Memorial
Memorial, Russian human rights organization. It documented human rights abuses during the Soviet era and played an important role in the transition to democracy after the Soviet Union’s collapse. It won (with Ales Bialiatski and the Center for Civil Liberties) the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2022 and was subsequently outlawed by the government of Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin.
Memorial was founded as the Group for the Preservation of the Memory of Soviet Repression Victims in Moscow in August 1987. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost (“openness”) had ushered in a new era of examination and criticism of the Soviet state, and Memorial sought to account for the abuses and excesses of the communist era. In time it would become one of Russia’s most respected human rights organizations.
The group’s first chair was dissident and 1975 Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrey Sakharov, and in 1989 the Moscow Memorial chapter united several other organizations under the umbrella of the All-Union Voluntary History and Education Society Memorial. In addition to reckoning with the crimes and legacy of the Stalinist regime, Memorial advocated for international human rights. One of its first public actions was a protest at the Chinese embassy in Moscow against the bloody crackdown at Tiananmen Square.
As the Soviet Union collapsed, Memorial assisted the government’s transition to democracy. Members helped draft a law on the rehabilitation of victims of political repression, and they served as witnesses in the trial against the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the wake of the failed 1991 coup by Communist hard-liners. Throughout the 1990s, observers from Memorial would document human rights abuses in conflicts in the North Caucasus and Chechnya. This decade also saw a raft of publications and museum exhibitions as Memorial uncovered details about the Gulag system, the KGB (Committee for State Security), and the NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs). In 2003 the group published a database of more than 1.3 million victims of Soviet state terror; in time this list would more than double.
Memorial did not enjoy such a close relationship with the Russian government in the 21st century, and Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin took steps to reduce the group’s influence. These actions became especially noticeable after 2007, when Memorial began hosting conferences to mark the imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian billionaire and Putin foe, whose prosecution was seen by many as politically motivated. In 2013 Russia adopted legislation that required any nongovernmental organization (NGO) that engaged in “political activity” and received funding from abroad to register as a “foreign agent.” Memorial was among the NGOs that refused to register under the new law, pointing out that “foreign agent” carried Cold War connotations of “foreign spy.” The next year Putin’s justice ministry filed a lawsuit before the Russian Supreme Court to close Memorial down. In 2016 Memorial was added to the Russian government’s list of “foreign agents,” and in 2021 the Russian Supreme Court ordered the closure of the organization.
In February 2024 Oleg Orlov, one of Memorial’s leaders, was imprisoned for “discrediting the armed forces” after criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He was freed in August 2024 as part of a massive prisoner swap that also saw the release of American journalist Evan Gershkovich as well as a several other Russian opposition leaders and human rights activists.