Let Us Draw a Mark of Demarcation between the Truth and Falsification

Helen Blau

Here is an analysis of the figures given by Alexander Yakovlev (former Ambassador of USSR to Canada) regarding the number of victims of Soviet "repressions" as well as some additional relevant and legal information which might also hold your attention.

I would like to start by quoting a paragraph from the article "Stalin and Religion" by Peter Zabugin (printed in a Moscow newspaper "Dosje" (Dossier) No. 8, 2000): "Speaking in New York in 1942 Lord Beaverbrook (1879-1954, British political figure, a newspaper magnate, Lord since year 1917) said: "Communism under Stalin won applause and admiration of all the Western nations. Communism under Stalin set us an example of patriotism analogies to which are difficult to be found in history. Communism under Stalin gave the best Generals to the world. Persecution of Christians? No! There is no religious persecution there. Church doors are open. Persecution of nationalities? No persecution at all. Jews live there as all others. Political repressions? Yes, of course. But it is clear now that those who were shot would have betrayed Russia to the Germans!"

According to Mr. Yakovlev, more than 85,000 Russian Orthodox priests were shot in 1937 alone. At this point I quote two more paragraphs from the above-mentioned article that should be quoted. "The February Revolution of 1917 freed the church from the authority of the state. After the October 1917 Revolution on January 20, 1918 the Council of People's Commissars passed the Decree on liberty of conscience. Every person was granted the right to profess either religion or none. The Decree also separated school and church. This all led to abandoning of religion by large number of the masses. The number of parishioners decreased, the parishes grew poor since they had to depend on their parishioners to support and also to fund the churches. The church hierarchy and ordinary priests who had served the Czarist autocracy their whole life and who were a constituent part of the exploiter regime could not resign themselves to the loss of their paid positions and prosperity. Many of them went along the path of struggle against the Revolution and this increased the people's hatred towards them. Wise Patriarch Tikhon banned, on point of excommunication, both the priests and the laymen if they struggled against Soviet power. And on his last day of life, he called upon all the priests of the Russian church to pray for God's help to the Workers and Peasants power at that responsible period of building the people's prosperity. Unfortunately, not all priests followed that call, and that fact entailed persecution of the church on the whole as well as repressions against the priests.

"The struggle against the Russian Orthodox Church reached its highest point when almost all the leading state posts were held by representatives of many nationalities with other religious beliefs. There were almost no Russians in the government, in the Extraordinary Committee and in the local authorities. Stalin never participated in the anti-church campaign, but then it was beyond his power to interfere in the process. It took many years of severe struggle against Trotsky and his adherents who promoted this campaign before the first resolution was passed in 1933 which banned pulling down of churches and discharged the priests from prison. After the complete defeat of Trotskyism in 1939, a second resolution on this matter was passed. Both were signed by Stalin."

I think that it will not be out of place to digress a bit here just to remind the readers of NSC of what Trotskyism is. Trotskyism is an ideological and political petty-bourgeois current that is hostile towards Marxism-Leninism and also to the international Communist movement. Its representatives used left-radical phrases to cover the opportunistic essence of this current. It appeared early in the 20th century as a variety of Menshevism in the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party and it was named after its ideologist and leader L. Trotsky (Bronstein 1879-1940).

Geoffrey York informs the readers of Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper, that today, Mr. Yakovlev's commission has rehabilitated four million people and it still has 400,000 cases to go.

And now let's read what was written in this regard in the article "We know more than you tell us," written not long before his death on January 12, 2001 by Vladimir Semichastniy, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Leninist Young Communist League of the Soviet Union (1958-1969), Chairman of the State Security Committee at the Council of Ministers of the USSR (1961-1967) a Colonel-General:

"Whatever Khrushchev is, it is he who took the decision to discharge the prisoners of war from the camps. The Commission led by Yakovlev, the activities of which Yakovlev is boasting of now, began to work under Shelepin, and under me almost all the prisoners were already rehabilitated, the overwhelming majority of them. There were only some cases where the relatives of those prisoners did not receive the documents and acknowledgement of the rehabilitation because we could not find these relatives according to all documents, we did not know where they were and the relatives did not apply to us. That is why there were delays. And the commission being led by Yakovlev only completed all this. But it does not mean that this commission dealt with rehabilitation. And now Yakovlev brings up a question of setting up a new commission (his "sinecure" has become empty, he wants a new one) on rehabilitation of both the children who were kept in special camps for convicts. (1 will remind the readers of NSC that, according to Mr. Yakovlev more than 884,000 children were in internal exile by 1954). But the children were not accused of any anti-Soviet activities, and were not deprived of civil rights, and were not convicted at all. So, what rehabilitation is meant here? The parents of these children were rehabilitated and a child either born in a camp for convicts or kept in a special reception camp was neither prosecuted in connection with their parents' case nor convicted of articles of the law."

