Statement by the Yabloko Bureau, 12.11.2021

Photo: The office of the Memorial human rights society / Photo by Safron Golikov. Kommersant

The Public Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation filed a lawsuit to liquidate Memorial International, a human rights organisation with more than 30 years of history, conducting research of political repression in the USSR, with which the Yabloko party have been continuously and actively cooperating.

Memorial’s efforts not only preserved and perpetuated the memory of tens and hundreds of thousands of victims of [Stalin’s] political repressions, but also the names of those responsible for organising and carrying out of repressions.

For the past three decades, [Memorial] has published detailed reference books and carried out large-scale research.

At the initiative of Memorial, monuments to the victims of political repression have been erected, and a public reading of their names is held annually in many cities of Russia.

The founders of Memorial were great citizens of Russia – Academician Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov and Sergei Adamovich Kovalev.

The names of such outstanding people as Arseny Borisovich Roginsky, Alexander Yulievich Daniel, Oleg Petrovich Orlov, Lev Alexandrovich Ponomarev, Yan Zbignevich Rachinsky, Yuri Alexeyevich Dmitriyev, and many others are associated with Memorial.

Yabloko regards the attempt to liquidate Memorial not only as a political reprisal, but also as an insult to the memory of tens of millions of victims of political repression, which the successors of their executioners are trying to erase.

This is a new step towards the restoration of Stalinism and the justification of its crimes.

This is a blow to the entire Russian human rights movement, in which Memorial plays a leading and enormous role. The unique archival materials collected by Memorial over three decades are under threat of destruction.

Memorial, which bears the stigma of a “foreign agent” similar to the infamous “yellow star,” is being liquidated for violating the controversial “foreign agents” law, which Yabloko has consistently opposed since its adoption.

We insist on the complete abolition in Russian legislation of all norms related to the concept of “foreign agents” leading to political discrimination of both citizens and public organisations and the media.

Yabloko demands to withdraw the shameful claim of the Public Prosecutor General’s Office, and will do everything in our power to protect Memorial and provide it with support.

Yabloko states that not only Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his subordinate Public Prosecutor General’s Office and the Ministry of Justice, but all the four of Putin’s parties – United Russia, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, A Just Russia and the LDPR, that  voted for the laws on “foreign agents” – bear political responsibility for is happening to Memorial.

Nikolai Rybakov,

Yabloko Chairman