Press release, 31.10.2018

On 30 October, the Novosibirsk branch of Yabloko participated in a rally to commemorate the victims of political reprisals. The activists of the party also joined an action against the installation of a monument to Joseph Stalin in Novosibirsk.

“For more than ten years a group of radical communists led by Alexei Denisuk have been trying to authorise the installation of a monument to Joseph Stalin in Novosibirsk. Some of them say – I do not care about repressions, while others deny the fact that repressions took place at all.

There are thousands of people in Novosibirsk who were officially acknowledged victims of political repressions. There are even more people who remember the way their family members suffered without having this status themselves. If the monument to Stalin is installed, that would be an insult to public opinion.

The largest camps that comprised 4,5 million prisoners are listed on the memorial to the victims of political reprisals – this is a decent monument to Stalin,” Alexander Rudnitsky, Chair of the Novosibirsk branch of Memorial human rights groups, said in his address to the audience.

The participants of the rally adopted a resolution against the installation of a monument to Joseph Stalin in Novosibirsk.

Yabloko took part in the Returning the Names memorial action across Russia. Grigory Yavlinsky, Chair of Yabloko Federal Political Committee, said that Russia’s current political system could easily turn towards the developments of the 1930s. “The current political system – taking its logic, methods and approaches into account – is the direct heir of the regime of terror and is a step away from becoming a political mechanism of terror itself.”

According to Yabloko Chair Emilia Slabunova, “if society preserves memories of the developments of the 1920-1930s, a similar scenario will be prevented”. She also said that the government must make a legal and political estimate of Stalin’s crimes.