Category Archives: Memory

There isn’t much by way of new information about the raid on Memorial. Why the human rights organization was raided still remains a mystery. Work has renewed at the organization’s office but day to day activities remain disturbed. After all, the police did confiscate a laundry list of materials.  According to a statement issued by Memorial, those materials include several hard drives that contain “biographical information of tens of thousands of victims of Stalinist repression collected by Memorial over the last 20 years, a unique collection of photographs and copies of archival documents on Stalinist terror, the results of searches of camp cemeteries and firing ranges in the territory of the former USSR, and an archive of audio interviews with former GULAG prisoners.”

Memorial, of course, wants their stuff back unmolested and as soon as possible.  When Irina Flige, the director of Memorial St. Petersburg, presented this request to the investigative ..read more

The Name of Russia votes are in.  The project, which started on June 12, allowed voters to decide who are the most important political, cultural, and historical figures. According to the Name of Russia website, 44,569,665 people voted.  Here are the top ten Heroes of Russia:

1. Aleksandr Nevsky 2,011,766 votes.

The great Novgorodian prince who successfully repelled German and Swedish invaders in the 13th century.  Could there be a better indicator of the Russian political unconscious? Once again Russia feels embattled by Western invaders and its people look for a defender of nationality (even before nationalism and Russia as a unified political entity existed) by going old school.

2. Aleksandr Pushkin 1,781,863 votes. 3. Fedor Dostoevskii 1,678,083 votes. 4. Peter I 1,511,367 votes 5. Vladimir Lenin 1,356,281 votes 6. Aleksandr Suvorov 1,271,345 votes 7. Catherine II 1,365,784 votes 8. Ivan IV 1,216,812 votes 9. Petr Stolypin 1,165,377 votes 10. Aleksandr II 1,066,896 votes 11. ..read more

Steve Barnes, Assistant Professor at George Mason University, has set up a invaluable site called Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives.  Barnes is an expert in the history of the Gulag.  I had the pleasure of hearing paper of his at the “The Relaunch of the Soviet Project, 1945-1964” conference at the University College London in 2006. I especially look forward to his upcoming book on the subject.

Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives provides a comprehensive, nuanced, and sensitive picture of life in what was officially known as the Soviet Union’s Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies.  The main exhibit, Days and Lives, gives a documentary run down of the experience of arrest, labor, suffering, dealing with criminal gangs, and how million died and survived imprisonment.  It’s truly an amazing and much needed achievement in history and memory.

In addition to the exhibits on Gulag life, Barnes has also ..read more

Today would have been the famed Soviet bard, actor, and conscious of a generation Vladimir Vysotsky’s 70th birthday. Vysotsky, who died in 1980 at the age of 42 from heart failure, perhaps proves once again that “its better to burn out, than to fade away.” True enough. Vysotsky’s great cultural impact in life and sudden death is the stuff icons are made of. Brilliant and moving, his passionate raspy voice made him a man fit for his time. It was also a time fit for the man.

Vysotsky’s 70th birthday is not going unnoticed in Russia. Monuments to the legendary actor, poet, and vocalist are being unveiled today in Samara, Voronezh and Dubna. The one in Samara is a 5 meter tall piece sculpted by Vysotsky’s close friend and well known artist Mikhail Shemyakin.

My love of Vysotsky’s music is only a few years old. ..read more

“Democracy” enjoys the support of only 36 percent of Russians according to the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development’s report “Life in Transition: A Survey of People’s Experiences and Attitudes.” Moreover, 40 percent of Russians prefer a planned economy over a market one. These statistics made Kommersant declare that “1/3 of Russians Prefer Authoritarian Rule” and Vedomosti write of a “Planned Satisfaction.”

But why the glass half full assessment? Clearly there is another 64 percent and 60 percent of respondents think otherwise. A clear majority. Yet given these two articles, one would assume that Russian’s are ready to return to the halcyon days of Brezhnev, or one might even dare say, Stalin. But this is not the case.

I think it is important to note that in regard to the 36 percent of Russians favoring “authoritarianism” (whatever that means) is a bit misleading. Respondents ..read more

By Maxim Gorky Novaya Zhizn, No. 174 November 20, 1917

The socialist ministers released by Lenin and Trotsky from the Peter and Paul Fortress went home, leaving their colleagues M. V. Bernatsky, A. I. Konovalov, M. I. Tereshchenko, and others in the hands of people who have no conception of the freedom of the individual or of the rights of man.

Lenin, Trotsky, and their companions have already become poisoned with the filthy venom of power, and this is evidenced by their shameful attitude toward freedom of speech, the individual, and the sum total of those rights for the triumph of which democracy struggled.

Blind fanatics and dishonest adventurers are rushing madly, supposedly along the road to the “social revolution”; in reality this is the road to anarchy, to the destruction of the proletariat and of the revolution.

On this road Lenin and his associates consider it possible to commit all kinds of crimes, such as ..read more