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Statement of Moscow bureau for human rights  The chairman of Moscow council of veterans V. Dolgikh addressed the Moscow mayor’s office with request to install informational stands with comrade Stalin’s portraits in the city marking the 65th anniversary of victory over fascist Germany. His request was instantly complied with: up to May 9 the capital would be “decorated” with numerous portraits of one of the greatest criminals in the world history. Moscow authorities will start placing these stands (at the expense of city budget) already in April. Meanwhile the district administrations already caught up the “patriotic” initiative and started putting up the portraits of “peoples’ leader” at the territories within their jurisdiction.
Nobody entitled the former secretary of the Central Committee of CPSU Dolgikh to speak on behalf of all the veterans. Not all our veterans are Stalinists. It would be good to recall what estimates were given to Stalin by veterans-front-line soldiers Viktor Astafyev and Alexander Solzhenitsin. Astafyev said that the generalissimo “burned down the Russian people and Russia in the fire of war”. Solzhenitsin named Stalin a cannibal and backed this testimonial with his great artistic study “GULAG Archipelago”. Astafyev and Solzhenitsin, like their brothers in arms Grigory Baklanov, Bulat Okudjava, Boris Vasilyev, Daniil Granin, Pyotr Todorovsky, have more rights to speak on behalf of front-line soldiers than V. Dolgikh.
Stalin is the butcher of Russia, murderous tyrant, killer of millions who plunged the country into numerous disasters. This can’t be obliterated from the history no matter how his followers try. So Stalin’s myth is basing upon the only thing today: they assert that Stalin won the war. Many people believe this. Yes, Stalin was the supreme commander-in-chief during the war. But how did he command? Even if one forgets for a minute that he eliminated the top of the Red Army before the war and thus doomed it to defeats and incredible losses in 1941-1942, it should be known that his command was incompetent and unproductive. Many millions of soldiers and officers who perished during the war are on his conscience (if one can speak about his conscience at all). They could live but Stalin heaped up the fields of Russia and East-European countries with their corpses. He is to blame that our losses in this terrible war were many times more than the losses of fascist Germany. Soviet soldiers and officers who found themselves surrounded, captured by fascists and who then returned to their motherland were finished off then in Stalin’s GULAG as traitors. So to say that “Stalin won the war” – this means to spit upon the graves of those who perished “for nothing, in vain” (A. Galich). It were the people who won the war – in spite of Stalin, with incredible efforts, paying with their lives, blood and tortures for this. The chairman of the committee on advertisement, information and decoration of Moscow V. Makarov stated that posters with portraits of the generalissimo would appear in the places where the people’s volunteer corps was formed. But soldiers of the people’s volunteer corps – students, intellectuals who were often released from military service but went to war voluntarily – perished almost entirely due to Stalin: as a rule, they got no arms, no normal clothes; the holes in the front-line were just plugged with their bodies. Few of them who survived would hardly be happy knowing they are used with speculative purposes. Intention of Moscow (and not only Moscow) authorities to fill the city streets with the butcher’s portraits using veterans as a cover should be estimated as a political provocation, as a next “trial” of Stalinists: what if this succeeds? Then they would be able to go further. Before that the words of Stalin’s hymn were revived in Moscow in the entrance hall of Kurskaya underground station, and the chief architect of the capital called to installing the monument to the “moustached” there too. By the way, this is also a test for federal authorities. What would be their response? Because the statements of the President D. Medvedev and the Patriarch Kirill with condemnation of Stalin’s crimes were heard just not long ago.
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Early in November 2009 a series of appeals of militia major Alexey Dymovskly to the leaders of the country was placed on one of biggest Internet video services Youtube. Militiaman from Novorossiysk tried to attract attention to the facts of corruption and exceeding of official authority in the ranks of law-enforcement bodies. Dymovsky, according to his own words, acted as a defender of honor of a real officer who found himself powerless in front of his bosses and the system in general. 
On January 22, 2010 the President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko declared awarding the title of the Hero of Ukraine to the head of Organization of Ukrainian nationalists (OUN) Stepan Bandera. This solution causes indignation and serious anxiety. 
Today people address themselves to tragedy of the past, try to realize why the ideas of racism, Nazism, anti-Semitism pushing to murders, attacks, pogroms and crushing souls and fates are still alive, and to a great extent in Russia too. 
A year ago, on January 19, 2009 in the center of Moscow in broad daylight the human rights activist Stanislav Markelov and the journalist Anastasia Baburova were killed. The criminal fired point-blank, before the eyes of passers-by but escaped safely. This mean murder caused broad public response not only in Russia but also abroad. Meetings, actions of protest and solidarity with the deceased took place in many countries of the world.