Moscow, 20 December: Former Yabloko leader and one of the founders of the party, Grigoriy Yavlinskiy, believes that the current system of power in Russia in many ways resembles one that existed under Stalin.

"The essence of the system, which is still unchanged despite everything, is that the goal justifies the means, and that people do not matter. We spent some time walking round in circles and came back," Yavlinskiy said in his address to the Yabloko congress which is being held in Moscow Region.

He also noted that "another element of this system is lies".

In his view, this now manifests itself not least as state propaganda.

"A whole range of political forces, including at least one well-known one, will be staging a whole series of events tomorrow devoted to Stalinism. This issue is directly related to what is happening in our country," Yavlinskiy said. (Passage omitted: repetition)

Yavlinskiy then went on to read out part of the list of people executed in 1930s.

"No judgment has still been passed at the state level on the system of violence towards individuals, and our authorities "democratically" let people win awards featuring the image of Stalin. In a society in which this is permitted, any talk of elections or democracy is pointless," Yavlinskiy said.

"We categorically protest against witches' Sabbaths devoted to murderers," he said.

In his address, the former Yabloko leader also said: "We have been defeated by the so-called sausage democrats, by those who believed that the main feature of democracy is personal wealth, full shops, and decent living for 20 per cent of the population."

According to Yavlinskiy, the main task for Yabloko now was "to create a fundamentally different democratic policy, and to make the public aware of this alternative, to explain that it is feasible".

"There is no doubt that there realty is a way out of economic stagnation and the economic crisis. To put it briefly, the programme is as follows: housing - roads - land," Yavlinskiy said.

In his opinion, the authorities can and should allocate R14,000bn (over 450bn dollars at the current rate of exchange) for these problems to resolved.

He then outlined his views on how the authorities could implement a housing programme.

In addition, Yavlinskiy listed among the problems that had to be resolved the questions of "what to do with the subject of the Interior Ministry, how to stop price rises, and also resolve the issue of private ownership guarantees ".

In his view, to resolve the Interior Ministry problem, genuine public control is needed; as for price rises, he explained them by collusion between major market players. Yavlinskiy believes that a tough antimonopoly policy is required here.

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