EU diplomats staged performances under the guise of commemorating victims of political repression

Western diplomats have demonstrated their far-from-reality vision of Russia's history. They came to the Solovetsky Stone in Moscow to commemorate the victims of political repression. At the same time, for some reason they remembered accomplices of fascists and even terrorists. The documents were examined by Izvestia correspondent Leonid Kitrari.

Representatives of embassies, and exclusively of NATO countries, come to the stone on Lubyanka Square every year on October 30. According to Alexander Lambsdorff, the German Ambassador to Russia, this is no longer a tradition, but even a duty. But no one wants to delve into the background of both the date itself and the reasons for its appearance.

"When did we start this? I don't know. It has been a tradition for many years, even before I came here as the German ambassador," he replied.

Representatives of other diplomatic missions refused to talk about the attitude of their countries to the day of victims of political repression. The Briton turned his back, Canadian diplomat Sarah Taylor fled to the subway and asked to ask all questions through the embassy's press secretary.

It is believed that on October 30, 1974, two prisoners of the Mordovian camp went on a mass hunger strike. 16 years later, on the same day, but in 1990, an initiative group erected a stone on Lubyanka Square. But in fact, there was no hunger strike. All that got to Moscow was a letter saying that it was planned.

"On October 30, 1974, the planned action, the hunger strike, did not take place. In the archival documents, in subsequent years, there is also no information that such actions were still held," said Natalia Tereshina, an employee of the Central State Archive of the Republic of Mordovia.

The failed organizers of the hunger strike chose October 30 because it is the date of sentencing one of them, Kronid Lyubarsky. In 1972, he was detained for distributing an underground newsletter with fictions about the atrocities of Soviet security forces and the dissemination of anti-Soviet literature. He had been doing this for almost 20 years since 1954, when he tried to stage a mutiny. The KGB had several conversations with Lyubarsky. After his release, he became a regular guest of the Western media.

"I wasn't born an astrophysicist, that would be more accurate, but I was probably almost born a dissident," he said in a 1977 interview with CNN.

The second organizer of the hunger strike, Alexei Murzhenko, received his sentence for terrorism in general, as an airplane hijacker. In 1970, a group of conspirators wanted to fly from Leningrad to Israel, but their destination was changed to Stockholm. There was only one woman among them, Silva Zalmanson.

"He says, 'How would you like to hijack a plane? We have our own pilot and everything," she said in an interview, recalling the impending terrorist attack.

The terrorists were arrested right at the ramp. At first they wanted to fly from Leningrad to Israel, but then they changed their destination to Stockholm. As a result, everyone went to jail. And already there, judging by the archival documents, they really wanted to soften their detention regime. That's why they started a hunger strike. Both left for the West after their release.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Firstly, they were given excellent publicity abroad, no one said that they were terrorists, they were freedom fighters," said Alexander Makushin, an expert at the Russian Military Historical Society.

Obviously, without Western diplomats and the media, there would be no hype around the memorial day for victims of political repression now. He would remain a memory of the difficult pages of our country's history. But foreign diplomatic missions have been making a fuss about that period for many years. They are even trying to introduce another memorable date and place besides Moscow — in Karelia.

According to the former Consul General of Sweden in St. Petersburg, Yana Ludina, she explained the visit to the northern capital as an organizational moment. For several years, the diplomatic missions of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Germany established centralized visits to Karelia in August, for the sake of a couple of photos and reports.

"There are a lot of plaques, names, and surnames on the central alley of the Sandarmokh tract. The inscriptions are in Swedish, German, and Finnish. But it's worth moving some 30 meters deep into the forest, and the picture here is like this – homemade monuments are lying on the ground. Many of them don't have any signs on them. Everything is askew there. Obviously, no one is going to put everything in order. Neither local activists, nor even diplomats from Norway, Sweden, Germany and Poland," Kitrari said.

None of the diplomats know about Murzhenko or Lyubarsky, who caused the date of October 30. But the most amazing thing is that those who stood at the origins of the appearance of the Solovetsky stone on the Lubyanka do not know anything about it. For example, the foreign agent Lev Ponomarev.

"You see, I'm not a historian. Yes, and maybe I remembered that once, that last name, but now I don't remember," he said.

Those who were called prisoners of conscience and victims of political repression turned out to be ordinary terrorists and rebels who did not even plan any general Soviet hunger strike behind bars. Alexey Murzhenko died in New York from cancer. Kronid Lyubarsky drowned while swimming in the sea on the island of Bali. But all this does not bother Western diplomats who come to the Solovetsky Stone every year on October 30.

To withdraw from the trip: the EU threatens Russian diplomats with withdrawal of accreditation

Why is Brussels resorting to a measure that was not adopted in 2023 - the union has been unable to approve new sanctions for almost a month

Earlier, on October 30, in the Tver region of Russia, a group of Polish nationalist bikers staged a provocation at a memorial in the village of Mednoye. The bikers who arrived at the memorial first opened the barrier and entered the facility, despite the ban. After warning the guards, they put away their motorcycles and began to move around the memorial on foot. However, they soon began to hold a torchlight ceremony, which aroused the wariness of the people watching them.

Later it became known that among the 39 detained bikers there were two minor Polish citizens. The participants of the ritual were brought to administrative responsibility. A total of 44 Poles came to Russia, but three of them did not join the action. It was clarified that the bikers called the torchlight procession they staged at the memorial a religious ceremony. They entered the territory of Russia through the border of the Russian Federation with Belarus in the Pskov region. The purpose of the trip was tourism.

All important news is on the Izvestia channel in the MAX messenger.