Viktor Imantovich Alksnis (russian: italic=yes, Виктор Имантович Алкснис, lv, Viktors Alksnis; born 21 June 1950) is a Russian politician and former

Soviet Air Force The Soviet Air Forces ( rus, Военно-воздушные силы, r=Voyenno-vozdushnyye sily, VVS; literally "Military Air Forces") were one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Soviet Air Defence Forces. The Air Forces ...

colonel of Latvian descent. He is the chairman of Russian

Center of Free Technologies Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricity ...

, an organization intended to promote

Free Software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

and

open standard An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a prerequisite to use open license, non-discrimination and extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in the development. There is no single definition ...

s in Russia. He is a former member of the

USSR Supreme Soviet The Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ( rus, Верховный Совет Союза Советских Социалистических Республик, r=Verkhovnyy Sovet Soyuza Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respubl ...

, a member of the

Russian All-People's Union The Russian All-People's Union (ROS; russian: Российский общенародный союз; РОС; ''Rossiyskiy obshchenarodnyy soyuz'', ''ROS'') is a Russian conservative political party formed in October 1991. In 2001, it merged into ...

and has also represented the Rodina (Motherland-National Patriotic Union) party in the Russian

State Duma The State Duma (russian: Госуда́рственная ду́ма, r=Gosudárstvennaja dúma), commonly abbreviated in Russian as Gosduma ( rus, Госду́ма), is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, while the upper house ...

. From 2003 to 2007, he represented the People's Union party in the Fourth Duma. Due to his political views and personal style, Alksnis was nicknamed "the Black Colonel", an allusion to the Soviet term "Black Colonels" (russian: italic=yes, Чёрные полковники) for the Greek military junta of 1967-1974.

Family history

In the 1930s, Alksnis's grandfather,

Yakov Alksnis Yakov Ivanovich Alksnis (russian: Яков Иванович Алкснис, lv, Jēkabs Alksnis; – 28 July 1938) was a Soviet military leader and the commander of the Red Army Air Forces from 1931 to 1937. Biography Jēkabs Alksnis was b ...

( lv, 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 Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky ( rus, Михаил Николаевич Тухачевский, Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevskiy, p=tʊxɐˈtɕefskʲɪj; – 12 June 1937) nicknamed the Red Napoleon by foreign newspapers, was a Sovie ...

and other high-ranking Soviet officers to death on

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...

's order. However, only eight months later, Yakov Alksnis himself was also arrested and executed. Alksnis's grandmother spent 14 years in labor camps and his father was discriminated for being the son of an "enemy of the people". 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. Alksnis's Latvian heritage was the subject of slander allegations in 2007 involving comments on the Internet.

Attitude to the breakup of the USSR

Viktor Alksnis was a strong opponent of the breakup of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

and of the independence of the

Baltic States The Baltic states, et, Balti riigid or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term, which currently is used to group three countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, ...

."Viktor Alksnis: Latvia's Fate Decided in Russia"

Pravda ''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, "Truth") is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most influential papers in the co ...

He claims that the Baltic states are

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

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. He once proposed the ousting of Soviet leader

Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...

from power, dissolving the parliament, outlawing all parties, the declaration of

martial law Martial law is the imposition of direct military control of normal civil functions or suspension of civil law by a government, especially in response to an emergency where civil forces are overwhelmed, or in an occupied territory. Use Marti ...

and the handing of power to a Military "Committee of National Salvation", which would avoid the disintegration of the Soviet Union. He has described the internationally non-recognized Transnistrian Republic as the base from which the restoration of the Soviet Union would begin. In later years Alksnis claimed to be a principal figure behind the

Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...

OMON, known for opposing the secession of Latvia from the USSR and actions such as the

Soviet OMON assaults on Lithuanian border posts Several Soviet OMON assaults on Lithuanian border posts occurred in 1991, after Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union on 11 March 1990. As a Soviet republic, the Lithuanian SSR did not have a state border with customs or che ...

. He was designated

persona non grata In diplomacy, a ' (Latin: "person not welcome", plural: ') is a status applied by a host country to foreign diplomats to remove their protection of diplomatic immunity from arrest and other types of prosecution. Diplomacy Under Article 9 of the ...

in Latvia after he left the country in 1992., in ''

'', 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 Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

as well, after he called for a Russian-Ukrainian border revision while speaking at a rally in

Simferopol Simferopol () is the second-largest city in the Crimea, Crimean Peninsula. The city, along with the rest of Crimea, is internationally recognised as part of Ukraine, and is considered the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. However, ...

Crimea Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a pop ...

Free software advocacy campaign

In 2007, Alksnis launched a campaign to promote the use of

such as the

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

operating system in Russian state institutions to secure software independence. In February 2008 he joined forces with Aleksandr Ponosov, a school teacher accused of

software piracy Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, su ...

, to form Center of Free Technology, a non-profit initiative which will research methods of usage of

in the Russian education system. Alksnis has met with project coordinator Aleksey Bragin to promote the development of the

ReactOS ReactOS is a free and open-source operating system for amd64/i686 personal computers intended to be binary-compatible with computer programs and device drivers made for Windows Server 2003 and later versions of Windows. ReactOS has been noted a ...

operating system. He also invited

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

, the founder of the GNU project and

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)#501(c)(3), 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

to Moscow. 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 Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

are enemies of

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

's peaceful nuclear program, and their hostile attitude towards Iran is an attempt to cover-up the United States' mistakes in

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

."Duma member: US, Israel enemies of Iran nuclear program"

References

External links

* by Leon Charney on The Leon Charney Report {{DEFAULTSORT:Alksnis, Viktor 1950 births Living people People from Tashtagol Russian people of Latvian descent Members of the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union Deputies of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Latvia Soviet Air Force officers Russian nationalists Copyright activists Defenders of the White House (1993) A Just Russia politicians 21st-century Russian politicians Third convocation members of the State Duma (Russian Federation) Fourth convocation members of the State Duma (Russian Federation)