“When Russia chose to take a democratic, legal path forward, I couldn’t in my darkest dreams have imagined that everything would eventually start going in reverse. “We were enthusiasts who wanted to know more about history, tell people about their history,” said Petrov of joining the organisation in 1988. Nikita Petrov, a historian and researcher at Memorial, said in recent years government archives have increasingly blocked access to researchers as primary documents from the Soviet era have once again been shrouded in secrecy. That mission has grown more controversial as Russia has further tied its state identity to the Soviet victory in the second world war and as its conflicts with other post-Soviet and former communist states, as well as the west, often required historical arguments favouring itself rather than statements of contrition. Increasingly, prosecutors have wielded the law as a cudgel to silence independent voices.Īnd yet, Memorial’s national network had survived Russia’s reactionary turn under Putin in the past decade, continuing to popularise its research into Soviet-era atrocities as it built a database of more than 3 million victims of political repressions. But we say them.”īoth branches of Memorial were early additions to Russia’s register of “foreign agents”, a punitive label that has been applied to much of the country’s independent media and NGOs. “That a government can be criminal … That’s unacceptable for them in principle. An accident,” said Orlov, a veteran human rights advocate, who joined the organisation in 1988. “ is ready to grieve for the victims of repressions, to say good things about them, remember them, but all of these words about the victims of repressions are almost like they’re talking about the victims of an earthquake, or of a flood. Photograph: Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images Oleg Orlov, a Memorial board member, said the organisation could lose a place to house its archive, library and museum of gulag artefacts.
But it had faced equal wrath for its research and educational activities on state-sponsored crimes under the Soviet Union, focusing not just on the millions of victims of gulag camps, forced deportations and violent purges, but also on the executioners and officials who ordered the atrocities. Memorial’s advocacy for human rights and political prisoners, such as jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, had angered the government, said Orlov. “The public support we have and the noise around this case leave us some kind of hope.” “Anything is possible in today’s Russia,” he said in an interview. Oleg Orlov, a Memorial board member, called the government’s case under the controversial “foreign agents” law baseless but said the ultimate decision would be a political one. Dissolving them would have significant negative consequences for civil society as a whole and human rights protection in the country.” Prominent Russian activists and western governments have protested against the cases, with the European Council commissioner for human rights calling the organisations “a symbol of the relentless fight for freedom, democracy and human rights in the post-Soviet area and beyond. A second case that began on Tuesday accuses Memorial’s Human Rights Centre – the other main branch of the organisation – of “justifying extremism”, by which a prosecutor argues is grounds for its dissolution.