With the closure of Memorial, the Kremlin wants to control Russia’s past

With the closing of Memorial, considered a pillar of the human rights and research on repression in the Soviet era, the Kremlin You will have your hands free to control not only the present of Russiabut also his past.

The decision made last week by the Supreme Court to close Memorial, officially because it violates the controversial law on the status of “foreign agent”, caused a stir both in Russia itself and abroad.

This is the final blow in the repression of the opposition, which in particular led to the imprisonment of its main figure, Alexéi Navalni, the independent media and the entire civil society. It also illustrates President Vladimir Putin’s effort to glorify the USSR, underscoring its achievements and downplaying its crimes.

Despite the fact that Memorial has been under pressure from the authorities for years, its closure was so far unimaginable.

This, since Memorial was more than just a defender of liberties. Since 1989, he has relentlessly chronicled Soviet terror, identifying both victims and their executioners, in a country where this heritage still clearly divides society.

Historians fear that henceforth the historical discourse in Russia will end in the hands of the heirs of the KGB and, above all, of the powerful current security services, the FSB.

“They are trying to recreate a single story: theirs,” says historian Nikita Sokolov, underlining that Memorial was “the bearer of another version in the memory of the people.”

“Why repent?”

During the closed-door trial, prosecutors clearly accused the NGO of denigrating the memory of the USSR.

“Why should we, descendants of the victors, be ashamed and repent instead of being proud of our glorious past?” Said Judge Alexei Khafiarov on the day of sentencing.

Young Russians, a whole generation that has grown up under the successive governments of Putin, have been instilled with a version of history in which Stalin’s crimes are only a detail.

“This is a ‘lighter’ version of Soviet history, in which the state is not guilty” of anything, explains the expert Alexei Makarkin.

In the version defended by the current authorities, Joseph Stalin is presented as an effective leader, who industrialized the country and defeated Hitler, and not as a dictator who sent millions of his compatriots either to their deaths or to the Gulag.

It is the refutation of this official doctrine by Memorial, and the revelation about who the executioners were, which unleashed the anger of power.

Its director, Ian Rachinski, points out that the Kremlin does not question the existence of repression, but has a different “interpretation” of it.

Thus, the State tries to convince that it is “certain bad people who did this or that, as if there were victims, but not the victimizers,” he continues.

As for Memorial, for its part, “it clearly demonstrated that it was a state policy and that the USSR practiced terrorism,” Rachinski added.

Stalin “revive”

The same week that the Supreme Court ruling was heard, one of Memorial Gulag’s historians, Iuri Dmitriev, saw his prison sentence increased by 15 years.

Supporters of Dmitriev, who spent several years searching for mass graves in northern Russia, claim that his conviction for a controversial “sexual violence” case was a fabrication.

A teenager was sentenced last month to four years in prison for urinating on a plaque with the portrait of a World War II veteran.

Although Vladimir Putin, a former Soviet KGB agent, regards the fall of the USSR as the “greatest (geopolitical) catastrophe of the 20th century,” he never flirted with nostalgic Stalinists.

In 2017, he even inaugurated a monument in Moscow dedicated to the victims of political repression and, more recently, supported the idea of ​​erecting a statue of Andrei Sakharov, the most famous Soviet dissident and founder of Memorial.

His will, according to experts, is to preserve the memory of the repression but without turning it into a cornerstone in Soviet history, nor blaming the state for it.

With the glorification of Stalin in history textbooks and on public television, more than 50% of Russians now have a positive image of the dictator, according to a recent poll by the Levada Center.

“Since crimes are not reported for what they were, (Stalin’s) body is revived,” Rachinski points out, making a metaphor.