The oldest human rights organization in Russia, Memorial was founded in the days of Gorbachev's USSR. The organization was shut down by court ruling in 2021, a few months before the outbreak of the large-scale war in Ukraine and a year before it received the Nobel Peace Prize. In an interview to Veridica, historian Sergey Bondarenko talks about the importance of truth and memory, the misrepresentation of history and the need to sometimes admit defeat. A member of the Memorial organization, Sergey Bondarenko is the author of the book “Lost in Memory: Memorial Society and the Battle for the Russian Past”.
This interview was conducted as part of a partnership between Veridica and the StraightForward Foundation, an anti-censorship NGO that helps Russian authors in exile (journalists, activists, etc.) publish works that would be otherwise banned in Putin’s Russia.
Soviet torturers eluded prosecution because the authorities wouldn’t risk a new wave of terror
VERIDICA: The Memorial organization emerged during Gorbachev’s perestroika years, when it set out to tell the world the truth about Stalinist terror, seeking to erect a monument honoring the victims of political repression. Both goals proved difficult to achieve, although, as you write in your book, this motivated Memorial to continue its work for over three decades. Please tell us more about these goals.
SERGEY BONDARENKO: These goals did not emerge during perestroika, because for several decades the widespread view was that no development could be possible truly understanding terror and without the state publicly owning up to it, so that, by erecting a monument, it would prove its will to distance itself from it and recognize it as a crime. In the second half of the 1980s, many people who shared the ideals of Memorial knew that, since the late 1950s and 1960s, even the party had considered erecting a monument. But then the authorities started debating about the consequences of telling the truth about terror. No one really understood what it meant to make the names of the victims public, how many there were, how to do it the right way or what that entailed. This debate started in the 1950s, then it was deadlocked for several decades, only to be resumed with renewed force. And it seems to me that, to a certain extent, this is what will happen now that we have reached a dead end, as we find ourselves in a situation that is far worse than at the end of the Soviet period. Back then, people thought that a monument would represent an admission of guilt from the state and a willingness to talk about these things. And, at the same time, a public conversation about terror would mean that the archives would have to be opened, that those names [of the victims] would be published, that this is the biggest topic no one ever dared to discuss in detail, and that once this conversation is over, we will never be able to return to that past state of affairs.
VERIDICA: With the recuperation of the past, did no one seek to see justice served?
SERGEY BONDARENKO: Of course they did, but it should be noted that, although the terror did not end with Stalin's death, and political prisoners continued to be arrested and imprisoned under Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov, the focus of the public discussion was always the Stalin period. And, on the one hand, at least 30 years had already passed since then, and 50 years had already passed since the darkest days of terror. So, on the one hand, it was already more difficult to judge the perpetrators, and many of them had died. On the other hand, perhaps even more importantly, the people who actually became the founders of Memorial organization shared a very widespread position: there should be no major criminal trials and no lustration. Because they believed that otherwise the tables would turn and terror would thus return. Specifically, they believed that it was important to break the cycle of terror. They thought that a few high-profile trials could remind us of the political purges and that civil peace, as they imagined it, could be achieved through dialogue, by being part of the same committees, by going to the KGB or the former KGB and striking a deal with them.
On the other hand, of course, if you ask these people today, they will tell you they had little choice. It is not as if they could have organized a trial of the former executioners, so they did what they could. For many of them, calls for lustration or other forms of justice seemed unrealistic and rather pointless from the very outset. The right thing to do, in both pragmatic and ideological terms, would have been to negotiate.
Putin's political police is the spitting image of its Soviet counterpart
VERIDICA: What became of the idea of building a monument in memory of the victims of terror?
