Russian scientists slam security chief for Stalin purge comments

A group of Russian scientists have sounded the alarm over what they said were attempts by the head of the security service to openly justify Stalin's mass purges, the first such attempt in decades.

In an open letter published by Kommersant broadsheet, more than 30 academics slammed Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB security service -- the successor to the feared KGB -- for seeking to legitimise the mass purges known as the Great Terror.

Historians estimate about one million people perished in Stalin's purges in the 1930s out of around 20 million who died under his three-decade rule before his death in 1953.

Since former KGB officer Vladimir Putin was first elected president in 2000, authorities have sought to promote a positive view of the Soviet past, including the role of Stalin, but Bortnikov's comments appear to mark a new step in this direction.

In an interview with Russian government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta published this week Bortnikov said the archives show that "a significant part" of the criminal cases of that period "had an objective side to them".

He said he did not want to "whitewash anyone" but pointed to "links of coup plotters to foreign security agencies".

The interview was published to mark 100 years since the establishment of the Cheka, the Soviet Union's first secret police service, created to stamp out opposition to Bolshevik rule.

Putin will run for a fourth Kremlin term in a March presidential election in a move expected to extend his rule until 2024 and cement his status as the longest-serving Russian leader since Stalin.

Many liberals have expressed concern that the Kremlin will tighten the screws on civil society even further following Putin's expected re-election.

In their open letter, the scientists -- who are all members of the Russian Academy of Sciences -- expressed fears that the "revision" of the role of the Soviet-era secret police could be intentional and called on the general public to join their protest.

"Apparently for the first time since the 20th Congress of the Communist Party held in 1956 one of the top functionaries of our state justifies mass purges of the 1930s-1940s which were accompanied by wrongful sentences, torture and executions of hundreds of thousands of innocent compatriots," they said in the letter.