The Death of Historical Memory in Russia

On the Media

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4.6 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

Russia's Memorial International maintained an archive whose purpose was to amass and preserve the crimes against humanity committed in the Soviet Union. On March 3rd it was closed down by order of the Kremlin. It was only a month ago that we first aired this piece about the threats to the archive, but already the information and media landscape in Russia is unrecognizable. Unknown numbers of journalists have fled draconian new laws that could land them in prison for 15 years for contradicting the party line on the war in Ukraine and state controlled media has has tightened its stranglehold l of the airwaves. In the chaos of the past few weeks, Memorial’s closing was - tragically, just another data point…another nail in the coffin for truth seekers.

OTM producer Molly Schwartz - who was in Moscow but has since left, visited Memorial International and spoke with archivist Nikita Lomakin about the importance of preserving Russia’s oldest Human Rights organization. In this piece, Molly also interviews historian Ivan Kurilla, author of The Battle for the Past: How Politics Changes History, about how the attacks on the archive resonate with Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

This is a segment from our February 11, 2022 program I’m No Expert.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the On the Media Midweek Podcast. I'm Vrklad Stone.
0:08.4	Last month, just days into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia's Supreme Court announced
0:14.2	it would uphold its decision to close Memorial International. The purpose of the organization
0:19.9	has long been to amass and preserve records of the crimes against humanity committed in
0:25.3	the Soviet Union, especially during the Stalin era. Archives are our collective memory
0:31.3	banks that assure future generations can piece together a reliable accounting of history,
0:37.9	and with luck, maybe learn from it. Which is why Mali Schwartz was drawn to report on
0:43.5	the story to begin with.
0:45.8	It's late December in Moscow. I'm walking down Ulitsa, Kharit Mirad, a wide street running
0:53.6	north to south. Workers are up on the roofs of the buildings, shoveling off huge clumps
0:58.3	of snow. When the snow hits the ground, it sounds like a series of small explosions.
1:02.9	It's 5 pm on a Friday, but when I walk inside the headquarters of Memorial International,
1:09.0	people are hard at work, prepping for a live stream of fun.
1:11.9	Oh, we can go upstairs.
1:13.5	Nikita Lomachen is an archivist at Memorial, the oldest and most famous human rights organization
1:18.6	in Russia. His family, like millions of others, was touched by the terror of the 1920s and
1:24.6	30s.
1:25.6	My grandfather was arrested in 1938 and died soon after this.
1:32.6	But that's not what drew him to these archives.
1:35.4	I like the paper. I like the sound of paper. I like the sound of scanner. I like databases.
1:43.4	And that's something which you like, like a good weather.
1:46.7	So on. Memorial has documents about around 60,000 victims of Soviet repression. They
	...

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