Sergei Mitrokhin’s blog post at the Ekho Moskvi web-site, 19.05.2015

Deputies of one of the [‘affiliated’] parliamentary factions of the ruling party want to introduce criminal responsibility for comparing the USSR with Nazi Germany.

Hereby I would like to declare solemnly and sincerely that I am not going to obey this law. (Maybe such statements too will be punished by imprisonment soon).

Looks like the news was specially announced in these days – the days of memory of deportation of Crimean Tatars.

Reprisals against peoples proceeding from the notion of their collective guilt is a common feature of the policies of the USSR and Nazi Germany.

On 18 May 1944, NKVD [later renamed into KGB] troops evicted on Stalin’s order over 190,000 people, mainly women, elderly, children and disabled veterans [of the Second World War] from their homes, loaded them into wagons for transportation of cattle and sent to the republics of Central Asia under a pretext of “betrayal of Motherland”. About 20 per cent of people died only in the first 18 months since the deportation.

Ten more nationalities were fully deported and dozens of nationalities were partially deported.

The present Russian authorities don not like to be reminded of this date and other dates connected with Joseph Stalin’s crimes.

On the eve of this tragic day Crimean Tatars and other repressed peoples not only didn’t receive a word of encouragement from the authorities but faced new repressions.

In 2014 Crimean Tatars were deported from Ukraine to Russia, after that a number of their leaders were actually deported back to Ukraine and FSB prohibits them to return to their homeland.

The Majlis (Ed. parliament) of Crimean Tatars is on illegal position. Several activists are imprisoned.

The rally in 2014

On May 18, 2014, Crimean Tatars were ‘mercifully’ allowed to conduct the traditional rally on the deportation day, but this year the rally was ruthlessly prohibited. The YABLOKO party was not allowed to conduct the same kind of rally in a decent place in Moscow.

A year ago Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanon allowed to conduct the rally at Presnya, close to the Moscow centre, but today he ordered that the rally may be allowed [much farther] only in Park Kulturi.

The remembrance dates of other deported peoples become the reasons for reprisals as well. On February 18, 2014, on the eve of another anniversary of the deportation of the Chechen and Ingush peoples of February 23, 1944, academic and research conference “Deportation of the Chechen People. How It Was and Can One Forget It?” took place in the National Library in Grozny (capital of Chechnya]. The next day drugs were slipped to Ruslan Kutayev, organizer of the event. He was given four years of imprisonment. This is how [President of Chechnya] Ramzan Kadyrov did his revenge because the round stable was not agreed with him.

In modern Russia we have already witnessed a direct relapse of deportations. In Spring 2002, the Krasnodar Territory authorities began constructing centers for temporary containtment and convoy departments aimed for forceful deportation of “illegal migrants” who were represented by Meskhitin Turks from the territory. Governor Alexander Tkachyov promised to provided charter flights for deportation of Turks and called the police and local Cossack armies to “activite” and conduct checks of passport regime “not only every day but every night”.

So, I advise the deputies who propose to introduce criminal responsibility for comparing the USSR with Nazi Germany to add extra point there: comparison [of the Nazi Germany] with modern Russia.

Certainly, Joseph Stalin was not a Nazi. But his absolute lack of principles allowed him to use the Nazi practices along with the Bolshivik ones.

What should be prohibited is not the comparison of Bolshevism and Stalinism with Fascism but praising of all such misanthropic ideologies and practices.

I would like to tell all the citizens of Russia, who think that deportation and genocide have nothing to do with them and their nationality: every Stalin’s crime “forgotten” by our present regime is a crime the regime is slowly preparing to. And no one can be certain today that he will not become its next victim.