MOSCOW. Aug 6 (Interfax) - Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the Yabloko party, has said that the country should get rid "in words and deeds" of the vestiges of Stalinism, which in his opinion continue to shape the public's mentality in Russia today.

Yavlinsky's statement says that state terror heralded by the ill- famed order of interior minister Nikolai Yezhov on the repression of anti-Soviet elements approved in July 1937 "inflicted a wound to this country that can prove lethal if it is not painstakingly treated with words and deeds."

"The threat is quite real. Even after decades the Great Terror and Stalinism, as a whole, unfortunately have not faded into history. According to public opinion polls, up to 20% of our compatriots are still ready to vote for Stalin, if he ran for the presidency today," the statement reads.

"The myths and illusions about a great leader and the father of nations that still remain in this country and abroad must be fully and finally dispersed," Yavlinsky believes.

However, the incumbent Russian authorities "are reluctant to either realistically evaluate the reasons for the collapse of the Russian state system in 1917 or unmask the Bolshevik practice of running the country relying on violence and deliberately involving the majority of the people in it simultaneously as victims and torturers," the statement reads.