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Russian Spying Stamps
by Steve Rosenberg |
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Boris Mityukhin has been making stamps for the Motherland for twenty years. He's Chief Designer at Russia's House of Stamps.
In his office, Boris shows me one of his albums - overflowing with brightly coloured images - it looks more like an encyclopaedia of Russian heroes. There are spacemen, scientists, poets, musicians, ballerinas and even tsars.
Then Boris shows me his latest creation - and a chill runs down my spine. For there staring up at me are the portraits of six members of Stalin's infamous secret police - the Cheka. Boris believes they deserve their moment of fame.
"Not everything in our history is bad." Boris told me. "These were honest, decent citizens, some of them were even geniuses. They helped protect our country and our people"
Those geniuses include agent Sergei Puzitsky - responsible for the forced deportation of thousands of peasants in the 1930s. Also Vladimir Styrne - who instigated widespread repression when he ran a local branch of the secret police. Not the sort of people you'd expect to make it onto a postage stamp in the 21st century.
Human rights organisations are up in arms. Nikita Petrov is a researcher for Memorial - an organisation dedicated to the victims of Stalin's terror.
"They are not heroes", Nikita told me "All of them served in Soviet secret police and they responsible for killing many thousands of innocent people."
Nikita believes that the new stamps reflect the growing influence of the secret police in Russia today.
After taking part in repressions against their own people, all six officers turned their attention to catching foreign spies. It's in that capacity that they're being honoured by the Russian postal service - the stamps have been issued to mark the 80th anniversary of the country's counter-intelligence service. They soon became victims of the system they had so violently defended - five out of six were arrested and shot in Stalin's purges.
Susana Pechora has little sympathy for the new heroes of the Russian mail. Susana spent five years in the Gulag - the stamps have brought back painful memories.
"There's no way I'd put one of those stamps on one of my letters," Susana told me, "It's an insult. Can you imagine modern Germany putting members of the Gestapo on their stamps? It's a slap in the face to the millions who died in that totalitarian system. It's just awful that we live in a society where hangmen and murderers are glorified."
Every nation - of course - needs its heroes. Shining examples for the rest of the population. Especially in Russia - a country still struggling to recover from the loss of an old ideology, the loss, too, of its old heroes. But as long as Russia refuses to face up to its past, it risks choosing false idols - those more likely to lead it, not to a glorious future, but back to the abyss.
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