Judicial probe needed into activities of Stalin’s security agencies – rights group

File Photo of Prison in Russia with Wall, Barbed Wire, Guard Tower

(Interfax – MOSCOW, May 16, 2013) A leading Russian human rights group has called for a judicial inquiry into the activities of Stalin-era security services after a high-profile public figure accused a Soviet counterintelligence service that existed during World War II of methods similar to those of Nazi Germany’s security agencies.

Leonid Gozman, head of humanitarian projects at state corporation Rusnano, compared the SMERSH counterintelligence agency, whose name is an acronym for “Death to Spies,” to Hitler’s SS security service and Gestapo secret police.

The State Duma has responded with an inquiry into Gozman’s allegation, but the head of human rights group Memorial argued that the Duma would be unable to come up with an objective assessment without a judicial investigation into the activities of SMERSH and Stalin’s secret police NKVD.

The Duma committees that have been given the job of scrutinizing Gozman’s words “are not competent to deal with such matters,” Yan Rachnisky told Interfax on Thursday.

“Many of those who were arrested by SMERSH and who were then convicted by military tribunals were afterward rehabilitated. It’s also well-known how (SMERSH) investigations were conducted,” Rachinsky said.

Memorial is the leading non-governmental organization on former Soviet territory investigating Josef Stalin’s reign of terror.

The Stalin regime is accused of mass-scale persecutions and blamed for Red Army defeats and huge Soviet death tolls during World War II.

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