Penza, 5 March 2016. PenzaNews. Around 100 people took part in the memorial event dedicated to 63 years since the death of the Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin, held in the Penza region CPRF committee on Saturday, March 5.

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The people were holding the flags with the symbols of the Communist Party and the images of the Soviet leader, as well as banners reading: “For Motherland! For Stalin!”

“Joseph Stalin is a personality that the Communists see as being able to unite all patriotic Leftist movements in the country for its rejuvenation, for the new industrial period, to save Russia,” Dmitry Filyaev, first secretary of the CPRF city committee, said during the ceremony.

He passed the microphone to Vladimir Kerkhanadzhev, veteran of the Battle for Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk, chairman of the city council of war, labor, military and law enforcement veterans, who said that the last when he had seen Joseph Stalin in person was during the Victory Parade on the Red Square in Moscow on 24 June 1945.

According to the veteran, he also remembers the day when the military regiments on the Far East, the place of his duty, received the message about Stalin’s death.

“Many years have passed. Personally, I will never forget this great person. It was Stalin who founded the Socialist state devised by Lenin,” Vladimir Kerkhanadzhev stressed.

In turn, Vladimir Simagin, State Duma deputy from the Penza region for the CPRF faction, pointed out that citizens of the region preserve the legacy of Joseph Stalin’s role in the world history.

“The windows of my cabinet – there they are – make it possible for me to see the monument to Joseph Vissarionovich. I often watch what happens around it. The elderly are coming here and laying flowers. Grandfathers and grandmothers bring the young ones here. Groups of young men and women come here, make selfies, like it’s popular to say now, and so on. But there are always flowers there, since the moment when it was unveiled,” he said.

Another person to speak to the audience was Valery Lavrov, Cand. Phil., secretary of the CPRF committee of the Crimean Republic, who was born in the Penza region.

“Today, I am very glad to once again be in my native land, in Penza city, where you hold such events dedicated to the legacy of Joseph Stalin, our prominent personality. Today, such events are held in Moscow and Krasnodar, Leningrad [St. Petersburg] and Pskov, Arkhangelsk and Rostov-on-Don, and in Chelyabinsk. At 11.00 sharp, similar public events also began in the heroic cities of Sevastopol in Kerch, in the city of Simferopol,” he noted.

Valery Lavrov added that the Crimean CPRF committee recently unveiled a memorial plaque dedicated to the stay of Joseph Stalin in Crimea during the 1945 Yalta Conference.

“Nowadays, this place – the committee of the Crimean Republic – and this memorial plaque are cultural heritage. Not a single guided tour through Simferopol avoids them,” he clarified, and thanked the colleagues from Penza for creating the Stalin Center.

Georgy Kamnev, first secretary of the Regional Committee of the Communist Party, deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Penza region, also addressed the audience, and asked them the question about the reasons why “[there are] attempts to ingrain a negative image of Stalin” for the Russian people.

“Because he was able to present an alternative to the capitalist system – a real alternative that people had seen. This is what the liberals, followers of capitalism, fear. Because right now they are telling us that there is no alternative to capitalism,” he stressed.

Georgy Kamnev pointed out that Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin should be considered heroes, as they have the merits for that.

“Lenin managed to build a theory behind such a state, and Stalin successfully implemented a Soviet Socialist state with all its attibutes – power of the people, Socialism law, Soviet culture, Socialist economy,” said the deputy.

In conclusion of his speech, he stated that the Communists will do everything to make Russia great once again.

After the event, people were able to lay flowers to the monument of the Soviet leader.