Russia liquidates Memorial

Russia on Tuesday turned its back on its dark Soviet past by liquidating the country's leading human rights organization Memorial, considered the voice of USSR reprisals, the scourge of Stalinism and a headache for Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin.

"It is a question of professional deformation, Putin, as a good agent of the secret services, does not believe in an independent civil society", commented to Efe Alexandr Cherkásov, director of Memorial.

It was of no use that, from the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, to the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dmitri Muratov, or the European Commission, called on the Russian Prosecutor's Office to withdraw the lawsuit against the oldest NGO in this country.

Distorted image of the USSR

At the request of the Prosecutor's Office, which accused Memorial of violating the law on foreign agents, the modern version of the USSR's "enemy of the people," the Supreme Court today ordered the withering liquidation of Memorial.

The ruling, which satisfies the request of the Prosecutor's Office that accused the NGO of creating "a false image of the Soviet Union as a terrorist state," dissolves both the organization that deals with the preservation of historical memory and the human rights organization that is part of Memorial International.

The prosecutor, Alexei Zhafyarov, charged Memorial for "distorting" the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War (1941-45) and rehabilitating Nazi criminals "on whose hands there is blood of Soviet citizens."

"Why should we, the descendants of the victors, now watch the attempts to rehabilitate the traitors to the Fatherland and Nazi accomplices? (...) Surely, because someone is paying for it," he said.

According to Cherkazov, "the USSR under Lenin and Stalin used the terminology of terrorist dictatorship and its leaders were not ashamed of it."

"The ruling is clearly a political assignment. Difficulties for human rights organizations began fifteen years ago, our life became even more complicated after the annexation of Crimea (2014), but since the constitutional reform (2020), with the creation of a new political landscape, there is no place for NGOs in Russia," he assured.

"Shame!", was the cry that could be heard in front of the Supreme Court building, where about a hundred people gathered to support Memorial.

A country without memory

Memorial accuses the Kremlin and state security organs, in particular the Federal Security Service (FSB, formerly the KGB), of trying to prevent him from continuing to investigate crimes committed during the USSR.

"Putin and those who support him only want to draw a glorious superpower past. It is like a supreme value that admits no doubt. According to that way of thinking, the state is everything and the rights of the citizen - nothing," Cherkazov explained.

The Russian authorities, according to the head of Memorial, do not understand that there can be "debates in Parliament, that the opposition criticizes the government, that a human rights activist asks questions or that the press investigates."

"For them, the truth can only be secret, classified. What they don't understand is that if there is no interaction with society, the system is doomed to catastrophe," he says.

Memorial, an organization formally founded in 1991 by, among others, the dissident and scientist Andrei Sakharov, has a database with more than three million victims of the Soviet repressions, out of a total of 12 million.

It also has a museum dedicated to the GULAG, or network of Soviet labor camps, and an archive of 41,000 executioners who worked for the NKVD, the precursor to the KGB, during the Stalinist purges.

Activists also accuse Putin of trying to cover up state crimes perpetrated since he came to power (1999), starting with the Second Chechen War.

"The repression will continue," the activist warns.

Memorial, all is not lost

Before the verdict was announced, Memorial's defender, veteran lawyer Guenri Reznik, warned that the trial is "a test of the values that determine life in a state governed by the rule of law," after which he said he would appeal the verdict, if necessary to the European Court of Human Rights.

"Close, liquidate, suspend, prohibit. They will not be able to do it with Memorial, since there is a popular demand for historical memory. The trend is evident, but there is no need to go into exile. The spirit of protest is still alive. It is too early to consider ourselves buried," said Cherkasov.

In this regard, the director of Memorial International, Yan Rachinski, assured that the ruling does not mean the cessation of the NGO's activities, as there are many organizations attached to it that are not registered or are not listed as legal entities.

"Suspending Memorial's activities does not fall within the possibilities of the Prosecutor's Office," he stressed.

The closure of Memorial is an attempt to "cloud the national memory of state repression" and is "an insult to the victims of the GULAG," according to Amnesty International.