KGB against Eternalizing Memory of Stalin Era Repressions Victims at State Level :: Charter'97 :: News

On February 13 the chairman of the KGB Stsyapan Sukharenka wrote a letter to the co-chairman of the committee on eternalizing memory of Stalin-era repressions’ victims, Radzim Haretski that setting up such a committee at the national level is inadvisable, Radio Racyja informs. Sukharenka believes that establishing of a state committee on commemoration of Stalin era repressions’ victims would require additional staff and expenditures for its logistical support, which is inexpedient at the present time.

Sukharenka has also told that publication of documentary historical chronicles of memory of all Belarusian regions was finished in 2004. The chronicle of each region contains a chapter “Returned Names” with a list of citizens wrongly accused in 1920-1950 and rehabilitated by the time of the book’s publication. In a calendar there are such days as Radunitsa and Dzyady to honour legacy of Stalinism’s victims, as said by Sukharenka. The year 2007 has been announced the Year of a Child in Belarus. Besides, 125th anniversaries of Janka Kupala and Jakub Kolas are celebrated on this year.

As said by a historian Ihar Kuznyatsou, by this answer the KGB indirectly offers the society to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the tragic 1937 in Belarus independently. The lists of people included to the chronicles are for from being complete. At a conservative estimate, 300,000 natives of Belarus were executed during the Stalin era.

Kuznyatsou has noted: “Less than 10 per cent of the names of the repressed have been included to the “chronicle of memory” of Minsk, while according to most conservative estimate, more than 50,000 people were shot dead in the city”.