OMRI DAILY DIGEST
No. 113, 11 June 1996

ZYUGANOV PRAISES STALIN. Communist presidential candidate Gen-nadii
Zyuganov told the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Hirlap that "if Stalin had
lived five or six years longer, the Soviet Union would have been
undefeatable for ages," ITAR-TASS reported on 10 June. Zyuganov made
similar comments in his book Beyond the Horizon. When asked how many
people died under Stalin, he said that "today, it is possible, that more
citizens bear the slaves' yoke in camps than in Stalin's time." He also
blamed the repression of the period not on Stalin, who was Georgian, but
on "elements foreign to the [Russian] nation," such as Genrikh Yagoda,
Lavrenti Beria, Lev Mekhlis, and Lazar Kaganovich. Zyuganov has been
careful during the campaign to present himself as a moderate, and such
reported statements play into the hands of President Yeltsin's
propagandists, who are trying to portray Zyuganov and his team as
extremists. -- Robert Orttung

SLOVAK MINORITIES CRITICIZE CABINET'S POLICIES. Leaders of Slovakia's
Ruthenian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Czech, and Bulgarian organizations on
10 June expressed disagreement with the government's minority policies,
Praca reported. In a joint declaration, the groups noted that although
the cabinet presents Slovakia to international organizations as a
country offering above-average minority rights, the situation of some
minority cultural organizations is "undignified." Financing through the
state cultural fund Pro Slovakia is "unsatisfactory," they said, adding
that "an incredibly large amount of money [intended for minority
cultural activities] is spent on private projects or political
activities." The group demanded a constitutional law on the status of
minorities as well as laws on the use of minority languages and on
minority cultural organizations. -- Sharon Fisher

HUNGARY'S GOVERNMENT PLANS TO SET UP ALTERNATIVE CRIME-FIGHTING BODY.
Leading politicians, including Prime Minister Gyula Horn and Interior
Minister Gabor Kuncze, during a 10 June session of the national security
committee agreed to set up a central crime-fighting directorate in a bid
to curb black-market activity and organized crime, Hungarian dailies
reported. Kuncze said that the new body, which might be established by 1
September, will be directly subordinated to the national police
commander and will employ an estimated 850 people. Magyar Hirlap
reported that the Interior Ministry wants to obtain the 600 million
forints ($4 million) originally earmarked for the aborted central
investigative office to establish the new body. Last month, Horn
withdrew his controversial proposal to set up a similar office, which
would have been subordinated directly to the prime minister's office and
would thus have interfered with Kuncze's sphere of influence. -- Zsofia
Szilagyi

DELAY LIKELY IN HUNGARY'S PUBLIC TV AND RADIO TRANSFORMATION. After long
delay, the cabinet finally ordered the financial screening of public
media organizations, Hungarian media reported on 8 June. The auditing of
Hungarian TV and Radio and the satellite Duna TV was stipulated as a
condition for the transformation of those organizations into
corporations. All three institutions are on the verge of financial
collapse. The media law requires that the auditing be finished by the
end of June, and the corporations are to be set up in August. That pace
is untenable; even media experts of the governing elites admit that the
deadlines are impossible to meet. -- Zsofia Szilagyi

[As of 1200 CET]

Compiled by Susan Caskie
Compiled by Victor Gomez