Vera Vasilieva: crafty myth

The Meshchansky District Court of Moscow rejected the lawsuit of the relatives of Raul Wallenberg against the FSB of Russia - they demanded to provide information about his fate after arrest in 1945. A year earlier, the Swedish entrepreneur and diplomat went to Budapest to save Hungarian Jews from the Nazi death machine. Unhappy energy allowed him to preserve tens of thousands of lives. However, in January 1945, the Savior was sacrificed, disappearing in the dungeons of the Stalinist Gulag. In 1957, the Soviet government reported that Wallenberg died of a heart attack in the Lubyansk prison on July 17, 1947. The circumstances of his stay behind bars and death were never made public. The FSB in court won: there is already access to some documents, and the rest cannot be published due to the fact that they contain delicate information about other people.

In my opinion, this trial, about which television and radio hosts with a tongue twister report in the general stream of news- an extremely important, iconic event. Not only for the family of the Swedish diplomat, whose members for several years after the end of World War II, no matter what, believed that he was still alive. The outcome of this trial is a completely accurate indicator showing that Russian society in the year of the sad anniversary, the 80th anniversary of the large terror is still not ready for a serious, honest public conversation about its history.

Not so long ago it was reported that the busts of the first persons of the Soviet and post -Soviet periods, including the sculptural images of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, will appear on the "Alley of the rulers" in Moscow. Buses with portraits of Stalin, traveling along the streets on May 9, or festively decorated with such portraits of the Moscow metro station, are not surprising. At the same time, the essence of the problem is covered by crafty conversations about the military and industrial victories of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Stalin or the plans of certain historical reconstructions to educate the public.

An impartial and independent trial of criminals of the Soviet past is needed

Meanwhile, the reasons for what is happening, in my deep conviction, is completely different. In the public consciousness, the image of Joseph Stalin as a tough leader, but an “effective manager” is again strengthened. High -ranking government officials are not shy about publicly calling mass repressions, the account of the victims of which goes to millions of lives, "excesses". Fear, suspicion, hatred, the search for enemies, “spies”, “foreign agents”, “fifth column”, and love of snoetry are cultivated now. And in recent years-the reference point, it seems to me, is the 2014th-the flow of aggression, pouring from the screens of state television channels, has become incredibly full-term. The story of the Strugatsky brothers, which was written a decade ago, seems to be an accurate reflection of today. For the creation of an atmosphere of hatred and fear, the Russian authorities, including representatives of the country's top leadership, are liable for direct responsibility.

But, I think, the problem here is much more serious and deeper than only in personalities. Everything will continue until the public consciousness is fundamentally changed. So far, totalitarian and authoritarian power will still exist in the heads, it doesn’t matter, as it is called, Soviet, Putin or somehow differently. An impartial and independent trial of criminals of the Soviet past is needed. The big mistake is that such a court was not organized in perestroika and post -perestroika years, when the truth about repressions, including hidden in secret archives, was generally available. This, it seems to me, would prevent today's veneration of Stalin.

The fact that most of the Stalinist executioners have already died is changed. The dead could have been pardoned after the sentence-due to the inability to carry it out. And the issues of revenge and forgiveness have nothing to do with it, since the court should not be an instrument of revenge or reprisals (as this, alas, has repeatedly happened in Russia). And forgiveness is a matter of purely personal, individual, private.

Vera Vasilieva is an independent journalist leading the Radio Liberty project "Freedom and Memorial"

Opinions expressed under the section may not reflect the point of view of the editorial office