By Mr. Yakovlev's estimate, as many as 35 million people were shot or died as a deliberate result of Soviet decisions, more than 41 million Soviets were imprisoned from 1923 to 1953. I do not know on what basis he bases his count, but in the Georgian newspaper called "Zarya Vostoka" No. 2 (19892) of 6-12, February 1997, I read the following:

"Early in 1954 a certificate addressed to N.S. Khrushchev about the number of those convicted for counter-revolutionary activities from 1921 to 1953 was made at the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR i.e. according to article 58 of the Penal Code of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic as well as to the relevant articles of the other Union Republics (this document was signed by the Minister of Internal Affairs of USSR, S. N. Kruglov and the Minister of Justice of the USSR K.P. Gorshenin and by the Prosecutor-General of the USSR R.A. Rudenko).That was a certificate of five type-written pages of February 1, 1954 made according to the instructions given by N.S. Khrushchev. It said that according to the data available at the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR from 1921 up to the beginning of 1954 the Board of the Department of Central Political Administrative Board (DCPAB) Troikas of People's Commissariat of the Internal Affairs, a Special meeting of the Military Boards, the Courts and the Military Tribunals convicted 3,777,380 people, including 642,980 people convicted to capital punishment, 2,369,220 people to serve in work camps and in prison, 765,180 people convicted into exile and deportation. It was stated that out of the total number of people convicted for counter-revolutionary activities about 2.9 million were convicted by the Board of DCPAB, Troikas of People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, a Special meeting (i.e. by the extra-judicial bodies) and 877,000 people were convicted by the Courts and the Military Tribunals. At present, said the certificate, 467,946 people convicted for counter-revolutionary crimes, are kept in camps and prisons and apart from that 62,462 people are in exile after having served their sentences for the counter-revolutionary crimes. (State Archives of the Russian Federation, Fund 9402, Inventory 2, Case 450).

Late in 1953 another certificate was made at the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR. On the basis of these statistical accounts of the Special Department #1 of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, this certificate gave the number of 4,060,306 people convicted for all the counter-revolutionary crimes and also treason from January 1, 1921 to July 1,1954. (Letter #26K signed by S. N. Kruglov and addressed to G.M. Malenkov and N. S. Khrushchev on January 5, 1954 and it contained this information.) This number comprised a total of 3,777,380 people convicted for counter-revolutionary crimes and 282,926 people convicted for dangerous treason. The latter number of people were convicted not according Article 58 but according to other articles equal to it: first of all, according to paragraph 2 and 3 of article 59 (especially dangerous gangsterism) and according to Article 193/24 (military espionage). For instance, part of the Basmatches were convicted not according to Article 58 but 59, (Basmatch – a member of a counter-revolutionary robber band in Central Asia during the Civil War.)

And now dear readers you will be given an opportunity of reading the information (from the same source) which might be of special interest to the readers of NSC.

TABLE – The number of people convicted for counter-revolutionary crimes and the other especially dangerous crime of treason within the period from 1921 to 1953. (State Archives of the Russian Federation. Fund 9401, Inventory #1, Case 4157, List 201-205: Popov V.D. State Terror in Soviet Russia, 1921-1953: the sources and their interpretation. "Home Archives" 1922 No 2, page 28.)

ANNOTATION:

Within the period from June 1947 to January 1950 capital punishment was repealed in the USSR. This fact explains the absence of death sentences in 1948-1949. Other measures of punishment meant inclusion in the period under arrest, compulsory medical treatment and deportation.

Well dear readers, comment is needless, I suppose. And do you know that within the last ten years the population of Russia decreased by 10,000,000 people and it is still decreasing by 1,000,000 people a year? But Mr. Yakovlev who is often called with a ring of irony "the intellectual father of Glasnost," is busy with what he chose as his final mission – he is compiling a formal count of the number of victims of Soviet "repressions." I would like to ask this architect of the reforms that helped trigger the Soviet Union's collapse: "And what if another commission compiles a formal number of victims of the temporary disintegration of the Soviet Union, of the temporary defeat of the socialist system, of the genocide of the Soviet people organized by the newly established capitalist bourgeois regimes throughout the territory of the former Soviet Union, for what in any case Mr. Yakovlev is to be charged? Will he stand all the horrors that will be disclosed?"

"Russians are sentimental, Mr. Yakovlev says. "When one person dies, we moan and cry. But when millions die, we regard this as normal politics." I wonder what Mr. Yakovlev will feel when he hears about the really stunning formal number of post-Soviet genocide? Will he moan or cry as a sentimental Russian? Will he shed tears or will he just be moved to tears? Or maybe he will be just on the verge of tears? Or maybe there won't be even a drop of tears? Will Mr. Yakovlev kneel before the millions of victims of the post-Soviet genocide and will his conscience prompt him that it is he who helped the present bourgeois regimes to enslave and kill the Soviet people?

"The Communist Party remains the biggest party in the nation," reports Geoffrey York, probably citing Mr. Yakovlev. Fine! This statement proves once again the strength of the Communist ideology, which existed, exists and will ever exist whatever the circumstances. And I do hope that in the nearest future the Communist ideology will prove to be not only invincible, but also all-triumphant!

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