No official ceremony is organized on Wednesday, the anniversary of the fall of the communist regime. Franceinfo has collected the testimony of former political prisoners who are trying to bring this memory to life.
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ELena Sannikova was 32 years old in 1991. Because she had circulated books under wraps, this Russian mother of a family was forcibly interned and then placed under house arrest in Siberia. This Wednesday, December 8 is a date that she has not forgotten: “I remember I had just had my daughter, who was born on November 19. I gave her the bath. I came out of the bathroom with her, in my arms. And there, in the kitchen, my husband and mother told me that the radio announced that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. I looked at my daughter and said to her ‘You will not live in the Soviet Union’. “
Thirty years ago, on December 8, 1991, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus met in secret in western Belarus, and signed the Belaveja Accords. A text proclaiming the disappearance of the USSR and announcing the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. In Russia this day is not the subject of a special celebration but this day remains special for those who fought against the Soviet regime.
Alexandre Podrabinek has not forgotten either. This journalist close to the famous dissident Andrei Sakharov knew the labor camps for three years in Siberia but at the time, he knew that the task would be complicated: “The fight was not to defeat Communist ideology because it was long dead.”
“Our task was to succeed in overcoming the fear of the repressive apparatus and we did not succeed.”
Alexandre Podrabinek, journalistto franceinfo
Three decades later, the rehabilitation of dissidents has often been only partial; those who have been deprived of their property have never recovered them. And compensation has sometimes disappeared in the spiral of inflation of the 90s. Even the ceremonies are reduced, explains Elena Sannikova. Officials no longer come to commemorations.
For Alexandre Podrabinek, the memory of the dissidents comes crashing into the national narrative that the current Russian power would like to impose: “The government is trying to embellish the history of Russia as if everyone has been beautiful and kind. And political prisoners do not really follow this trend. That is why the authorities are trying to present the repression as a human error or misunderstanding. “
Alexandre Podrabinek and Elena Sannikova are still campaigning for human rights in Russia today. Thirty years after the end of the USSR, they are still considered opponents.