‘Russian conscience’ on trial as human rights group approaches closure

The gradual disappearance of the greenhouse on the Varsonofyevsky block in central Moscow shows that for 30 years there was a large group of Soviet secret police.

As many as 15,000 people were shot and killed in their basement and backyard, tourist leader Vasily Starostin told a small group gathered outside his gates on the same day a week ago, during a visit organized by Russia’s oldest human rights group, the Memorial. , and take the lead in the archives of the Soviet era.

The group has been working since 1989 to commemorate some of the most difficult times in Russia’s history, but its work could be halted soon as prosecutors are accused of failing to identify themselves as “helpers” and claiming their human rights. Center supports gangs.

Moscow courts are meeting to discuss the resolution of the Memorial in two separate cases on Tuesday and Thursday after the first trial last month.

“When it happens, it will be a tragedy,” said Starostin, as participants in the “topography of the horror” peeked through the gates of the Moscow building, according to a Memorial survey. once a laboratory testing for the poisons of political prisoners.

The move has sparked outrage, with some criticizing the government for trying to curb the memory of the Stalin era, from the Gulag concentration camps to the expulsion and assassination of the 1930s.

“The memorial is now being removed from me,” wrote author Ludmilla Petrushevskaya in her open letter. “This is how he remembers the condemned and the murdered, who. . . starved to death by cold-blooded migrants from the Gulag. ”

The open letters have been published by many others, including the widow of author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose books highlighted the dangers of the Gulag system in the world. More than 120,000 people have joined the call for the rescue squad.

Opponents of the government say the Memorial has repeatedly violated the requirement to register all of its publications and online publications as created by “foreign agents”, a name given to the group in 2016.

On Tuesday – commemorating the death of one of the founding members of the Memorial, Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov – Russia’s highest court will meet again to hear the case, which was first heard last month.

Describing antitrust lawsuits as a “conscience”, Andrei Kolesnikov, head of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the group had been a hindrance to repeating Russian legends.

“History is very important to people who have power right now,” Kolesnikov said. “They don’t have a lot of technology to brag about, and they don’t have a vision for the future. . . That is why it is so important to connect everything with history. ”

And this story should be shiny, great, great. Naturally, the history of Stalinism and cleansing comes to a head, “Kolesnikov said.

The monument, known to some as the “Russian conscience” and others, has helped to unveil monuments and museums, and posters erected in cities displaying the final addresses of Soviet political prisoners.

A plaque from Kolesnikov’s grandmother, who died in a concentration camp in 1946, was erected in a Moscow apartment three years ago.

The commemoration has also included museums to create rehabilitative prisons with the death toll of the millions of victims of the Soviet era – as well as the names of more than 41,000 terrorists from the NKVD secret police.

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a historian who seeks to tamper with other documents that would disclose NKVD names. In a court hearing, representatives of the FSB, a review of the current NKVD, argued that such an explanation could jeopardize national security. The verdict was stated, said Kolesnikov, who found the names of the male and female prison guards on the Memorial list.

At a meeting of the Russian Federation for Human Rights last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he respected the observance of the Memorial, but added that he understood that the movement has protected terrorists.

“In the case of the international organizations that the Memorial is trying to protect, we have in our list of terrorist and extremist groups. This is an issue that needs further investigation,” Interfax reporters quoted Putin as saying.

The Human Rights Committee, renowned for its activities in Chechnya and other southern Russian countries, has questioned the legitimacy of extremist groups or extremist groups in Russia, including the Hizb ut Islamist group. -Tahrir is one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. On Thursday, a Moscow city court will meet to decide whether to violate the law.

The Memorial branch also has a modern-day list of political prisoners, and the number now corresponds to that of the late Soviet Union, said Sergei Davidis, director of the group’s political support program.

Davidis states: “It is one of the highest figures in modern Russian history.

At the conclusion of the Memorial march around central Moscow, standing in old courtyards, massacres, and prisons, tour guide Starostin said he believed that even if the group was shut down, any idea could survive.

“You can stop us and stop us as an organization, but you can’t stop the idea – that’s the most important thing,” he said.