MOSCOW, October 22, 2007 Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) presents information concerning how Russians evaluate the repressions that took place in 1937 and the following years.

After seventy years have passed, the year of 1937 still remains in the memory of every second Russian (47%) primarily as the symbol of Stalin's terror and mass repressions, 44% of respondents find it difficult to come up with an answer as to what events of any significance happened at that time. 1-3% of respondents for each option propose an alternative version of events that year connecting them with mass famine, industrial growth, industrialization, collectivization of the country, the beginning of fascism in Europe, or just "difficult times for all people in general".

Three fourths of respondents, 76%, find it difficult today to mention any particular surnames of well-known people who suffered from repressions during those years. This question causes the greatest difficulty among the young people of 18-24 years of age (88%). More frequently than others they manage to recall in this respect M. Tukhachevskiy (6%), A. Solzhenitsyn (4%), V. Blyukher (3%), N. Bukharin, A. Sakharov (2% per option), N. Vavilov, G. Zhzhenov, G. Zhukov, G. Zinovjev, L. Kamenev, S. Kirov, S. Korolev, O. Mandelstam, K. Rokossovsky, L. Trotsky (1% per option).

Every fifth respondent today can think of his or her relatives, who died during that period of time or were sentenced to a penal in Stalin camps (ranging from 15% among young people to 29% of respondents of 60 years and older). 50% of respondents are quite sure that there were no political prisoners in their family, 24% find it difficult to provide an answer to this question.

The relative majority of respondents, 36%, estimate the number of victims of Stalin's repressions as equalling to several million people; another 20% consider it to have been several hundred thousand, 13% assume that Stalin's repressions accounted for several tens of millions of victims, and only 4% mention several tens of thousands. All age groups of respondents most frequently consider the number of victims to have been several million people.

From the repressions of those years most of all suffered the people prominent in cultural matters, science and art, as 51% respondent of those interrogated identify, to be followed by soldiers (31%), "the ordinary citizens, everyone taken at random" (21%), "Jews, Latvians, representatives of other national minorities" (18%), clergymen (18%), peasants (17%), workers (16%), party workers (14%), political opposition to Stalin (11%); NKVD workers and workers of other power structures (6%). Only 5% consider that "spies and wreckers", and 2% that "speculators, thieves and bandits" were the ones who predominantly suffered.

In the opinion of a half of respondents (51%), in essence honest and innocent citizens, who were maligned, were then the ones to undergo repressions. One third (32%) assumes that part of those punished was guilty, but the other part was not. Only 2% of respondents consider that these were chiefly wreckers and enemies of the Soviet regime, and another 4% note that in essence these were all communists, guilty at least of the fact that they themselves during the Civil War and in the early years of the Soviet regime had committed numerous crimes. Respondents of all generations are inclined to think that predominantly honest people suffered.

Only 2% of respondents consider the repressions of those years to have been the correct and necessary step of the Soviet regime. 16% share version about exaggerations: it was necessary to fight with the enemies of the people in those years, but "in to the flame of fight" many innocent people suffered. 19% call what happened in 1937 the large error of Stalin; just as many respondents characterize repressions as a crime committed in cold blood, carried out by Stalin personally, to which there can be no justification. And the most wide-spread estimation (give by 33% of respondents) is that not Stalin alone was guilty of the repressions but the entire system of government created by him. The higher the level of education the respondents had, the more inclined they were to blame the system (ranging from 28% in the group with less than elementary education to 38% in the group with higher and uncompleted highest education), and the less they support the version of "exaggerations" (22% and 14%).

The majority of Russians (70%) negatively evaluate the "cleaning" of the military leaders in 1937, considering this as one of the reasons of the failures of our army at the beginning of the war in 1941-1945. Only 9% of respondents assume that the repressions in no way affected the defence capability of our country, but 3% even think that "cleaning" strengthened the Soviet Army.

The initiative All-Russia opinion poll was conducted by VCIOM on October 6-7, 2007. 1600 respondents were interviewed in 153 population areas of 46 regions of Russia. The statistical error does not exceed 3.4%.