October 30:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has addressed a memorial service in Butovo, south of Moscow, where more than 20,000 victims of Josef Stalin’s political repression were executed in 1937-38, GZT.ru reports. “We all well know that while 1937 is considered the peak of repression, that year was well prepared by the preceding years of cruelty: it is enough to recall the shooting of hostages in the years of the civil war; the destruction of entire classes, the clergy; the dispossession of the kulaks; the destruction of the Cossacks,” Putin said. Historically, such “tragedies” have happened “when ideals attractive at first glance yet empty were placed higher than basic values - the values of human life, human rights and freedoms,” he said.
Stalin’s repression was a “special tragedy for Russia “because the scale was colossal,” Putin said. “Hundreds of thousands, million of people were destroyed and sent to camps, shot [and] tortured. These were people with their own opinions, which they were not afraid to express. They were the cream of the nation.” The Associated Press, meanwhile, quotes Sergei Volkov, head of the Association of Victims of Political Repression, as warning of the danger of new repression. “It’s the fault of the man who has stepped with one foot into democracy and still stands with another in KGB - our president, Vladimir Putin,” he said.
An officer of the Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) has died, along with a former colleague, under “mysterious circumstances” – apparently as the result of poisoning, NEWSru.com reports. The incident comes in the wake of the arrest by the Federal Security Service (FSB) of several high-level FSKN officials who had been investigating alleged contraband smuggling by senior FSB officials. Following their arrest, FSKN chief Viktor Cherkesov publicly warned that a conflict is taking place inside Russia’s special services.
October 31:
Five former KGB generals, including Vladimir Kryuchkov, who headed the KGB from 1988 until 1991 and was involved in the abortive coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, have warned that the conflict inside Russia’s special services could lead to “big trouble” and called on the warring factions to unite around President Vladimir Putin. “We see that the sides are united in faith in Putin as a national leader, as a factor of stability in the country,” the ex-KGB generals said in an open letter published in the ultranationalist newspaper Zavtra. “Many people share this faith and are ready to support any steps leading to mutual understanding between the sides.”
A bomb on a bus in the southern Russian city of Togliatti has killed at least eight people and injured 50, Reuters reports. The blast was probably caused by a bomb hidden under the floor of the bus, local police sources told Russian media. Nikolai Tulayev, a member of the Federation Council’s Defense and Security Committee, told Ekho Mosvky radio the bombing may have been an attempt by “radical extremist forces” to influence the political situation in the run-up to the December 2nd State Duma elections.
November 1:
Former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, who is a leader of the “Union of Right-Wing Forces,” has written in Kommersant that preparations for falsifying the results of the December 2nd State Duma elections are “in full swing.” “At the local level, officials have already received quotas stating where and how much the United Russia party should get,” Nemtsov wrote. “Some places it is 69 percent, elsewhere it is all 100 percent. Governors are bending over backwards to ensure the required result. After all, they are appointed by the president, and they have a lot to lose and something to fight for.”
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