Memorial (society)

Through the efforts of the society, on 30 October 1990, the Memorial to the Victims of the Gulag (a simple stone from Solovki) was erected at the Lubyanka Square in Moscow, near the KGB headquarters. For nine months the memorial stood beside the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, known as Iron Felix. The statue was removed in August 1991.

Memorial worked to achieve passage in Russia in 1991 of the Law on Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression. In 1991 Memorial also contributed to the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR making 30 October an official Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Political Repression.

Memorial also helps individuals to find documents, graves, etc., of politically persecuted relatives. As of 2005, Memorial had a database with records of more than 1,300,000 names of such people.[3] The archives have also been used by historians, such as British historian Orlando Figes when he was researching his 2008 book The Whisperers: Private Lives in Stalin's Russia.[4]

Memorial funds or helps to produce various publications and films related to this topic. One such film was the documentary The Crying Sun (2007), focusing on the life of people from the mountain village of Zumsoy in Chechnya, and their struggle to preserve their cultural identity in the face of military raids and enforced disappearances by the Russian army and guerilla fighters. The 25-minute film was produced in collaboration with WITNESS.[5]

In the early 21st century, Memorial is working on a project to create the Virtual Gulag Museum. This will be a way to bring together research and archives from all over the former Soviet Union to commemorate and record the existence of the Gulag and the lives of its victims.[6]

Memorial are trying to build a National Memorial Museum Complex in Kovalevsky Forest to commemorate 4,500 victims of the Red Terror who were killed and buried there.[7] Memorial workers discovered the bodies in 2002.[8]

In July 1997 a joint expedition of the St Petersburg and Karelian Memorial societies located a massive killing field not far from the town of Medvezhegorsk, capital of the pre-war White Sea Canal project. Led by Yury A. Dmitriev, Irina Flige, and the late Veniamin Joffe, the expedition found 236 common graves containing the bodies of over 7,000 victims of Stalin, who were executed in 1937 and 1938. A memorial graveyard was established there and became known as Sandarmokh.

In 2016, the Russian government attempted to revise this account of the shootings at Sandarmokh, and claim that among the dead were Soviet POWs, shot by invading Finns in 1941-1944. Memorial representatives challenged both the motivation behind this claim and the purported new evidence intended to support it.[9]

In 2008 Memorial HRC launched an online version of the noted samizdat publication, A Chronicle of Current Events, which had been distributed in the Soviet Union.[10] Appearing at irregular intervals during the year, the Chronicle had circulated in typescript form (samizdat) in the USSR from 1968 to 1983. All of its 63 issues were also translated into English and published abroad.[11] Western observers and scholars considered it to be a key source of trustworthy information about human rights in the post-Stalin Soviet Union.

The launch of the online version was held at Memorial's office in Karetny pereulok. Many former editors of the underground publication attended, including Sergei Kovalev and Alexander Lavut.

On 4 December 2008, Memorial's St Petersburg office, which houses archives on the Gulag, was raided by the authorities. Officers confiscated 11 computer hard disks containing the entire digital archive of atrocities committed under Stalin, representing 20 years of research. The information was being used to develop "a universally accessible database with hundreds of thousands of names." Office director Irina Flinge believes that Memorial was targeted because their organization is on the wrong side of Putinism, specifically the idea "that Stalin and the Soviet regime were successful in creating a great country".[25][26]

Officially, the raid was related to an article published in the Novy Peterburg newspaper in June 2007.[27] Memorial denies any link to thatarticle. Some human rights lawyers in Russia have speculated that the raid was retaliation for Memorial screening a banned film Rebellion: the Litvinenko Case (2007), about the murder of Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko in Great Britain in 2006. The film was distributed in the West under the title Poisoned by Polonium.[6][28]

According to historian Orlando Figes, the raid "was clearly intended to intimidate Memorial".[29] Allison Gill, director of Human Rights Watch in Moscow, said "This outrageous police raid shows the poisonous climate for non-governmental organisations in Russia [...] This is an overt attempt by the Russian government [...] to silence critical voices."[29] Academics from all over the world, signed an open letter to Dmitry Medvedev that condemned the seizure of disks and material.[6] The United States declared that it is "deeply concerned" about the raid: State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said: "Unfortunately, this action against Memorial is not an isolated instance of pressure against freedom of association and expression in Russia."[6]

On 20 March 2009, the court of Dzerzhinsky District ruled that the search on 4 December 2008, in Memorial and confiscation of 12 HDDs was carried out with procedural violations, and actions of law enforcement bodies were illegal.[30][31][32] Eventually the 12 hard drives, plus optical discs and some papers, were returned to Memorial in 2009.[33].

Memorial had an office in Chechnya, to monitor human rights issues there. It was frequently raided by the authorities. A Memorial activist Natalia Estemirova, who investigated murders and abductions in Chechnya, was abducted in Grozny and shot to death in Ingushetia on 15 July 2009.[34] BBC reporters have suggested her death was connected to her investigations of government-backed militias in the country.[35] Memorial's chairman Oleg Orlov accused Ramzan Kadyrov of being behind the murder,[36] and claimed that Kadyrov had openly threatened her.[37] Kadyrov denied his involvement[38] and sued Memorial for defamation, naming Orlov specifically in his complaint.[38][39]

On 18 July 2009, Memorial suspended its activities in Chechnya, stating "We cannot risk the lives of our colleagues even if they are ready to carry on their work."[40]

Russian authorities declared that Memorial was a "foreign agent" under the Russian law that requires organizations that accept funds from abroad and engage in "political activity" to register and declare themselves as a "foreign agent". The management of Memorial has argued that the society's activities of the society do not meet the criteria of "political activity" under this law.[41]

Following this designation, Russia's Justice Ministry, in its annual "foreign agent" audit, accused Memorial of "undermining the foundations of the constitutional order of the Russian Federation" and of calling for "a change of political regime" in the country.[42][43][44] As of June 2017, Memorial was still listed on Russia's "foreign agents" registry.[45]

In 2014, the Russian Minister of Justice Aleksandr Konovalov called for Memorial to be liquidated. The lawsuit concerned technical details over the legal registration of Memorial.[46][47][48]

On 17 January 2018, masked arsonists set fire to Memorial's North Caucasus office in Nazran, Ingushetia.[49]