In Russia, the Keeper of Memory is Liquidated

The Memorial Human Rights Center, the International Memorial and all Memorial civil rights groups and organizations focusing on the history of political repressions and the protection of human rights were liquidated by the Russian Supreme Court on December 12 by the demand of the Prosecutor General's office of Russia and the Prosecutor's Office of Moscow.

  The purpose of the suit was to eliminate the memory of Stalin's repression of the Soviet people. The major goal of Memorial is to research and preserve Stalin's crimes for future generations. The Memorial data base contains the names of more than 4 million people accused of crimes for which they were never convicted, innocent victims of Stalin's terror, and the sites of their burial. For the 30 years of operation Memorial has collected solid data from archives on the types of Soviet state terror, the GULAG, and actions taken against Soviet dissidents.

  The suit by the Prosecutors was intended to reinvent Stalin as a benevolent leader and innocent of the atrocities which he has been accused. However, Stalin's crimes cannot be erased such as the starvation of over 5 to 10 million Soviet citizens (mostly Ukrainian) during the Holodomor because of their opposition to Soviet forced collectivization. Nor will many ethnic groups forget 1937-1944 expulsion of their entire populations of Koreans, Germans, Finn-Ingrians, Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks, which resulted in the killing of hundreds of thousands people. On a smaller scale on the Night of the Murdered Poets 13 intellectuals were shot in 1952, and in the same year the best doctors in Moscow were rounded up and convicted of trumped-up charges of plotting to murder leaders of the Communism Party and sent to prison or to the GULAG. It is these and other stories of repression of human rights that are part of the legacy of Memorial that must be preserved. Russia cannot rewrite the history of Stalin's murderous regime.

Larry Lerner

Leonid Stonov

Anastasia Aseeva