Viktor Alksnis

Viktor Imantovich Alksnis (Russian: Виктор Имантович Алкснис, Latvian: Viktors Alksnis; born 21 June 1950) is a Russian politician and former Soviet Air Force colonel of Latvian descent.[1][2] He is the chairman of Russian Center of Free Technologies,[3] an organization intended to promote Free Software and open standards in Russia. He is a former member of the USSR Supreme Soviet, a member of the Russian All-People's Union and has also represented the Rodina (Motherland-National Patriotic Union) party in the Russian State Duma. From 2003 to 2007, he represented the People's Union party in the Fourth Duma.[4][5]

Viktor Alksnis
As a Russian State Duma Deputy
Member of the State Duma
In office
January 2000 – November 2007
Personal details
Born (1950-06-21) June 21, 1950
Tashtagol, Kemerovo Oblast, Soviet Union
CitizenshipRussian
NationalityLatvian

Due to his political views and personal style, Alksnis was nicknamed "the Black Colonel",[6][7][8] an allusion to the Soviet term "Black Colonels" (Russian: Чёрные полковники) for the Greek military junta of 1967-1974.

Family history

In the 1930s, Alksnis's grandfather, Yakov Alksnis (Latvian: Jēkabs Alksnis) was the head of the Soviet Air Force. He also took part in the military tribunal for the Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization, which sentenced Mikhail Tukhachevsky and other high-ranking Soviet officers to death on Joseph Stalin's order. However, only eight months later, Yakov Alksnis himself was also arrested and executed.[9]

Alksnis's grandmother spent 14 years in labor camps and his father was discriminated for being the son of an "enemy of the people".[10]

During the destalinization of late 1950s Yakov Alksnis was posthumously rehabilitated; the Air Forces college in Riga was named in his honour. Despite these Stalin-era persecutions of his family members, Viktor Alksnis became a staunch supporter of the Soviet political system.

In 1973 Alksnis graduated from the Riga Higher Military Aviation Engineering School named for his grandfather as a qualified military radio engineer.[4]

Alksnis's Latvian heritage was the subject of slander allegations in 2007 involving comments on the Internet.[11]

Attitude to the breakup of the USSR
ReactOS project coordinator Aleksey Bragin shows ReactOS functionality to Viktor Alksnis

Viktor Alksnis was a strong opponent of the breakup of the Soviet Union and of the independence of the Baltic States.[12] He claims that the Baltic states are apartheid regimes, that the Russian population in these states suffers repression.

In 1989 he was elected into the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In 1990 he was elected to the Supreme Council of the Republic of Latvia. In 1990, he was one of the founders of a hard-line group "Soyuz" within the USSR Supreme Soviet.[13] He once proposed the ousting of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev from power, dissolving the parliament, outlawing all parties, the declaration of martial law and the handing of power to a Military "Committee of National Salvation", which would avoid the disintegration of the Soviet Union.[14][15]

He has described the internationally non-recognized Transnistrian Republic as the base from which the restoration of the Soviet Union would begin.[16]

In later years Alksnis claimed to be a principal figure behind the Riga OMON,[17] known for opposing the secession of Latvia from the USSR and actions such as the Soviet OMON assaults on Lithuanian border posts.

He was designated persona non grata in Latvia after he left the country in 1992.,[12] in Pravda, 1 November 2002. Since that time he has taken part in Russian politics, representing left-wing and nationalist positions. Alksnis was one of the leaders of the National Salvation Front that united nationalist and communist movements that opposed Yeltsin's policies. In 2005, he was named persona non grata in Ukraine as well, after he called for a Russian-Ukrainian border revision while speaking at a rally in Simferopol, Crimea.

Free software advocacy campaign
Alexander Ponosov and Viktor Alksnis

In 2007, Alksnis launched a campaign to promote the use of Free Software such as the Linux operating system in Russian state institutions to secure software independence.[18][19][20]

In February 2008 he joined forces with Aleksandr Ponosov, a school teacher accused of software piracy, to form Center of Free Technology,[21] a non-profit initiative which will research methods of usage of Free Software in the Russian education system.

