BASEES Statement on the threatened closure of Memorial

It is with utter shock and disbelief that BASEES received the news that Russia’s Prosecutor General has requested that the Supreme Court 'liquidate' Memorial, one of Russia’s oldest civil ​rights organisations. Memorial, which was established in the 1980s in the context of Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika, has worked tirelessly for decades to document the crimes of the Stalinist regime and commemorate victims of political repression. In doing so, Memorial has also been a become a beacon of Russia’s civil society defending human rights and basic freedoms. The move to close down Memorial is a shameless attempt to crack down on all organisations that stand in the way of the state-driven rewriting of Russia’s past and to silence critical voices in the public discourse more generally. BASEES concurs with Memorial’s view ‘that the Russian foreign agent legislation is unlawful and consciously designed to suppress civil society.’ For academic historians of the USSR the potential dismantling of Memorial is a serious blow to their attempts to write the history of the Stalin era and a further example of the weaponisation of history and scholarship that is undermining academic freedom in Russia today. ​Whatever happens to the organisation itself, it is imperative that Memorial’s archive remains intact and in safe hands. BASEES would like to express its full solidarity with Memorial in their fight to defend the organisation against what strongly appears to be a politically motivated attack.  

Dr Matthias Neumann

President of BASEES