Memorial in English

Memorial's statement on the exchange of prisoners. On August 1, we waited with bated breath for news - and now what was very hard to believe has become a reality: the world-famous Russian political prisoners, among them our colleague and fellow Memorial member Oleg Orlov, have…

August 5 is the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Great Terror. On this day in 1937, Order No. 00447, regarding an operation against “kulaks and anti-Soviet elements,” was sent to regional NKVD offices throughout the USSR. However, mass repressions were not limited to…

Russia bans Internet searches for ‘extremist material’, broadening scope for terror in occupied Ukraine Russia’s State Duma has rushed through legislative amendments which impose serious fines for using VPNs to access ‘prohibited sites’ and modest fines for what is called…

Crimean Tatars: the fight for the right to return home. In July 1957, Crimean Tatars submitted a petition to the Presidium of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The petition demanded that the deported people be returned to their homeland. Mustafa Selimov, Bekir Osmanov,…

July 11 is the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica In July of 1995, the Bosnian Serb Army took control of Srebrenica, a town designated as a “safe zone” by the UN. There, they killed at least 8,372 people, mainly men and…

“If you misbehave, we’ll send you to the Politburo!” In an elite Stalin-era psychiatric hospital, this did not refer to the highest governing body of the Communist Party. “The Politburo” was the intensive care unit for violent patients. Doctors at the hospital would give such…

Today, on the morning of July 8, security forces in Syktyvkar conducted searches of the houses of the employees of the Revolt Center and the independent exhibition space itself. The space bears the name of one of the founders of the Komi Memorial and the broader Memorial…

Torture of civilians by Russians in temporarily occupied territory is a crime against humanity On June 26, the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the “Tribunal for Putin” Initiative presented a communication to the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC,…

She rejected Beria, went through the Gulag, and when she was released… She became an investigator and imprisoned dissidents. This is not the plot of a novel, but the real biography of Nina Gnevkovskaya, found in the archives. The story began in 1945 on Mayakovsky Square. As a…

Russia is to remove Ukrainian language from curriculum in occupied Ukraine In today’s material from the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, we’re telling you about the Russian education ministry’s plans to exclude the Ukrainian language from the curriculum imposed on occupied…

“But I wanted to live, not play a role, even if I were wearing a new costume. I wanted harmony between my internal world and the world outside.” In 1973, a man named Innocent wrote this to Viktor Kalnberz, the surgeon who successfully performed a series of gender-affirming…

#WorldRefugeeDay: On the protection of the rights of Ukrainian children affected by the war Children are a particularly vulnerable group in the process of seeking asylum and all kinds of displacement, and require special support when returning to the country and reintegrating.…