09/23/2002 | Serhiy Hrysch

Хоче поставити пам"ятник Дзержинському.



SECRET SERVICES....................................................

Eleven September marked the 125th anniversary of the
birth of Feliks Dzerzhinskii, founder of the Soviet
secret police, RosBalt and "Izvestiya" reported on 12
September. "Izvestiya" described Dzerzhinskii as a person
who chose security over freedom. An impoverished Polish
nobleman who once dreamed of becoming a priest,
Dzerzhinskii became a fanatic in the mold of Osama bin
Laden, a man who was willing to commit terrorist acts for
the sake of goals he believed were noble, the daily
continued. Dzerzhinskii organized the Red Terror in order
to combat injustice and was a man who saved children by
killing adults, the paper said. "Dzerzhinskii has never
left us. He remains in our hearts, souls, and minds,"
"Izvestiya" concluded.

..AND MOSCOW MAYOR ADVOCATES RESTORATION
OF MONUMENT IN HIS HONOR...............................

Yurii Luzhkov on 13 September called for the restoration
of a monumental 15-ton statue of Dzerzhinskii, Russian
and Western news agencies reported. The statue, which
formerly stood in front of the headquarters of the Soviet
and Russian secret services on Lubyanka Square, was
dismantled by the city council, of which Luzhkov was
deputy chairman, following the demise of the August 1991
coup attempt against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
After it was removed, it was quietly taken to a park
where many Soviet-era statues have ended up and was
repaired. Speaking to a meeting of the municipal
architectural council, Luzhkov called the monument an
"impeccable sculptural composition." Luzhkov, who has
opposed restoring the monument in the past, justified his
turnabout by focusing selectively on some of
Dzerzhinskii's achievements, saying, "We should remember
that he solved the problem of homeless children and that
he bailed out the railroads in a period of devastation."
Luzhkov downplayed Dzerzhinskii's role in the "excesses"
of the Red Terror.

..AS LIBERALS VOW TO OPPOSE THE MOVE...........

Union of Rightist Forces (SPS) leader and Duma Deputy
Boris Nemtsov said that the proposal to restore the
Dzerzhinskii monument is part of a clear trend toward
increasing authoritarianism, "Izvestiya" reported on 16
September. He said SPS will attempt to gather 1 million
signatures in protest against Luzhkov's proposal.

Grigorii Yavlinskii's Yabloko party also came out against
the restoration, RosBalt reported on 16 September. "The
personality of Dzerzhinskii is inseparably linked to the
creation of the system of concentration camps and the
destruction of millions of people, including the best
representatives of the intelligentsia, the clergy, the
Cossack community, the working class, and the peasantry
during the period of the Red Terror," a Yabloko statement
asserted. The party once again urged the city to place a
monument to the victims of political repression on the
spot where the Dzerzhinskii monument stood.

..AS DO WRITERS....................................................

Nobel Prize laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn told
"Izvestiya" on 17 September that the restoration of the
monument to Dzerzhinskii would be an outrage to the
millions who perished in the concentration camps.
"[Dzerzhinskii] was a Red henchman, and his figure is a
symbol of the punitive organs of the USSR," said the
writer, who himself served time in the Gulag and
documented it in his "Gulag Archipelago." Another
well-known writer, Fazil Iskander, said that he opposes
the proposal because "this measure does not frighten
embezzlers of public funds, brings nothing to ordinary
people, and gives intellectuals reason for gloomy
thoughts about the future of the country." Aleksandr
Gelman told the daily that playing with symbols begets
false fears in some and false hopes in others. He said
that if the proposal was made in order to please
President Putin, then it is mistaken, because the move
would simply prove to the world that the president is a
creature of the secret services.

..AND RIGHTS ACTIVISTS.....................................

The restoration of the Dzerzhinskii monument would mean
"the complete revision of 12 years of the new Russia,"
Yelena Bonner, widow of Nobel Prize laureate Andrei
Sakharov, told "Komsomolskaya pravda" on 17 September.
Valerii Abramkin, a former Soviet political prisoner who
is now a leading human rights advocate, pointed out that
a stone from the Solovetskii Island concentration camp
has now been placed on Lubyanka Square to commemorate the
millions of victims of Soviet-era terror. "To erect the
Dzerzhinskii monument nearby is ridiculous and to put it
in place [of the Solovetskii stone] would be
blasphemous," Abramkin was quoted by the daily as saying.
Aleksei Molyakov, a former KGB colonel general and the
former head of the FSB's military counterintelligence,
said that as a person who was educated in the chekist
tradition, he was pained by the demolition of the
monument in 1991. "But I am not sure that today we should
return to the past," Molyakov told "Komsomolskaya
pravda," quoting the Greek philosopher Heraclitus's
observation that, "One cannot step twice into the same
river."

..AS DEPUTY PROPOSES A MONUMENT TO ANDROPOV.

At its plenary session on 18 September, the Duma rejected
a proposal by Deputy Aleksei Mitrofanov (Liberal
Democratic Party of Russia) to erect a monument to former
KGB Chairman and former General Secretary of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union Yurii Andropov on
Lubyanka Square instead of restoring the Dzerzhinskii
statue, polit.ru and other Russian news agencies
reported. Mitrofanov argued that Andropov is a much less
controversial figure than Dzerzhinskii and noted that
many people currently in the government and the security
organs began their careers under Andropov. However, only
23 deputies voted in favor of the initiative. (end)

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