I russi e il lavoro sulla memoria russa

Yakovlev - An Architect of the Perestroika
"Although we succeeded in crushing Stalin's fascist totalitarianism, its heritage lives on."
from the Vilhelm Konnander's weblog
Over the past 15 years, Yakovlev has dedicated himself to the crimes of the soviet era; as chairman in the Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression; and since 1993 through his own Yakovlev Foundation (Mezhdunarodny Fond Demokratsii). By this work, some 4.5 million innocently convicted have been rehabilitated, among those Raoul Wallenberg. Still 400,000 cases remain to scrutinise... "Who is guilty?", Yakovlev asked. This recurrent question in Russia is often given a misdirected answer. When we point at Lenin, Stalin, and the Bolsheviks, we avoid to touch on our own guilt. We hide our heads in the sand, and pretend that it wasn't we that shot all those people; that it wasn't we that betrayed the neighbour to save ourselves. The truth is that the guilty are as much among us as they are in hell. Although we succeeded in crushing Stalin's fascist totalitarianism, its heritage lives on.