"Memorial": hundreds thousands of repressed people are unfairly rejected rehabilitation

Hundreds thousands of victims of political repressions in the USSR have been illegally rejected rehabilitation, and in some cases "they rehabilitate those whom they should not," Nikita Petrov, a Board member of the Scientific-Information and Education Centre "Memorial" and author of many books on Stalinist history, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent:

"From the point of view of Russian law enforcement bodies, the rehabilitation is over. They have physically reconsidered all the cases kept in the FSB archives all over the country. This is what the authorities consider to be the end of the process.

...It turns out that we still have an ideological approach to rehabilitation. It means that those who were state servants, even unjust servants, can be rehabilitated, but those who had once acted on the part of the forces, which resisted Stalin and Bolsheviks - cannot.

...The rehabilitation departments at prosecutor's offices have been dissolved. However, if somebody files an application, any regular department of the prosecutor's office shall consider it. Thus, there is no worsening of the situation for relatives."

The "Caucasian Knot" informed that on July 7, Vasily Khristoforov, head of the FSB's Department of Registration and Archive Funds, stated in his interview to the "Interfax" that the FSB had declassified the materials about mass repressions of 1920s-1950s. He declared that now everyone can get acquainted with them, but added that for getting access to the file, a researcher or journalist should have a notarized power of attorney from the relatives of the victim authorizing him or her to study the case.