SERGEY BONDARENKO: In the early 1990s, the Memorial brought to Lubyanka Square the so-called “Solovetsky Stone” [the monument is a granite boulder brought from the former Solovetsky camp, a symbol of the Gulag and Soviet state terror, e.n.], which right from the start did not look like a monument should. No one ever said this was exactly what we wanted. But to many people, it resembled a symbolic cornerstone, that is, the foundation where the future monument will one day stand. A few days ago, Russia’s Ombudsman, a completely obnoxious, almost caricature character, said that the Solovetsky Stone should be moved from Lubyanka Square, because it stands there not as a monument to the victims of repression, but as a reminder that here, next to it, are the workers of the former KGB, the secret police, and when people take part in actions that pay homage to the memory of the victims of political repression, they also do it to show they [the former KGB employees] are to blame. Of course, that's why people take part in such actions in the first place. And that's absolutely true, every part of it. The current political police is in every way like its predecessor.
But it seems that this discussion, which gained increased traction in the late 80s, was about the fact that this monument should be different, and that, regardless of where it’s set up (Lubyanka Square or the Red Square), it should be connected to a large-scale state program of raising awareness about the past. And, in a way, if we were to consider a metaphysical approach, the state itself would have to change for this monument to appear. I remember people talking a lot the monument in the early 90s and in the 10s, when even the most reconcilable of people said that the current regime cannot build this monument. I mean, whatever it builds now, no matter how big it is, it will only emphasize the hypocrisy. It will be just an empty symbolic gesture, a monument that will take the place of the real monument, which does not exist. Because if we were to imagine such a monument now, it would have to reflect, of course, both the terror of the Putin regime and its recent crimes. That is, perhaps, why this idea and this project were not seen through.
VERIDICA: So, are you talking about a monument that actually has to exist in people’s minds?
SERGEY BONDARENKO: To a large extent, yes. And this is the paradox of Memorial’s work, because the ultimate goal is fundamentally almost unattainable – it remains important, and the work continues. But the problem is that “people’s minds” are constantly evolving. The first years of the organization’s existence are indicative of that, a time when Memorial was successful and enjoyed public visibility. They said that now Solzhenitsyn would get published in large editions, we would include everything in the school curriculum, we will force it into people’s minds, and everything will change and the past will never return. But it turned out that things don’t work that way, that “people’s minds” is a very fluid concept, which is not so much a statement as a discussion that should continue. I believe Memorial is responsible for this highly likely conservation, so to make sure it does not end and it continues, especially in this dreadful context, in order to be able to influence what is happening.
The Palace of Memory of Soviet Crimes vs. The Ministry of Truth
VERIDICA: Can you give us an example of a Memorial project?
SERGEY BONDARENKO: I would mention the “Memorial” archive, which works mainly with memories and memoirs. It is an institution that doesn’t collect the kind of information and sources that were traditionally collected, including by state or private archives. It accumulates the memory of Soviet terror as its primary subject. When we are already talking about 1,000 [memorial testimonies] that describe the camp experience in more or less detail, the archive already becomes a cloud for this type of experience. It exists not just to establish the where, the who, the when, which camp, what year and so on and so forth. A more important task is to preserve what was lost over the years, due to the fact that life has changed so much, to preserve these materials and these emotions, this pain, so that we have a place where they endure, a place you can return to. In English, we have the concept of memory palace. In a way, this is what the archive actually is, a memory palace, a mnemonic for memorizing a very large volume of information. In a way, of course, Memorial is a memory palace where a huge number of different memories are stored in different places. And Memorial’s mission was not just to store them, but also to be able to access them at any given time.
VERIDICA: With Putin’s rise to power, there has been talk of a re-Stalinization in Russia, whereby we see a positive reevaluation of Stalin's image, we see the inauguration of monuments devoted to him. Is this an attempt to rewrite history, to create an Orwellian Ministry of Truth?
