Russia's Soviet Legacy

 From the MT:

“Russia Should Drop ‘Terrorist’ Soviet Legacy, Constitutional Court Judge Says”

A Russian Constitutional Court judge has said that modern Russia should renounce its status as a successor state to the Soviet Union, the Kommersant business daily reported Monday. Judge Konstantin Aranovsky expressed his opinion as an addition to a December ruling that awarded restitution to the children of the victims of Stalin’s repressions. While he agreed with the ruling, he argued that Russia’s law on rehabilitating the victims of Soviet repressions shouldn’t be interpreted as the perpetrator awarding compensation.  “Russia doesn’t carry on [the Soviet Union’s legal system] in law, but replaces a state that was once created illegally, requiring it to reckon with the consequences of its activities, including political repression,” Aranovsky wrote. “This makes succession — with the transfer of the Communist Soviet regime’s commitments to repressive and terrorist acts to Russia — disputable,” he continued. Judge Aranovsky added that he doesn’t believe that Russia should give up its membership in international bodies. Russia inherited its UN Security Council seat from the U.S.S.R. in 1991. The Constitutional Court later said that any of its judges have the right to express their opinions if they differ from the court, the state-run news agency TASS reported. Those opinions carry no legal weight, the court told TASS. The Kremlin dismissed Aranovsky’s comments as his personal opinion. Russia remains legally and in practice the successor state of the Soviet Union, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Monday. Although Stalin sent as many as 12 million Soviet citizens to the gulags, Russians increasingly view the leader favorably as the memories of his repressions fade.  The Kremlin has in recent years advocated pride in Russia’s Soviet past, with Putin criticizing attempts to demonize Stalin as veiled attacks on Russia. 

^ Russia is, and should remain, the successor country of the Soviet Union. When Nazi Germany collapsed in 1945 there was no successor country as the the Allies (the US, UK, USSR and France) occupied parts of the former Nazi Third Reich – which later became West Germany and East Germany and today Germany. Even with no successor state named modern-day Germany is still obligated for the horrors of World War 2 and the Holocaust. With regards to Russia: when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 Soviet Law remained within Russia until the Constitutional Crisis of 1993 (i.e. the storming of the Russian White House.)That means that the Russian Federation was and is the successor state to the USSR. That means that modern-day Russia has an obligation to the victims of the Soviet Communists that the Germans have to the victims of the Nazis. Clearly this Constitutional Court Judge doesn’t know or fully understand both Russian and International Laws or Russian History. ^

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/02/17/russia-should-drop-terrorist-soviet-legacy-constitutional-court-judge-says-a69312