Shamil Salakhetdinov
shamil at users.mns.ru
Sat Nov 3 01:56:19 CDT 2007
Hi All, This post is a way off-topic and it's not easy weekend reading but I dare to post it here because it's related to the people of many nations and I expect this my post will be let through by moderators who allowed to have here a rather heated discussion about fires in California... No, I do not expect a heated discussion of this OT thread here. Just read it. This post has excerpts from an article published on 31-OCT-2007 here: http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=820588 Here is its automated translation: http://www.translate.ru/url/tran_url.asp?lang=ru&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kommer sant.ru%2Fdoc.aspx%3FDocsID%3D820588&direction=re&template=General&cp1=NO&cp 2=NO&autotranslate=on&transliterate=on&psubmit2.x=44&psubmit2.y=6 Below are the excerpts, which I tried to make more readable than referred above automated translation. My short comments are in brackets marked with (SS: ...). As you can find this article is far from being "an apologetics to the nowadays Russian Authorities"... I'm sorry that is all I can do now. Read on till the end and then you should get what a lot of people feel and think here. Thank you. <<<< If he would have not arrived today, it could not be understood... ================================================================= ...Yesterday, in Day of Memory of Victims of Political Reprisals, the president of Russia Vladimir Putin has arrived to Butovo where are buried more than 20 thousand of people shot to death in 1937-1938.... ...Here are buried more than 20 thousands of persons, - speaks diakon Dmitrij, and these are only about whom we precisely know. More than three hundreds of them are canonized, these are those from approximately thousand who passed on church affairs: not only clerics, but also church heads, and simply active laymen. First Russian pilot Danilevsky, troupe of one Baltic theatre with its full complement lays here... People of sixty nationalities are buried here: Greeks, Japanese, Germans... even an Epiopian... ...You go on a sanded pathway, and you realize, that what you now feel is "the ground burning under foots". To not touch it, to not tramble it down that is all what is required from you now. Because you never ever walk over the tombs before. Leaves rustle under foots, as pieces of polyfoam in hands. And you feel "frost on your skin"... ... - For us it is a real tragedy, - he (SS:Mr. Putin) has continued - the scale of this tragedy is enormous - millions of persons were banished, have been shot to death. And that were first of all people with their own opinion who were not afraid to openly express this their opinion... The most effective people, color of the nation were destroyed.... ...I (SS:this artcle author continues), maybe, first time have seen the confused president. - That's a complete crazyness (SS: umopomrachenie <- RUS), - has murmured the president. - it seems, that it is impossible to do that. For what?! (SS: for what all that people were executed to death?)... ...Father Cyril, the grandson of one of shot on this field, has made a helpless gesture and has added, that here the executors have shot the boy of twelve years. It was authorized to shoot only from fifteen, and they have attributed in the documents three superfluous years to the boy (to be "authorized" to kill him "legally"). They have also shot the seventy years old grandmother, and it is not clear for what reason she was shot do death.... ... - But memory is necessary to us not in itself, - spoke president. - but to determine the ways for development of the country... Political disputes, fights, struggle of opinions are necessary, but it is necessary, that this process would have not been destructive - it should be creative Now it should become clearer, why "United Russia" (SS: the most powerful political party here leaded by Mr.Putin for this year's December Russian Parliament Elections) will not participate in pre-election debate. These debate, probably, risk to become destructive for them (SS: for "United Russia" party).... >>>> -- Shamil