New Russian Investigations Committee "Not a Monster of 1937", Says Its Head

Acting Chairman of the Russian Investigations Committee Aleksandr Bastrykin has said that the new Investigations Committee will not be another NKVD. [The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD, was the public and secret police agency in the period of Joseph Stalin and was largely responsible for executing political repression orders]

"When people say that we want to set up an NKVD (by merging various investigations bodies to form one Investigations Committee) and that we will be slaughtering people all over the place, this are blatant unscrupulous lies," Bastrykin said at a meeting of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia faction in the State Duma today. He was telling deputies about the president-proposed draft law on establishing a single Investigations Committee in Russia.

Bastrykin said he was bewildered by statements by some deputies "directly saying that you are creating some kind of monster, a monster of 1937". Bastrykin said he could not understand such a position and categorically rejected the possibility.

There is no need to hurry with establishing a single Investigations Committee in Russia, he said, stressing that this was his personal opinion. "It should be established but this should be done in a natural evolutionary way, in a calm fashion, without revolutions or hysterics," Bastrykin said.

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