The sentence to Yuri Dmitriyev means the beginning of the government’s war against the society

Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 30.09.2020

Photo: Yuri Dmitriyev. Photo by AFP PHOTO /Scanpix/LETA

The present Russian regime does not always need chemical warfare agents. Old proven tools also work well. If you need to get rid of undesired persons, shut the mouth of truth-seekers, then there are investigative bodies, courts and prisons for this. To be more precise, there are no longer real investigative bodies and courts in Russia. The Investigative Committee, the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Public Prosecutor General’s Office, the courts – all these are just tools of the punitive system inherited from the Bolsheviks.

Yuri Dmitriyev, a 64-year-old historian and human rights activist, was sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security colony. Everyone knows very well, including judges and public prosecutors, that his case has been rigged from the beginning to the end. However, one can easily read the personal hatred and revenge to the Russian people of modern Stalinists – high-ranking officials – in the filthy and vile slander against an innocent and honest person. They saw how many people of different professions and views supported and defended Dmitriyev, and, looking with horror at Belarus, proactively declared a hybrid war on society. The decision of the Supreme Court of Karelia [sentencing Dmitriyev to 13 years in prison instead of releasing him] is a deliberate and coordinated blow to the entire Russian society.

It is quite possible that this is only the beginning, and now, after the plebiscite of July 1 [on Vladimir Putin’s amendments to the Russian Constitution] , this inhuman system, hostile to the people, will continue to operate in this way.

Putin’s system wants to declare itself a triumphant – always and in everything, – even in lies! Its lies must be the biggest. Its falsities must be of a grand scale. Putin’s system does not tolerate the truth, it does not organically get along with society and therefore is waging an exterminatory war against it. It was simply decided to destroy Yuri Dmitriyev, who tried to preserve in Karelia the memory of the thousands killed during the Stalin’s Great Terror and tell the truth about the crimes of Bolshevism. At any price. By means of any lies.

I will repeat what I wrote in July this year:

THEY LIED when in 1937 and 1938 they secretly loaded prisoners onto barges in the Solovetsky Islands, so that they could then be shot in the Karelian forests. After 1939, THEY LIED to the relatives of the prisoners already buried in the forest ditches that they were allegedly sentenced to ten years without the right to correspond. Since 1945, THEY LIED to their relatives that their fathers, sons and brothers died in custody for natural reasons.

Even after the restrictions were lifted in 1988 and the families finally found out about the death sentences, THEY continued to LIE, hiding the places of mass executions. When in the late 1990s historian Yuri Dmitriyev, together with his colleagues from the Karelian [branch of the] Memorial [human rights society], discovered the tract with the remains of the victims of the executions, THEY LIEED, referring to the statute of limitation, and refused to initiate a criminal case.

THEY LIED when they forced to remove the words “executioners of the NKVD” from the inscription (“Here, in the Sandarmokh tract, the place of mass executions from 1934 to 1941, over 7,000 innocent people – residents of Karelia, prisoners and special settlers of the White Sea – Baltic labour camp and prisoners of the Solovetsky prison – were killed by the NKVD executioners. Remember us, people! Don’t kill each other!) on the monument to the victims of the memorial complex that had been already opened in Karelia.

Then THEY LIED that in Sandarmokh were the remains of anyone, but not of innocent victims of the Bolshevik-Stalinist terror. And so that the researchers did not seek the truth and that it would be discouraging for anyone to even think about the past, THEY DEFAMED historian Dmitriyev by fabricating a dirty case – the first one, and shortly the second one – and put him in prison.

THEY are the modern successors of the Bolshevik cause, the servants of the authoritarian regime of the absolute minority, which regards the people as a source of resources to be used along with natural resources. THEY WILL LIE always and about everything.

But we must know the truth:

– in the forest tract of Sandarmokh there lie the remains of about 7,000 innocent victims of the Bolshevik terror;

– Russia lost at least 26 million people for the period from 1917 to 1953, as a result of the civil war, collectivization and continuous mass terror.

– HISTORIAN YURI DMITRIYEV IS INNOCENT!

And we will always be grateful to Yuri Alexeyevich Dmitriyev for his many years of selfless professional work. We will strive to the last to achieve the complete acquittal and release of Yuri Dmitriyev.

Source

Grigory Yavlinsky

is Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Russian United Democratic Party YABLOKO, Vice President of Liberal International, PhD in Economics, Professor of the National Research University Higher School of Economics.