Memorial/Мемориал: Defending the Memory of Soviet Crimes

Memorial (Мемориал in Cyrillic) is an association dedicated to the documentation of the history of human rights violations and the defense of human rights. Memorial specializes in the state crimes committed in the Soviet Union during the rule of Joseph Stalin, the murderous system of the Gulag camps, the dissident movement in the late Soviet Union; the violation of human rights in post-soviet conflicts, the defense of rights of migrants and other vulnerable groups in society, etc.

Memorial was created 3 years before the collapse of the Soviet Union and continued its work in the post-Soviet space. Gradually, Memorial's activities came into increasing conflict with the position of the Russian authorities and were subjected to intensifying pressure and restrictions. On the eve of the outbreak of open war against Ukraine, Memorial's main organizations, located in Russia, were shut down by Vladimir Putin’s regime. Today, the activities of Memorial still continue outside of Russia, including in France.

The current moment is the one of both reflection and assessment of the path taken and the formulation of new tasks and methods in a new historical situation.

During their presentation, Natalia Kolyagina and Irina Galkova from Memorial France are going to talk about the history and main areas of work of Memorial, and about new challenges the association is facing in the current geopolitical moment.

Natalia Kolyagina is a PhD candidate at Sorbonne Université in Paris, where she studies autobiographies of women participants in civil rights dissidents' circles in the USSR (1960-1980s). She has been working in Memorial since 2009, as a manager for development culture programs, as editor of the website urokiistorii.ru, as coordinator of an educational program, and as a researcher in the dissident project. Her publications deal with dissident history (and the role of women in it) and politics of memory in Russia since the 1990s.

Irina Galkova is a historian and an art historian. She was the director of the Museum of International Memorial until 2022 and is currently a researcher at the ERLIS laboratory at the Université de Caen Normandie (as a PAUSE programme laureate). Her current research topic is the creative work of artists in the Gulag camps.

Registration is required for those who wish to attend who are not part of the AUP community. Please note that registration will close on April 16th. Thank you.