#6
RFE/RL Security and Terrorism Watch
Vol. 3, No. 32, 19 September 2002
(Compiled by Victor Yasmann)

11 SEPTEMBER: BIRTHDAY OF THE FOUNDER OF SOVIET SECRET POLICE... 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.

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