The Kremlin is trying to erase Russia’s collective memory. It won’t succeed.

The Washington Post ^ | 12.23.2021 | Vladimir Kara-Murza

[Krosan]

Vladimir Putin is big on symbols. He began his rule by installing a memorial plaque to a Soviet KGB chief and reinstating the Stalin-era national anthem. More recently, he used the anniversary of the assassination of political rival Boris Nemtsov to award a medal to a Chechen official reportedly involved in organizing it. And he used the birthday of another opponent, Alexei Navalny, to sign a law banning his movement as “extremist.”

...

For all the importance of human rights work in authoritarian societies, Memorial is more than just another civil society organization — it is the keeper of the nation’s collective memory. Unlike in other post-communist countries, where atrocities committed by former regimes are being documented by government institutions — such as the Stasi Records Archive in Germany or the Institute of National Remembrance in Poland — in Russia this mammoth task was left to volunteers. Memorial’s activists have spent many years conducting research in state archives. That was hard enough in the 1990s, under a friendly government (then-President Boris Yeltsin was himself a member of Memorial). But it’s become ever more challenging under Putin.

...

Not surprisingly, Putin’s government has a different perspective. For the people who pride themselves on their past service in the KGB — the very organization that carried out this state terror — historical truth comes as a personal affront. No less irritating to the Kremlin is Memorial’s work of chronicling political repression in today’s Russia by maintaining the list of current political prisoners — which now stands at 431, twice as many as in the late Soviet period — that informs the work of international human rights institutions in this field.

[mvonfr]

yes, you right.

[tlozo]

Sorry, source not credible on anything.

Putin being interviewed by Oliver Stone. Putin even said that ‘tough’ criticism of Stalin amounted to ‘attacking the Soviet Union and Russia."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crlIG8QgyiQ

[Jacquerie]

No clicks for Bezo’s Blog.

[Thunder90]

Lenin remains on display in Moscow in his Masoleum on Red Square. Russia also holds large throwback parades every victory day, with Soviet flags and Soviet songs.