MOSCOW, June 14 (RIA Novosti) - Post-Soviet Baltic countries are presenting themselves as the only victims of Stalinist deportations. That is blasphemous from the historical point, and absurd from the point of present-day politics, Konstantin Kosachev said in a RIA Novosti interview.
He leads the international affairs committee at the State Duma, Russia's lower parliamentary house.
His interview was dedicated to an anniversary of the start of prewar mass deportations, whose victims the post-Soviet Baltic countries are mourning.
Those Stalinist atrocities "certainly have no vindication. They were among the most heinous crimes of the regime. But then, they were part of dire developments within one country, and so they were crimes the regime was perpetrating against the population of its own country-not one country's crimes against another. Deportations came in a horrible wave to sweep other ethnic entities, too-Russians being no exception."
Proportionately to their population, the three present-day Baltic countries did not suffer worse than other ethnic entities within the Soviet Union. "This does not mean there's room for comparison-whatever comparisons made in that context are shockingly out of place. We ought to treat those developments as a past tragedy we all shared. There is no way to settle a score with the culprits' offspring now.
"Ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians and others were involved in the reprisals-representatives of the Baltic peoples, too. They were active in the Soviet secret services."
The parliamentarian went on to comment statements Lithuanian and Estonian political activists made on this day of mourning. "A big political gamble is on. It is tied in with present-day Russian relations with the post-Soviet Baltic countries. Attempts are made to pile on contemporary Russia the greatest possible number of accusations, many of which concern the past."
As for the alleged military occupation of the three Baltic countries by the Soviet Union, "the matter has no legal prospects at all. Characteristically, the Lithuanian top is fully aware of that point. Thus, the Lithuanian parliament passed a bill on compensations back in 2000-but Lithuania's president has not signed it to this day, so the document has not come into juridical force."
As the Russian parliamentarian added, "Moscow, too, can come up with counterclaims, but we don't think we shall be right to do so, or the two parties may get drowned in a pool of mutual claims."
