Letters and Parcels

YURY DMITRIEV is already at the Serbsky Centre in Moscow. Several people, including his son, have been quick to take him a food parcel there — good for him and his morale, and helpful in making friends inside.

food parcel for Dmitriev (Serbsky Institute)

What Victoria Ivleva took Dmitriev

Photojournalist Victoria Ivleva took a lemon, mandarins, butter, toilet paper, cigarettes, cheese, sugar, speck (fatback), biscuits, salami and sweets.

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Russia – Past, Present and Future

THE OFFICIAL VIEW

“As Russia marks the centenary of the October Revolution, President Vladimir Putin has urged the society to end discord over the Soviet era,” reported the TASS news agency[1] on 21 December 2017.

“This year, the centenary of the October Revolution, we have been seeking to encourage the society to abandon confrontation, to see themselves as a single society and realize that we are continuing our common centuries-long history,” Putin told a session of the Council for Culture and Art.

“Whether we like certain years or not, but there was everything there – bad things, but also a lot of good things that should not be forgotten,” he said.

Johnson’s Russia List
2017-#239, Friday, 22 December 2017, Item 1 (Excerpt)

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HOW RUSSIA REPRESSES THE PAST

Nikita Petrov (Memorial)

Every spring, buses covered in portraits of Joseph Stalin appear on the streets of Russian cities. His face replaces ads for cell phones, soft drinks, laundry detergent, and cat food. With each passing year, the dictator gets more handsome and more glamorous; a portrait of him in his gorgeous white generalissimo’s jacket has become especially popular. He casts his stern gaze on the citizens, as if to say, “Remember me? I’m here, I didn’t go anywhere – and don’t you forget it!” 

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Prosecutor wants Dmitriev locked up in a madhouse

After the court-appointed assessment did not find child pornography in any of the photographs in the Dmitriev case, the prosecution, represented by YELENA ASKEROVA, Petrozavodsk city prosecutor, petitioned for a new assessment to be made of the photos of YURY DMITRIEV’s foster daughter.

Furthermore, Ms Askerova once again recommended that the court approach a private firm, not a State expert organisation.

She did not stop there, however. 

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Who wants to rewrite the history of Sandarmokh—and why?

Since its discovery in 1997, Sandarmokh has become a place of pilgrimage for the descendants of those killed in Stalin’s Great Terror, for local villagers, for historians and for public figures. An International Day of Remembrance has been held at Sandarmokh every year since then, attended by delegations from various parts of Russia and from abroad.

The “new” hypothesis

Yet in 2016, almost twenty years on, certain Petrozavodsk historians announced that, in addition to those shot in the 1930s, Soviet POWs might have been killed and buried at Sandarmokh during the “Continuation War” with Finland (1941-1944). This suggestion prompted a great debate among academics and was reported in both Russian and Finnish media.  Prospectors, historians, and public figures who had been closely involved in locating, studying and publicising the story of Sandarmokh were bewildered. What new documents had now appeared? Where could they study these declassified papers? The authors of the sensational claim were in no hurry to publish their sources and the atmosphere surrounding the memorial complex grew increasingly tense.

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