Alksnis has met with project coordinator Aleksey Bragin to promote the development of the ReactOS operating system.[22] He also invited Richard Stallman, the founder of the GNU project and Free Software Foundation to Moscow.[23] The visit however was canceled by Stallman due to the controversy surrounding Alksnis.

Views on global politics

In 2006, Alksnis said in an interview that Israel and the United States are enemies of Iran's peaceful nuclear program, and their hostile attitude towards Iran is an attempt to cover-up the United States' mistakes in Iraq.[24]

References
  1. Kimura, Hiroshi (2000). Japanese-Russian Relations under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-7656-0587-0. OCLC 43115021. Retrieved 28 November 2008.
  2. Chung, Eunsook (1998). Foreign Policy Making in Russia: An Analysis of Domestic Entanglements. Sungnam: Sejong Institute. p. 72. ISBN 978-89-7429-342-0. OCLC 43760158. Retrieved 28 November 2008.
  3. Center of Free Technologies
  4. "Партия национального возрождения «Народная Воля» | Члены партии | Алкснис Виктор Имантович" (in Russian). Archived from the original on January 8, 2008. Retrieved March 17, 2008.
  5. http://www.duma.gov.ru/index.jsp?t=history/4/99100952.html%5B%5D (in Russian)
  6. Remnick, David (1994). Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. New York: Vintage. p. 385. ISBN 978-0-679-75125-0. OCLC 29389418. Retrieved 28 November 2008. With his high black pompadour and black leather jacket, Alksnis was known in the liberal press as the "black colonel," the Darth Vader of the hard-line set.
  7. McCauley, Martin (1997). Who's Who in Russia Since 1900. London; New York: Routledge. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-415-13898-7. OCLC 35593895. Retrieved 28 November 2008. He acquired the sobriquet the 'black colonel'[.]
  8. Senn, Alfred Erich (1995). Gorbachev's Failure in Lithuania. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 124. ISBN 978-0-312-12457-1. OCLC 31287398. Retrieved 28 November 2008. Particularly prominent among the critics of his Baltic policy was a Latvian, Viktor Alksnis, known as "the Black Colonel" [...]
  9. David Remnick (1993), "Lenin's Tomb", p. 385
  10. "Hardliner helped topple leading Soviet reformers; Viktor Alksnis influential as Kremlin turns to right" in The Ottawa Citizen, February 12, 1991, p. E11
  11. Азар, Илья (2007-03-06). ЖЖ-лузер. Газета.Ru (in Russian). Retrieved 2008-03-17.
  12. "Viktor Alksnis: Latvia's Fate Decided in Russia" Pravda
  13. Hoover Institution Policy Review - "Shevardnadze's Journey" Archived September 29, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  14. "Mayday for the USSR", in Jerusalem Post, May 3, 1991, p. 6
  15. "Colonel Urges Shifting of Rule From Gorbachev", in Boston Globe, November 17, 1990, p. 9
  16. John Mackinlay and Peter Cross (editors), Regional Peacekeepers: The Paradox of Russian Peacekeeping, United Nations University Press, 2003, p. 137. ISBN 92-808-1079-0
  17. Viktor Alksnis's blog on LiveJournal
  18. Виктор Имантович Алкснис - CNews Форум 2007 "Информационные технологии завтра" (in Russian)
  19. Нужна ли России своя операционная система? Открытые системы (in Russian)
  20. CNews: Итоги CNews Forum 2007 Archived 2007-11-23 at the Wayback Machine (in Russian)
  21. Official site of the Center of Free Technology (in Russian)
  22. Виктор Имантович Алкснис - Знакомство с проектом ReactOS (in Russian)
  23. Депутат Алкснис пригласил Ричарда Столлмана в Москву - SecurityLab (in Russian)
  24. "Duma member: US, Israel enemies of Iran nuclear program" Archived September 30, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
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