“PRIVATIZING” THE RUSSIAN VICTORY.

Human rights activist Viktor Krivulin denounced the Yeltsin government for seeking to “privatize” the triumph of the Russian people over fascism. Writing in the May 8 Vecherny Sankt-Peterburg, Krivulin said that Yeltsin had “turned the blood shed by the Russian people into ideological capital.” Meanwhile, liberal Moscow historian Viktor Afanasiev told Radio Liberty the same day that the tone and content of V-E speeches by Yeltsin and other Russian leaders recalled the worst excesses of Soviet propaganda. He also criticized the military parade at Poklonnaya hill, the first such public display in the Russian capital since 1990.

V-E Commemorations Outside Of Moscow.