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On Stalin's Atrocities : 'We Aren't Humans if We Don't Have Memory'

Jamie Dettmer

   ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA - Russian historian Anatoly Razumov has been
   working for more than three decades to identify those who died in
   Joseph Stalin's purges. "We aren't humans, if we don't have memory," he
   says.

   As he bustles around his cramped office with floor-to-ceiling bookcases
   and papers stacked high everywhere, he assures VOA, "This room is
   well-organized, I can find everything I need very quickly."

   Razumov's office, which can be discovered at the end of a series of
   narrow corridors and winding stairs in the National Library of Russia
   in St Petersburg, is a frontline in a battle being waged over history
   and the chronicling of the communist past.

   Expunging Stalin's crimes

   Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin has slowly been rehabilitated since
   Vladimir Putin came to power, a rehabilitation that is growing apace
   with memorials once again being erected to Stalin and officials no
   longer embarrassed to hang portraits of the Soviet dictator.

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