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Russia: Four million people rehabilitated since Stalin's death
RIA

Moscow, 29 October: All in all more than four million victims of political repression have been rehabilitated since the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the work is still going on. This announcement was made on Monday [29 October] by Aleksandr Yakovlev, the chairman of the Commission under the President for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression.

According to the report by the RIA-Novosti correspondent, Yakovlev said that earlier stages of the work on rehabilitation, which started during the "Khrushchev thaw", victims of political repression were merely given an amnesty without removing the accusations made against them. "In addition, in those days the so-called "Lenin period" was not taken into account, during which, for instance, mass shootings of completely innocent people took place at the time of the civil war," Yakovlev remarked. It was cases from this period of history, among others, that the commission headed by himself was assessing, he said.

Yakovlev stressed that in Russia "repression was wide-ranging", so that "terrorist gangs and groupings" were found even in the office of the Kremlin commandant's office and in the government library. In some departments, socialist competitions were held over the numbers of people shot on denunciation, and "quotas" on the number of people to be shot were handed down as well.

Yakovlev reported that in some NKVD [the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs] camps for repressed persons about 20 to 27 per cent of internees died every year, especially children under the age of five. All in all, 10 million people died during the years of repression, the chairman of the commission remarked.

Yakovlev believes that the number of employees in the Military Prosecutor's Office and other agencies investigating cases of political repression should be increased. These assessments can be completed in 2-3 years, he believes, at least "in formal terms".

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