There is no place for a mustache

The 23-year-old deputy of the City Duma of Yekaterinburg called the Gulag "a good thing." And fell under general obstruction

For a week in Yekaterinburg they have been discussing the words of young communists about repressions. Five young Leninists aged 15 to 23 told the Yekaterinburg edition of The Village that they approve of the Gulag and that the political persecution, which were subjected to millions of people in the Soviet Union, were justified.

“Gulag is a good thing, in fact. Previously, people were sent under supervision to work for the benefit of society-at least there was a benefit from them, ”said Andrei Pirozhkov, 23-year-old deputy of the Yekaterinburg City Duma from the Communist Party of the City Council.

“I have a positive attitude to the Stalinist repressions-they sent it to the camps deservedly if a person did something bad. If in China they shot, then our method of correction was more humane-people were sent to work <...> If Stalin sent someone to exile, then it was necessary. If I were in his place, perhaps I would have done the same way, ”said 19-year-old Komsomolets Dmitry Terentyev.

The statements of young communists instantly scattered through the Yekaterinburg public and the city media. And the young Leninians did not find support there. The vast majority of citizens wished them to "teach history." “Many ideologists of repression themselves were eventually repressed,” people wrote. No less indignation was expressed about the fact that a 23-year-old young man had not been a deputy of the City Duma had previously previously a 23-year-old. However, there is already a question to the Yekaterinburgers themselves.

Andrei Pirozhkov eventually had to explain:

“From the interview, we can conclude that I do not empathize with people who are innocently convicted and sent to labor camps. Gulag in the days of the USSR is an example of the system that should never be recreated either in Russia or in any other country. But the concept itself has the right to exist. I am in order to adopt the idea of ​​labor camps, but to remove cruelty, lawlessness and the arbitrariness that existed in the Soviet years. ”

New Gazeta conducted its own youth survey about Soviet repressions. We asked people from 18 to 30 years old what they think about the Gulag.

The picture turned out to be ambiguous.

Of the 40 respondents, 29 said that they consider the Gulag system a bad and shameful phenomenon for the country, but they admitted that they only have the most general idea of ​​it.

Five people were able to explain their point of view.

- Catherine II said that it is better to justify ten guilty than to condemn one innocent. This is a really wise expression, because when they plant an innocent, injustice is born, ”says 21-year-old student of the Eastfacing Cyril Kozyur. - The Soviet Union, despite the fact that he declared the idea of ​​universal justice, was not built on it. On the contrary, it was built by the labor of people who were often condemned not even for their views, but for their nationality: the same persecution of the Romanians, Finns, the Bulgarians in the 30s under the guise of fighting foreign spies or the post-war “popular deportations” of Kalmyks, Chechens and Ingush. I personally saw a shooting case where a person was sentenced to the highest degree of punishment for considering himself a Cossack. And now, after 80 years since the end of the great terror, they tell us that it was normal?

Another aspect is emphasized by 24-year-old Svetlana Usova, a catering technologist:

- The deputy Pirozhkov said about the “benefits” of the Gulag and that he would like to return such camps. But this benefit in most cases is imaginary. Many single -industry towns and villages built by prisoners in Soviet times, now in decline, were closed there. These cities are a headache for the country and people living there. I have relatives from such a city - Inta, it is in the Komi Republic. The coal shaft on which half a city works is closed. There is nowhere to put people. Aunt constantly complains that he cannot move - he can’t sell the apartment, and there is nowhere to work. Do we still need to build a bunch of int? And if the deputy Pirozhkov says that he is not about Inta, but about the prisoners to chop the forest, so they do it without a Gulag now.

Only two people said that they share the position of young communists. At the same time, only one of them agreed to argue his point of view. 25-year-old accountant Vadim Mosintsev explained that he puts the interests of the state in the first place.

- If it weren’t for the Gulag, the Soviet Union would have been ruined long before 1991. And we would not have any flight into space, no victory in the Great Patriotic War. Because the powerful colossus of the USSR was able to ruin a handful of traitors. And there were millions in the Gulag of these traitors.

Mosintsev admits that among the repressed in Soviet times were innocently convicted people. “This is bad,” he agrees. - But mainly those who went against the country entered the camps. Now imagine that in 1941, two or three million citizens on our land raised weapons against their own. ”

Four more people noted that they see a rational grain in the deputy’s proposal, but they emphasize that it is unacceptable to justify the gulag.

- The deputy Pirozhkov expressed a sound thought - prisoners can really and should bring to society more benefit. Especially injured from their actions, says 30-year-old Anton Zakharov. - But praising the gulag to the young deputy, even in the context of the correct thought, was unethical. I was very outraged by his statement and statements by other young communists, who were given in the article. I was also a maximalist at the age of 19, but at the same time I understood a simple truth: killing people is bad. Especially kill the innocent. You can not treat the genocide of your own people well. Like any other genocide. No good goal justifies the murder of dozens and hundreds of thousands of people. And in the Gulag it was the genocide that took place.

Anton notes that he is still sure that the young communists ecupably responded about the Gulag, because they did not know history.

- I really do not want the leading posts to be occupied by people who believe that "once they planted, it means to blame" and "once shot, then there was something for."

PS

From 1918 to 1953, 64 104 people were subjected to repression in the Sverdlovsk region. 19 410 of them were sentenced to death.