NewsDay.com - 02.10.2003

Newsday.com

Putin Signs Repression Payback Bill

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a bill providing additional government pensions and other privileges to children of victims of Soviet-era political repression. 

The new law gives people whose parents were subjected to political repression while they were minors the same rights as other repression victims, the presidential press service said Monday in a statement. 

More than 20 million people are believed to have suffered in political purges between the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1953. More than half of them died. Political repression continued after Stalin's death but on a lesser scale. 

During the Stalin era, the children of purge victims routinely were sent to state orphanages where conditions were sometimes as harsh as those in prisons. Many died of malnutrition and mistreatment. 

Repression victims have long received government benefits, and human rights activists had pushed for a law extending benefits to victims' children. The bill was passed last month by both houses of parliament.