MOSCOW – The number of Russians who deem Joseph Stalin’s repressions to be a political crime has notably declined over the past five years (from 51 percent in 2012 to 39 percent now), while the percentage of people totally ignorant of those events has doubled (from 6 percent to 13 percent), the Levada Analytical Center told Interfax.
A quarter of 1,600 adult respondents polled in 137 populated localities in 48 Russian regions on April 21-24 said the repressions were a warrantable political necessity (25 percent now vs. 22 percent in 2012).
As to who fell victim to the repressions, 45 percent of the respondents said ‘everyone indiscriminately at the arbitrary will of persons in authority or on the basis of denunciations by enemies’. A fifth (19 percent) believe that the repressed people ‘were in open or secret opposition to the Soviet authorities’, 14 percent describe them as ‘the most talented and authoritative people’, and 7 percent think they were the ‘most loyal supporters of the Soviet government’.
The opinion as to whether or not the repressions should be remembered has undergone a drastic change in the past five years. About half of Russians believe that ‘mentions of those repressions should be rare and the past should not be disturbed’ (47 percent). Thirty-eight percent disagree and think that ‘the events of those years should be actively debated and national history should not be forgotten’. The correlation was the opposite, 37 percent vs. 49 percent, in 2012.
More than a third of respondents (36 percent) believe that the human losses were justified by the goals and results rapidly achieved in the Stalin era, while 49 percent say there is no excuse.
As in 2010, 22 percent of respondents acknowledged that some of their family members were subjected to repressions either before or after WWII, and 53 percent had no such relatives (63 percent seven years ago). The percentage of undecided respondents grew from 15 percent in 2010 to 26 percent now.
Twenty-six percent of Russians called Joseph Stalin a state criminal (32 percent in 2010). About half do not think so (48 percent now vs. 40 percent before). A quarter (25 percent) are undecided.
Russia started to observe the day of victims of the Great Purge of 1937-1938 on Oct. 30, 1991. Remembrance events are held nationwide. The Memorial human rights society annually holds an action titled ‘The Return of the Names’ near the Solovetsky Stone on Lubyanskaya Square in Moscow to read out the names of executed persons. According to Memorial, at least 12 million people in the former Soviet Union were defined as victims of political repressions under the Rehabilitation Law.
