A horror year is coming to an end for Russian civil society.

After the historical Memorial Society, which has documented the crimes of the Stalin regime against its own population for more than thirty years, the human rights center of the same name was also dissolved by a Moscow court ruling.

Kerstin Holm

Editor in the features section.

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The two non-governmental organizations that have been declared Foreign Agents by the Russian judiciary and want to challenge the court decision are the oldest and most respected in the country. With its destruction, the Putin regime "crowns" its campaign against any social self-organization and dissent, which began with the imprisonment and condemnation of the opposition leader Alexei Navalnyj, who returned after his poisoning, and the smashing of his nationwide network in the spring.

The course of repression, unprecedented in post-Soviet Russia, is packaged in a legalistic manner. In the grounds of the verdict against Memorial it is said that the organization violates Russian laws, which means above all the obligation to self-inflict as a foreign agent. But Memorial paid the fines that were imposed, and individual names of Nazi collaborators in the lists of victims criticized by a war veterans association have long since been erased. The main reason was probably that, as the public prosecutor explained, Memorial by the Soviet power (which in phases killed so-called enemies of the people according to plan numbers) “paints the image of a terrorist state”, directs criticism on the state organs and thus falsifies Soviet history.

Stalin, whose portrait adorns facades again, is said to be venerated as the victor in World War II. Significantly, the 66-year-old memorial historian Yuri Dmitrijew, who uncovered the mass graves of Stalin victims in Karelia, northern Russia, had his prison sentence extended from thirteen to fifteen years on the basis of fabricated allegations of pedophilia against his adopted daughter. On Christmas Day, the website ovd-info, whose employees document victims of police arbitrariness on sleepless nights and organize free legal assistance, was blocked by the Russian media regulator.

The system relies on demonstrative cruelty. The 67-year-old rector of the prestigious Moscow Shanin University, Sergei Sujew, has been held in custody since the summer despite - or perhaps because of - his poor health, his elderly parents and his sick child. Since, following an amendment to the Police Act, the law enforcement officers will in future be able to penetrate the homes of unsuspecting people at any time, those who have remained in the country expect an expansion of the repression. The priest Alexej Uminski, a rare humanist voice of the Orthodox Church, posted on Facebook the poem by Anna Akhmatova "To the defenders of Stalin" from the thaw year 1962, which compares Stalin worshipers with those Jews of the New Testament who asked Pilate to release Barabbas .

The writer Alissa Ganijewa, who sums up the latest bad news on Facebook and illustrates it with a photo of herself in front of a burned hut, nevertheless encourages herself and her compatriots to try to stay healthy and be happy in the new year.