Russia tightens crackdown on key human rights group

The eight were detained for questioning on charges of alleged “rehabilitation of Nazism”, which could carry up to five years in prison. The case being made against him is trivial: a memorial database documenting victims of Soviet political terror mistakenly included three actual Nazi collaborators among more than four million other names. The database has long embarrassed Russia’s secret services, which consider themselves the successors to the KGB. One of the eight memorial employees, Alexandra Polivanova, says that the investigating officers were also interested in matters unrelated to history: “They asked about Alexey Navalny and Ukraine, for whatever reason.”

The case is not explicitly about Nazism; Even using the word in relation to the Memorial, which was established to fight totalitarianism and extremism, is ridiculous. Nor does it appear to be aimed at any particular person. Ms. Polivanova thinks the purpose is to send a message to stop investigating or promoting human rights, war crimes or historical truth, because any such act undermines the basis of Vladimir Putin’s imperial war. Memorial has received many such messages over the years, but has ignored all of them. In 2015 it was dubbed a “foreign agent”; In December 2021 it was officially disbanded by the government. It was removed from its headquarters in October 2022. On the same day it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, it was shared with Ukrainian activists and an advocate for human rights from Belarus.

Dmitry Muratov, who received the Nobel Prize last year As the editor of an independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, the authorities underestimated the harshness of Memorial’s mild-mannered scholars, who are determined to stay in Russia. “They are still unable to understand how the monument was created in the atmosphere of the Soviet dissident prison camps,” he says. Mr Muratov says he has encouraged memorial members to leave Russia, but with little success. who demonstrate that they are not afraid of those who, in their opinion, are bringing our country to ruin.”

Ms Polivanova of Memorial said the group had been expecting such a raid since authorities leaked news of the criminal case in early March. But he and his colleagues reaffirmed their decision to stay. They need to help fix the “disaster” of Russian society, she says. “Even if the war ends, and Ukraine regains its territories, the Russians will not disappear into space.” She sees 2023 as a “low point”: life is as difficult for people like her now as it was for Soviet dissidents in the 1960s–80s.

The day after the raid, several Memorial staff members made their way to the Gulag Museum in Moscow. There he attended the release of a new book about Andrei Sakharov, a noted dissident who was sent into internal exile in 1980 by then-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. The book, based on secret KGB files, documents the system’s exhaustive and futile efforts to shut it down. Publishing it in the current political climate is an achievement. The mood at the opening was somber, but some drew inspiration from Mr. Sakharov’s eventual victory over the Soviet machine. The David-and-Goliath story “gives us hope”, said Irina Shcherbakova, one of the authors.

For others that time is gone. “The market of hope is gone, we just stopped trading these stocks,” says Mr. Muratov, who has been navigating the treacherous waters of Russian power for three decades. At least six of his associates have been killed over the years. Dangerous currents are now heading towards the monument. “The authorities have decided to destroy the monument and detain these people,” he says. “They won’t stop.”

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Updated: June 08, 2023, 05:35 PM IST