RUSSIA: Final step of the Kremlin’s lobotomization of the Russian people’s memory (2)
In the aftermath of the banning of Memorial in April, HRWF calls for the release of all its human rights defenders still in detention, including possibly in an international exchange of prisoners as it happened with Oleg Orlov in 2024.
HRWF (04.05.2026) – In a closed hearing held on 9 April 2026, Russia’s Supreme Court designated the International Public Movement Memorial – a catch-all term that the government used to impose the ban on all Memorial-related organizations – as “extremist” and ban its activities in the country. This was the final step of the Kremlin’s lobotomization of the Russian people’s memory.
This move culminated a years-long campaign against Memorial, which was founded in the late Soviet period and had since grown into a community of dozens of sister organizations operating in Russia and abroad.
“Never Again an era of totalitarian regime in Russia” had been the objective of Memorial, Nobel Peace Prize 2022.”
From “foreign agent” to “extremism” (2014-2026)
In May 2014 one of the associations, Russia-based “Human Rights Centre Memorial”, was designated as a “foreign agent” due to foreign funding and alleged political activities. It was hereby forced to label all its information materials as such and faced intensive auditing.
Afterwards, the Russian authorities labelled several other Memorial organizations as well as around 20 of its staff members “foreign agents.”
In December 2021, the Supreme Court liquidated International Memorial and Human Rights Centre Memorial.
The reasons were repeated violations of the law on foreign agents, including in terms of labeling materials. The prosecutor’s office accused the organization of speculating on the topic of political repression and creating a “false image of the USSR as a terrorist state.” These decisions caused a large-scale international reaction.
Many public figures in Russia and abroad expressed their support for Memorial and its structures. Among them were Nobel laureates Mikhail Gorbachev and Dmitry Muratov, writer and actor Stephen Fry, playwright Tom Stoppard, journalist Vladimir Pozner, several dozen academicians and corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The European Union and the United States also condemned the dismantling of Memorial.
The head of the European Union’s foreign policy service, Josep Borrell, expressed regret over the decision to liquidate Memorial, which “plays an important role in preserving the memory of political repression and human rights violations.” US State Department spokesman Ned Price said that the liquidation of Memorial reflected “an era of rapidly shrinking space for independent civil society, media and pro-democracy activists in Russia.” He called on the Russian authorities to stop harassing human rights defenders.
From 2021 until 2026, the various Memorials continued to operate without state registration.
In February 2026, the Russian Ministry of Justice added the Switzerland-based Memorial International Association and German foundation Zukunft Memorial to the list of “undesirable organizations.”
Repressions against the guardians of the memory temple
A special tribute must be rendered to the numerous well-known or anonymous guardians of the memory temple who have strived to collect and preserve the evidence of the atrocities perpetrated under the totalitarian Communist regime. A few prominent victims among many…
In 2009, Natalia Estemirova, a researcher of Memorial’s Grozny office (North Caucasus), who was investigating kidnappings and murders in Chechnya, was kidnapped in Grozny and found murdered in Ingushetia. Her death shocked Russia, but the masterminds of the murder were never found.
According to the chairman of the board of the Memorial Human Rights Centre, Oleg Orlov, the leadership of the Chechen Republic is behind this murder. He also said that Ramzan Kadyrov had personally threatened the human rights activist.
The case of historian Yuri Dmitriev, the head of the Karelian branch of Memorial and the researcher of mass graves of victims of repression in Sandarmokh and Krasny Bor, caused a significant public outcry.
Yuri Dmitriev is currently 70 years old. He has been on trial since… 2018. As a result of repeated court reviews of his case, the historian was lastly sentenced to 15 years in prison and, if the court decisions remain unchanged, he will not be released until 2032.
His supporters claimed that the persecution was related to his human rights activities and work to restore the memory of the victims of repression under the Soviet Union.
The European Union, as well as scientists and artists from different countries, demanded his release.
On March 31, 2026, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg ordered Russia to pay him financial compensation to imprisoned historian Yuri Dmitriev for moral damage caused to him by excessively long pre-trial detention and lack of a fair trial.
