After Apologizing for Genocide of Crimean Tatars, Vasily Gatov Attacked by Russian Channel One Employees
15 Minut
May 20, 2016

Well-known journalist and media manager Vasily Gatov, grandson of Ivan Sheredega, the NKVD Internal Troops commander who, in 1944, oversaw the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, has been targeted by his former colleagues at Russia’s Channel One after publishing a post on Facebook.

On May 18, Gatov wrote the following on Facebook.

“Today is the anniversary of one of the most shameful events in the history of the Soviet Union, the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people. I don’t find it so easy to write these words: my own grandfather commanded this ‘operation.’

“In May 1944, the Soviet Army was in the midst of liberating the lands of Europe from the Nazi genocide machine, and the concept of ‘death camps’ was clear to the soldiers and officers. During these very same days, Stalin decided that another entire people, from its children to its heroes, was the ‘enemy.’

“As it is euphemistically called in the relevant documents, the ‘expulsion’ of the Chechens, Balkars, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians is nothing but a form of genocide. A genocide that has never been recognized, that has never been mourned, and that has never been paid for.

“The Crimean Tatars, Chechens, and Ingush are nations that have suffered at the hands of both the USSR and Russia.

“It is not only a shame. It is not only a sin.

“It is a crime that has been committed twice, an aggravated conspiracy by a gang whose objectives completely fall under the definitions of the crime as laid down by the International Court.

“And until a trial takes place in one form or another, any reasonable and sober person will have to repeat the same words:

“Forgive me if you can.”

Gatov also published his comment on the condemnation of his actions by his former colleagues on his Facebook page.

“Towards evening, I read the [minutes of] the long-distance Party meeting held on Facebook by Channel One employees and a few invited guests in order to condemn me. My thanks to Ksenia Turkova and Arina Borodina for their efforts to defend me in circumstances in which I cannot even reply to Svetlana Kolosva (director of Channel One’s documentary films department) and her fellow Party members.

“As for the claims made there, I have the following to say. Only a complete raving lunatic whose head was chockablock with propaganda and had been made insecure by continually lying to himself and others could have read into what I wrote yesterday everything my former friends and acquaintances discovered there. Basically, that’s all I have to say.

“Actually, it’s not quite everything. I discovered several interesting likes from people I didn’t expect to see on the list of invitees to the Party meeting. However, upon reflection, I concluded that the people who left those likes also completely fit the definition written above.”

[…]

Vasily Gatov is a Visiting Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. Photo courtesy of 15 Minut. See my translation of Gatov’s recent essay on the dismantling of RBC and the demise of the free press in Russia. Translated by the Russian Reader