"The head of the same time was hung": a memorial plaque appeared at the Moscow Law University to Stalin

What do students and university teachers think about this

On June 26, the lawyer and professor of the Moscow State Law University (Moscow State University) Henry Reznik announced his departure from the university in protest against the restoration of the memorial plaque to Joseph Stalin, who spoke in the university building in 1924. Representatives of the university, explaining the installation of the board, referred to the 1960 resolution on the protection of cultural monuments and assured that the dismissal of Reznik "would not affect the educational process." On June 28, it became known that some teachers of the Higher School of Economics refuse to cooperate with Moscow. Medusa talked with teachers and students MGUA and learned how they relate to a restored plate at the university itself.

Henry Reznik called Stalin the "burial man of law." Explaining his decision, he wrote: “Stalin is mass extrajudicial bodies and repressions: special meetings, triples and deuces, legalized torture, the elimination of an independent court, the presumption of innocence and the principle of adversarial, deportation of entire peoples. <...> This is the edge. From among the professors of the MGUA, I am expeling. ” The lawyer also specified that the memorial plaque was not reduced, but "extracted from somewhere in the basement." It was first installed in 1949, but after the exposure of the personality cult of Stalin in the late 1950s-early 1960s was dismantled. Additionally, Reznik refused to comment on the Medusa situation.

The MGUA administration restored the memorial plaque, performing the operation of the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR of 1960. This was announced on June 27 in the press service of the university. In the resolution “On the further improvement of the protection of the monuments of culture in the RSFSR”, the hall in the MGUA building on Sadovo-Kudrinskaya Street is indicated as a monument of local history, since Stalin performed in one of his halls (the XXII Congress of the CPSU, according to which the monuments of Stalin throughout the USSR were dismantled and the objects mentioned in his honor were renamed. After the decision was adopted, in 1961). According to representatives of the university, the decision is still valid and obliges the university administration to indicate the audience with the corresponding sign.

MGUA also stated that “they do not want to join [Reznik] into a polemic,” and his “departure would not affect the educational process, since he occupied 0.1 rates of the professor.”

Some laws and decisions adopted in the Soviet years continue to operate in Russia so far . In 2012, Deputy Minister of Justice Viktor Yevtukhov spoke of 45 thousand similar legal acts that have to be verified for compliance with the Russian constitution and modern laws. According to the New Izvestia, at least until 2012 at least four hundred decisions of the Soviet government operated.

Other lawyers and university teachers opposed the installation of a memorial plaque. On June 27, Mikhail Barshchevsky, the representative of the Government in the Constitutional Court, called the installation of a signs by a mistake. “While the plate hangs, for any meetings with students, master classes and so on, of course, I will not come,” he said and added that several teachers from whom he studied at Moscow State University “passed the Stalin camps”. On the same day, a petition appeared in the name of the rector of the Moscow State University and the Minister of Education demanding to dismantle the memorial board - at the time of the publication of this Medusa material, there were 6399 signatures under it.

Representatives of another Russian university - HSE, refused to cooperate with Moscow. On June 28, the teachers of the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law of the Higher School of Sciences wrote an open letter in the name of the rector of the university Viktor Bolzeyev, in which they refused to participate in "scientific and other events held by the Academy." “They hung a board in a law university in honor of who eliminated the right. And at the same time several million people, ”Ilya Shablinsky professor explained on Facebook.

Students MGUA are different about the story with the memorial board. The third -year student of the evening department of the Moscow State University (she asked not to reveal her name and surname) told Medusa that students were divided into two groups: some spoke out against the installation of the board, others do not understand why this causes such a mass discussion. “I don’t like that the whole story as a whole is discredited by the university,” the student added. - As I understand it, all this comes from the administration, and not from the teachers. They are often expressed in seminars and lectures against the regime and against Stalin. ”

The freshman Sergey (he also asked not to name the surname) suggested that his classmates are unlikely to know who Henry Reznik is and do not discuss the sign in any way. “One of my friends - she studies in the third year - wrote in the chat:“ Do you care? They installed and installed, Putin portraits at every step do not embarrass anyone?! “” Said the young man. Sergei also quoted Medusa with one of the teachers of the Moscow State University, who called the installation of a tablet attempt by the Academy to get into the trend: according to the student, the professor believes that today there is a “request for Stalin to which the Academy decided to respond.”

Most MGUA teachers, with whom Medusa managed to contact, refused to say anything about the situation with the memorial board. The rector of the university Viktor Blazheev and the press service of the university on June 28 were inaccessible to comment.

Anna Panicheva, an assistant professor of criminal procedure law in a conversation with Medusa, called the official reason to restore the “unconvincing” memorial plaque. “It does not seem to me that in this way the story triumphs, I completely share all the arguments of Henry Reznik,” the teacher added. Panicheva also told Medusa that she and one of the university colleagues decided to sign a petition requiring the memorial board and support protesting students. The silence of other teachers MGUA Panichev commented as follows: “Someone needs to be defended, someone has a certification-not everyone has the opportunity to freely declare [their position]. And it's not about fear, we are talking about a scientific career and work. You have to reckon with this. ”

Some students and teachers supported the installation of a memorial plaque. The Chairman of the MGUA Association Anton Zhurkov told Medusa: “Most of the students support the installation of a plate. Our university is not preparing lawyers in the narrow sense of the word, but of real full -fledged citizens, our educational process is based on patriotic education, and on knowledge of the history of our country, and not just on the study of the letters of the law. The installation of this memorial plate only indicates that we remember, we know and do not be shy of our history. ”

“There is no propaganda there, it is simply written there that there was Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. It happens that they write on the walls: Vasya was here, ”said Ivan Klepitsky, professor of the Department of Criminal Law. He also suggested that the Bank hung the board: "I do not think that the rector is falling to such trifles."

Sasha Sulim