Yuri Dmitriev was a laureate of the following awards: the Golden Pen of Russia Prize (Russia, 2005), the Golden Cross of Merit (Poland, 2015), the Certificate of Honor of the Republic of Karelia (2016), the Moscow Helsinki Group Prize in the field of human rights protection (2018), the Anna Dahlbeck Memorial Foundation Prize for Civil Courage in the Struggle for Human Rights (Sweden, 2020), the Lev Kopelev Prize for Peace and Human Rights (Germany, 2020), Andrei Sakharov Freedom Prize (Norwegian Helsinki Committee, 2021).
On 18 March 2019, Oyub Titiev, the head of Memorial’s Chechen office, was sentenced to four years in a penal colony on alleged charges of drug possession.
Oyub Tatiyev is a laureate of the Václav Havel Prize for the Protection of Human Rights (awarded by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in 2018), the Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law established by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of France and Germany (2018), the Moscow Helsinki Group Prize for Courage in the Protection of Human Rights (2018).
On 23 May 2023, human rights defender Bakhrom Khamroev, who collaborated with Memorial, was sentenced to 13 years and 9 months in prison on politically motivated charges: “Public calls for terrorist activities, public justification of terrorism or propaganda of terrorism committed using the media or electronic or information and telecommunications networks, including the Internet”) and “Participation in the activities of a terrorist organization.”
He has been detained since February 24, 2022.
On 27 February 2024, the Co-Chairman of the Memorial, Oleg Orlov, was sentenced to 2.5 years in a general regime colony in a politically motivated case with the motivation of repeatedly discrediting the army.
On 1 August 2024, Oleg Orlov was released in a prisoner exchange between Russia, Belarus and five Western countries
Oleg Orlov is a laureate of the Andrei Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought (2009), the Moscow Helsinki Group Prize in the category “For Historical Contribution to the Protection of Human Rights and the Human Rights Movement” (2012), the Honorary Citizen of Paris Prize for “the struggle for democracy, respect for human rights and freedom” (2024).
On 4 April 2024, Alexander Chernyshov, the former chairman of the Perm “Center of Historical Memory” (created after the liquidation of the Perm “Memorial”), was convicted of “attempted smuggling of cultural values.” The investigation alleged that Alexander Chernyshov and the former head of the Perm “Memorial”, Robert Latypov, tried to illegally export from Russia to Germany archival documents of the organization, which represent “cultural and historical value”. It was about documents from the archive of the Perm Memorial, which covered the period of the organization’s activities for several decades…
The court sentenced Chernyshov to 3 years in prison with a probation period of three years. According to the court’s decision, the archives of the Perm Memorial should be transferred to the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History for storage.
On 19 August 2025,Sergei Davidis, a member of the board of directors and co-chairman of the Memorial Centre, was sentenced in absentia to six years in prison under a politically motivated article, for allegedly justifying terrorism on the Internet (Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code). The formal reason for the prosecution was that Davidis reposted on his personal Facebook the news about the recognition as political prisoners of 22 prisoners from the Ukrainian Azov regiment (banned in Russia as a terrorist organization).
Davidis now lives in Lithuania and continues his Memorial work from that country.
Destruction in Russia of monuments to the memory of Soviet repression victims
Hopefully there will be a time to erect such monuments in all the regions of Russia where there was a Memorial branch. For now, Moscow continues to destroy monuments to the memory of the victims of Soviet repression.
In April 2026, on the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People, the Stone of Sorrow (Marble Arch and Grey Granite Stone), a memorial to the victims of Soviet repression, was bulldozed at night without warning.
Memorial stones erected in memory of the captivity of Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians and Kalmyks deported to Siberia while the Soviet army was occupying their countries or regions many were also demolished in Tomsk.
All Memorial activists who were victims of the repression of the Russian Federation in the 21st century would deserve to have a monument with their names engraved in stone.
Why not in the area of the European Parliament in Brussels or Strasbourg?
Picture: The Stone of Sorrow in Tomsk, a memorial to the victims of Soviet repression in a nice park before its destruction in April 2026
