, the crisis of the intelligentsia allowed to reduce the multi-stage system of formation of a totalitarian regime to just one step.

“Stalinism is a monster, it is doomed to collapse sooner or later, but there are two options: either deconstruction, or a crash with debris, and this must be well remembered,” he added.

Kogan-Yasny also stressed that Yabloko was the only party of the intelligentsia had been trying to fulfill s a super-task, a strategic goal throught these 30 years – to affirm a categorical condemnation of Stalinism, the practices of Stalinism, and more broadly – the entire Bolshevik trend aimed at suppressing people, the dominance of a single state ideology, and in fact the dominance of one group over all citizens.

Ivan Bolshakov, a member of the Federal Political Committee and head of the Yabloko Analytical Centre concluded, “It is necessary to resist in every possible way the oblivion of the memory of the repressions, and when the window of opportunity opens and the time for reforms comes, it will be necessary to have a comprehensive de-Stalinization programme that will take into account all these aspects”.