Picture of Felix Dzerzhinsky to be hung in FSB offices

Corriere della Sera, an Italian daily newspaper that is famous for its publications about accounts of Boris Yetlsin’s team, decided to pay attention to Vladimir Putin, who is currently reviving the epoch of the State Security Committee (KGB) in Russia.

The Western newspaper cited by Inopressa.Ru is indignant because of a new Russian wall calendar published for officials of the Federal Security Bureau (FSB). A correspondent of Novaya Gazeta managed to take a picture of the calendar secretly.

The Italians say that, first of all, the FSB has published a large picture of the Lubyanka square, and the picture was taken in the Soviet era, when the KGB still existed. It is astonishing, but the picture was taken before the year of 1991, before the break-up of the USSR. The Italian newspaper says that this fact evidently demonstrates that the epoch of the Soviet secret special services is not over; it has just slowly proceeded to the new epoch. “The people believed that after the coup-d’etat of 1991 and the arrest of the KGB chairman the period of KGB was over.” However, this was not to be the case.

What else irritates the Western critics? They mention that there are lots of Soviet-made autos, pictures of hawks and hammers, shields and swords defending the revolution and fighting against sabotage in the calendar.

However, as the newspaper reports, the most outrageous thing is that a monument to chairman of the All-Russian extraordinary committee (VChK) Felix Dzerzhinsky, which has been dismantled from the Lubyanka square (a monument to the repression victims has been raised instead), is published in the calendar. The date of his birth – September 11 (that also provokes some sad associations) – is marked red in the new calendar. The day of December 20, the date when the Extraordinary Committee was founded, is marked red in the calendar too. Corriere della Sera remarks that there is nothing surprising about this, especially considering the fact that “the date is celebrated by Vladimir Putin himself and his colleagues.”

At the end of the article, the newspaper explains what kind of organization the Extraordinary Committee was for the Soviet Union. “The Extraordinary committee killed, annihilated people, committed inhumane acts, and it was not for fun. Arrested people were buried alive in the city of Krakov, priests were put on stake in the Poltava region, and captive white officers were faggoted in the Ukrainian city of Odessa. The day of December 20 is a black day in Russia’s history.

Are you really scared ?

Are you? But you will have to admit it as a fact if the calendar is to be placed on the walls of FSB. The only consolation in this case is that such a calendar will never appear in Italy.

However, perhaps such a calendar for FSB officers does not exist, and the facts mentioned above are just ravings of a madman stuck in false reports spread by the Western (and non-western) journalists.

in any case, such articles do not seem to be accidental. The tendency for revival of the KGB epoch is evident: the music of the Soviet national anthem has been restored, and the experience of the Soviet state structure is often referred to. The eyes of fear see danger everywhere, and someone could have seen even Dzerzhinsky.

In addition, PRAVDA.Ru has already published information about Putin in the article “Putin against the Family. Who rules Russia?”

Sergey Stefanov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Maria Gousseva

In the photo: Felix Dzerzhinsky

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/02/05/36584.html