For the historian Nicolas Werth, specialist of the USSR and president of Memorial France, the decision of the Russian justice, Tuesday, to order the dissolution of the NGO will not prevent the work of memory on the victims of the gulag.
On Tuesday, Russian justice decided to dissolve the Memorial human rights association, founded by dissidents initially to shed light on the Stalinist purges, then on the repressions in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. For Nicolas Werth, president of the French branch of the NGO, former research director at the CNRS and one of the greatest specialists of the Soviet regime, Memorial’s work of memory, initiated thirty years ago, “has been done. , is archived and can no longer disappear ”.
Are you surprised by the decision of the Russian court?
No, we are not surprised at all. Monday gave us a foretaste of what awaited us with the umpteenth increase in the sentence against Yuri Dmitriev[historien du goulag, collaborateur de Memorial en Carélie], now sentenced to fifteen years in prison. We already knew that this was an all-out, large-scale offensive by the Putin power. This is a new stage in the hardening of the regime, both internally and internationally. Since November 11, when the first threat was raised against Memorial, we were very pessimistic.
But where will the repression end?
Hard to say. The number of political prisoners will undoubtedly increase. There are already over 400 of them. But I would like to emphasize a glimmer of optimism. First, the liquidation will take a long time, months, maybe a year. Then there may be the possibility of appealing, although we do not harbor many illusions about it. And then, the job done is done, it won’t go away. This work of memory, of history, has been digitized, archived, it is there and can no longer disappear. He is safe, he will stay. You can’t just erase thirty years of work, knowledge, archives all at once. So everything is not completely negative.
Moreover, Memorial does not function like the power of Putin, vertically. It is an absolutely horizontal organization, of which there are 63 regional branches and seven outside Russia, two of which are in Ukraine. And these regional branches have a very large autonomy, they all have their own archives.
However, the judgment of this Tuesday concerns only a handful of these branches. The authorities would have to liquidate all these regional branches one by one, which is obviously possible, but it will take a long time. There is also the practical question of what will happen to everyone who worked for Memorial. All these hands which, concretely, work every day. We are witnessing the eternal struggle of a political power against the truth. But this can never be annihilated.
Can we hope for a surge in civil society?
I am not very optimistic about this. We saw it with the mobilization for Alexeï Navalny. Two weekends of mobilization, with a few tens of thousands of demonstrators, on the scale of a country of 144 million inhabitants, it does not weigh heavily. Memorial does not mobilize the crowds. Moreover, a few weeks ago, the organization released a very touching film in which people in the street were questioned. They had no idea what Memorial is! Only a few, in a certain milieu, that of the intelligentsia, as always in Russia, as in the XVIIIe, in the XIXe and in XXe century, are mobilizing. There’s still a little group of intellectuals numbering, a few hundred, maybe a few thousand, that’s engaged. But there is no mass resistance movement.
Why ? Is it fear that prevents mobilization?
I think it is more of a deep ignorance, and indifference, of the new generation towards the Soviet era. It can be understood in part. For twenty years, we have witnessed the advent of a real consumer society, built on a fragile economy, of course, with its flaws, but all the same. Putin is the symbol of this consumer society, which he associates with the restoration of nationalist pride.
The Soviet period was divided into two, a first half of violence and terror and a very different second half, in the 1970s, on which a form of nostalgia was built. A sort of welfare state, where there were shortages but where job security was guaranteed. The younger generation has a very rough take on the Soviet period, fueled by films from the 1970s which are regularly shown on television and maintain this cartoonish image.
Doesn’t that encourage optimism for the future?
No, we are not really optimistic. Unless the very new generation reacts. The fall of the USSR dates back to thirty years ago. There are the forties, and then there are the very young. In support for Navalny, for example, we found that there were many more young people in their twenties than in their forties. Fortunately, things are not set in stone. Like any society, Russian society is on the move, it is not clear how the younger generation will develop. When we see that Youtubeur journalist Yuri Doud’s film on Kolyma and the gulags has been seen by millions of people, we can hope. Nothing is ever frozen. The work done by Memorial cannot be deleted. You cannot immobilize the past or the future.
Putin is not going to stop there?
No, I’m afraid. Now, he will move on to serious matters, to the question of nationalities, of neighboring countries. The heart of the matter for him is that today’s Russia is not a monolithic construction. National minorities in the interior have always been a problem. Putin is concerned about Russia’s central and major relationship with Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus or Central Asia. We have to understand the offensive against Memorial in a broader context, that of Putin’s reflection on spheres of influence, Russia’s place in its immediate environment and more widely in today’s world.