Kremlin chief laments Russian youth views of Stalin

By Oleg Shchedrov

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Kremlin chief Dmitry Medvedev on Friday said he was concerned that the majority of young Russians were unaware of the scope of Josef Stalin's purges and said the crimes of the past should not be forgiven.

Medvedev's comments, on the day Russia honours the victims of Soviet repression, come amid what rights campaigners see as a creeping attempt by some politicians to whitewash the legacy of the Soviet Union's most feared dictator.

Speaking in a video blog posted on the www.kremlin.ru web site, Medvedev warned against attempts to "rehabilitate those responsible for exterminating their own people."

"Two years ago sociologists conducted a poll and nearly 90 percent of our citizens, young people aged 18-24, could not even name prominent people who suffered or died in the years of the repressions," Medvedev said. "This cannot but cause concern."

"There is no justification for the repressions," he said.

The day of remembrance for the victims of repression was introduced 18 years ago by the first post-Soviet Kremlin leader, Boris Yeltsin, who believed that facing up to the horrors of the past was essential to build democracy after years of repression.

Stalin is still the subject of heated debate in Russia, nearly two decades after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.

For some Russians, Stalin was a cruel tyrant who sent millions to their deaths by building a totalitarian system that corrupted the ideals of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.