MOSCOW, October 30 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian Prosecutor General's Office said Monday it has completed inquiries into cases of political repression, and has rehabilitated over 775,000 people.
Russia remembers past victims of political repression on October 30 each year. The Day of Soviet Political Prisoners was first commemorated in 1974 and became a day dedicated to the memory of those who suffered following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
"Since the introduction of the law On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression [enacted in January 1992], the Prosecutor General's Office has reviewed over 970,000 criminal cases involving over 1.2 million people who were accused of counter-revolutionary and extremely grave crimes," the Prosecutor General's Office said. "Over 775,000 people have been rehabilitated."
In 1991, Russian leaders renounced the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state, and moved to restore the rights, social status, military rank and awards of the victims of political purges. The government has also been paying compensation to the victims.
Tens of millions of Russian citizens, both ordinary people and Communist Party members, were sent to prison camps by Joseph Stalin for dissident views, or often for no particular reason at all.
The massive internal purges began in 1935 and lasted until Stalin's death in 1953. Many of the political prisoners were killed while others were sent to labor camps, forming a reservoir of forced labor that sustained the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union.
Stalin's cult of personality was first condemned in 1956 by then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who read his famous "secret" report at the 20th Communist Party Congress. The report was later leaked to Soviet satellite states and Western countries, and provoked uprisings in Hungary and Poland.
