Moscow: 'memory' cannot be erased

A year ago the trial of the humanitarian association Memorial began. Closed on 28 February, it won the Nobel Peace Prize. Activists work in hiding to continue its efforts: 'They will not shut us up'.  The group expects changes in Russian society, "huge changes".

Moscow (AsiaNews) - A year has passed since the start of the trial that liquidated, on 28 February, the Russian humanitarian association "Memorial", which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Its activists and collaborators continue their work in conditions of quasi-hiding and exile, without giving up defending the memory of trampled rights, as can be seen from the many recent interviews and publications.

Novaja Gazeta Evropa, the agency created after the closure of Nobel Prize winner Dmitry Muratov's newspaper, has interviewed many of Memorial's collaborators: even from afar and despite the impediments, they try to continue the work of documenting the century of Soviet repressions, and now also those of Putin. One of them, Lilja Matveeva, is a young artist who has only been involved in the centre's activities for a month, after visiting the Presnenskaya transfer prison in Moscow in a group led by her activists.

The visit prompted her to get involved in Memorial's initiatives, participating in this year's censored 'Restitution of Names' in Moscow. She was entrusted with the task of illustrating the event with various drawings, including the best known one with the inscription 'My-Memorial, We are the Memorial', along with many portraits of the persecuted. Back in her Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, she also started working there to disseminate images and documents of the repressions, when the trial against the association began: at the most dramatic moment, Lilja became its main creator of images.

Every day Lilja gathered with the other members of the group in front of or near the courthouse, distributing flyers, jumpers and gadgets, posters and even specially designed columbos, as they had to demonstrate in the streets in sub-zero temperatures. When she did manage to enter the courtroom, the activist also portrayed the trial sessions, 'a strange and frightening spectacle', between a threatening prosecutor and a placid elderly judge.

On 28 December, the sentence of liquidation came, and the activists tried to remain energetic and optimistic, hoping for an appeal, until the final verdict in February, in the very days of the invasion in Ukraine. 'We had organised a festival before the last session,' says Lilja, 'precisely so as not to give in to despair, but the festival turned into an anti-war protest'. In May, the artist emigrated to Germany, partly to avoid ending up in prison herself, and now lives in Berlin.

Natalia Koljagina is a few years older than Lilja, and has remained in Moscow to pursue her profession as a 'culturologist', now outside academic circles, and participates in the editing of the site 'Lessons of History', trying not to disperse the historical and human heritage of Memorial, in which she has been actively involved since 2009. For a number of years, she and the other members of her team proposed the competition 'Man in History: Russia in the 20th Century' to Russian schools, which was also closed by authority in 2021.

Many teachers supported the competition, not only by promoting literary or artistic compositions, but also by guiding students to visit places of repression or confinement of Germans and Estonians. Many reacted by saying that 'we need Memorial, to share our impressions, to understand how we live'. Natalia says that the liquidation of Memorial 'was like suffering the death of a close friend, but the community we created cannot be destroyed or dispersed, they will not shut us up'.

The members of Memorial assure that not everyone in Russia supports the war and dictatorship, and it is precisely the memory of the repressions that gives hope, because even then it was believed that the Soviet regime had suffocated everything; the few who resisted were able to deliver the necessary resources: 'I believe that there will be changes in our society, and they will be huge changes,' Natalia concludes.