Penza, 27 July 2015. PenzaNews. Andrei Sorokin, author of petition against moving the Joseph Stalin monument to Penza city center, sent PenzaNews agency a reply to the commentary of Georgy Kamnev, leader of the Penza Communist Party branch and regional Legislative Assembly deputy who stated this decision is final and cannot be revised.

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“First of all, I would like to explain that I had absolutely no compulsion to deal with this hole monument-moving story. However, a local newspaper failed to begin gathering signatures against it as they promised so I had to do it myself. This is solely a civil act that has very little to do with politics. I prefer other [means] of attracting attention to my humble person. The words about ‘people in the know’ who allegedly ‘exploited’ me in any way look bewildering. It seems to me that Mr. Kamnev felt compelled to spin a tale about ‘outside influence’ in the best traditions of Communist propaganda. By the way, the deputy took it too small: the online flame wars nowadays begin right from accusing the other party of receiving funding from the US State Department. The words about my age seem no less strange spoken by one of the youngest leaders of a Communist Party branch in RF,” reads the message by Andrei Sorokin received by PenzaNews agency on Monday, July 27.

It also claims that the author of the petition [who worked with “Nash Gorod” newspaper and several online resources in the past] is not a “permanent” journalist and does not seek to build a career in this field, and the wording “beginner journalist” is solely the wording by PenzaNews agency.

“So I would recommend Georgy Petrovich [Kamnev] to stop judging people he doesn’t know. By saying that somebody ‘cannot find his place in the world,’ Mr. Kamnev demonstrates only his own narrow-mindedness, as a wide range of hobbies is something entirely different and a thing more trivial in the current world than praising the world’s punishers,” Andrei Sorokin notes.

“As for the stance of Mr. Kamnev on moving the Stalin monument, I have nothing to say, as that is terrible. And using the words ‘liberal clique’ with a negative subtext to describe those who disagree with regional Communists in this issue once again shows the narrow vision of the deputy and the lack of any tolerance he claimed to have in an interview to ‘PenzaNews’,” the author of the petition thinks.

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.