Penza, 27 July 2015. PenzaNews. Georgy Kamnev, leader of the Penza branch of the Communist Party, deputy of the regional Legislative Assembly, gave a comment to PenzaNews agency about a recently published online petition that addresses the city administration head Yuri Krivov with a request to stop the plans to move the Joseph Stalin monument to the new building of the CPRF regional committee on Kirova street. According to the interviewee, the decision was already agreed on with no possibility for a review.

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“The regional committee moves to Penza downtown, to Kirova street, and so the monument to the Soviet Union Generalissimus Joseph Stalin that currently stands on Darvina proyezd by the current committee building. The decision was made, and it will not be reviewed, so any petitions are useless and should be seen only as a good chance for the media to fill up the characteristic summer dead air,” the speaker pointed out.

He reminded that the Communist Party followers, the second strongest political movement in the country, were ignored as well when the authorities decided to construct the Spassky Cathedral in the Sovetskaya square of the city on the place of the Karl Marx monument.

“Indeed, some people take offence in a Joseph Stalin monument in the city downtown, while some, like us, take offence in the construction of a cathedral on the Sovetskaya square. They removed a monument to Karl Marks, author of the Communist Manifesto and The Capital, in July 2011, but installed it on its new location, on the intersection of Lermontova and Kuybysheva streets, only in late May 2014,” Georgy Kamnev said.

The modern society yet has much to learn about tolerance, he added.

“After watching the hysteria online in and in some media, I can only make a single ironic conclusion that this while liberal clique that rides along Kirova street in their expensive foreign cars will be disgusted by the silhouette of a monument dedicated to the man who changed the flow of the world’s history. Maybe it will remind them of the unyielding struggle against themselves, the capitalists who squeeze the last drops of juice from the people. I can find no other reasonable justification to these completely unfounded, illogical and unreasonable proclamations,” the speaker explained.

He also suggested that the signatories of the petition might lack sufficient knowledge of their native country’s history.

“Maybe they have some fragmentary vision of people and events of those times. Perhaps they even read works of Shalamov or Solzhenitsyn, but still have no full picture. And yet there are biographies and memory records of regular people who lived under Stalin – like the Second World War veterans. And they speak of Stalin with great respect,” Georgy Kamnev pointed out.

Speaking of the petition itself, he concentrated on the figure of its creator Andrei Sorokin.

“You know, I had talked to journalists who worked in their industry for no less than five years, and not a single one of them could actually tell me anything worthy of this man. Even calling him a journalist would be a tough task. He’s mostly a ‘rewriter,’ as it’s popular to say nowadays – a person who relates somebody else’s texts in his own words. He’s got no serious works in the media, so the man isn’t that big in professional field. Seems like he can’t find his place: a lawyer in education, qualified as a translator, a guitar player, was involved in a local rock band. Had nothing to do with politics, by the way. Maybe this step of his [publishing the online petition] is aimed at attracting attention to his minor figure. Or maybe he was advised by people with the know-how – used an opportunity, let’s say. He is a young man, only 24, but how tough he is in criticizing the actions of Joseph Stalin! It is a common knowledge that people of his age are frequently affected by various bad ideas, including those coming from certain authorities willing to use all means available to fend for their interests,” the leader of the Penza Communist Party office stated.

As PenzaNews agency reported earlier, the Joseph Stalin monument was opened in Penza on July 15, 2011, in the CPRF regional committee building on Darvina proyezd.

The monument was ordered by German Karpov and cast in South Ossetia. The members and followers of CPRF in the Penza region gathered some 100,000 rubles for its creation, while the regional CPRF branch took the expenses related to improvement of the nearby plot of land and the installation of the monument.

In July 2015, the Communist party members announced their plans to move the Joseph Stalin monument to the new party office branch building on Kirova street, 24B.