Medvedev in damning assessment of Soviet system

PRESIDENT Dmitry Medvedev yesterday slammed the Soviet Union as a totalitarian regime that suppressed human rights, in the most damning assessment of the USSR by a Russian leader in recent years.

In an interview with the Izvestia newspaper published before Russia marks tomorrow’s 65th anniversary of victory in World War II, Medvedev said the crimes of wartime dictator Joseph Stalin could never be forgiven.

“The Soviet Union was a very complicated state and if we speak honestly the regime that was built in the Soviet Union . . . cannot be called anything other than totalitarian,” he said. “Unfortunately, this was a regime where elementary rights and freedoms were suppressed.”