Memorial's statement devoted to 15th anniversary of rehabilitation of victims of political repressions

We call your attention to the condensed version of the statement issued by the Memorial Society on January 16, 2004.

"Fifteen years ago, on January 16, 1989, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued the Decree "On Additional Measure To Restore Justice with Respect to Victims of the Repressions That Took Place in the 1930s-40s and Early 1950s".

(...)

The Decree has been of great importance for the following democratization of the society. (...)

Most of the people sentenced by extrajudicial bodies have been rehabilitated by this Decree. (...)

One can certainly point out a number of defects of the Decree (many of them were corrected by the Law of the Russian Federation "On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions" passed in 1991). But the fact that after 15 years, the process of rehabilitation in Russia is far from completion should by no means be imputed to these defects.

Many thousands of people who were executed or sent to camps as well as millions of people who were dispossessed, deported and disfranchised have not been rehabilitated so far.

One can not say the attention has not been given to this problem at all. For example, in 2002, the Prosecutor General's Office issued a direction to finish reviewing the cases as fast as possible. However sufficient means have not been allotted for it, and the work is going slow. The cases are poorly studied, a lot of documents are absent, and there are no enough qualified personnel. All these hamper the rehabilitation.

But the other thing is much more dangerous. There is much evidence that the Russian (and not only Russian) authorities try to close this issue. Of course, no one wants to say that there were no repressions at all. They surely were, and we have denounced them; but now these dark pages can be forgotten, and we can start being proud of our past, which is great on the whole.

But the meaning of the rehabilitation process is not reduced to the restoration of good names and (when possible) rights of the victims of political repressions. It is certainly necessary to do it, but there is another thing to be done. It is essential that the memory be kept not only by each suffered family but by the society as a whole. There is only one way to do it: the tragic knowledge must not be withdrawn from history textbooks and from the heads of young people, it must not be kept behind doors of closed archives.

But the most important thing is to comprehend and change those peculiarities of our society that made the tragedy possible. Chronic Russian diseases - uncontrolled power and disregard for human rights and freedoms - have not been gotten over. Furthermore, they are obviously gaining ground.

We would like to remind that the lack of knowledge in history does not release anybody from responsibility, and the deliberated oblivion of the past is mortally dangerous for the society."

Board of the International Society "Memorial"

Moscow, January 16, 2004