SERGEY BONDARENKO: To understand this phenomenon, we need to remember this is not the first time it’s happened. From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, more and more voices said that Stalin did a lot of good things, that the war was won owing to his leadership, and that, overall, he can be mentioned in a positive context... His name started making headlines again, his persona reappeared in war films. But that was a different type of re-Stalinization. To me, it is extremely important that in the 2000s, we are no longer talking about Stalin’s return as a historical figure, but about a construct that had very little to do with the real historical figure. Basically, there were no people left who had experienced and remembered those days. All that remained were the memories of people from the second generation after Stalin. The very possibility of working with memory in Russia and rewriting this narrative, as well as the fact that it became so malleable, was due to the fact that a lot of time had passed, the temporal gap itself was sufficient.
Moreover, this effort to control the past, to create a kind of Ministry of Truth, like you said, seems to be true not just of Russia. I would say that, in fact, it is largely a phenomenon with technological underpinnings, impacted by the way the Internet is used and controlled. But just as importantly, what makes the situation different from Orwell's Ministry of Truth, is that it has now been proven that there’s no need to suppress or completely shatter the opposing view. This is seen in the way social networks work. We also see it if we look at what is happening in America. The important thing is not for your point of view to fully prevail. The important thing is to dilute the opposing point of view, to create this perpetual doubt. We live in the so-called era of doubt, when things have become even more insidious and sophisticated. If it were just a matter of brutally imposing a single point of view, the opposition would become stronger and more consistent. But herein likes the difficulty and horror – that’s just not how it works. I can give you the clearest example: the Katyn massacre. It is a well-known fact: at the start of World War II, Polish officers held captive in the tens of thousands in the Soviet Union, were shot by Stalin’s secret order near Smolensk, in Katyn forest, in Mednoye and elsewhere. Several tens of thousands of people. Mass graves were later discovered. For decades the Soviet Union denied any responsibility for the massacre, claiming the Nazis were the perpetrators, even though all the evidence pointed to the opposite. Finally, Russia officially admitted it because it was an undeniable truth. Even the perpetrators were identified. There are documents, all kinds of physical evidence proving how the massacre was committed. Yeltsin admitted it, even Putin admitted it. There is a memorial in Katyn, in that grim forest. But now, after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the State Duma argued, and this was said publicly, that everything had been a Western conspiracy, that the authorities should not have admitted this crime in the 90s, but what could you ask of them – it was a liberal period. They claimed, first of all, that the Germans were responsible, and that, anyway, we do not know the whole truth. Well, how are we supposed to fight this? Of course, we can make counterarguments, and many historians, not just from Memorial, have done so, presenting documents, testimonies, retelling the entire narrative from the very beginning. But it seems that, at a certain level, even that doesn't work anymore. It's like trying to prove to people that the Earth is round. How can you prove that? There are a million pieces of evidence. But then someone comes and says: “I don't think so” or “I don't believe it's round, I believe it's flat”. "I don't see any curves anywhere, so it's not round”. It's not a system like Orwell's. But, of course, it shares a lot of features, in a way even worse than those described by the classics of totalitarianism, because even they couldn't imagine such control over information and such technological control, as Russia exerts at present. All these surveillance cameras, all these systems that allow the state to detain people for the most insignificant posts on the Internet. This is what reality looks like today.
In Russia, “if you fight for something, you are bound to lose”
VERIDICA: In your book, you write that members of the Memorial organization were faced with choosing between history and politics. And although some members entered politics, the organization as a whole refused to follow. Do you now think it was the right decision?
SERGEY BONDARENKO: I don’t think that one can answer this question without understanding what politics was like in the late 1980s. And I would give two separate answers to your question. First, to a certain degree, even those who in the late 1980s said they would not enter politics were not completely honest. That is, during the best, most open and active public years of Memorial, in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the organization very political, even without being affiliated to a political party, without taking part in elections and so on. That is, it played the classic political role of a major public institution. I would even say that its importance precisely stemmed from the fact that it was not directly involved in politics, because, of course, politics – and this is my second answer to your question – therefore, politics and the idea of politics in general had become so toxic in the Soviet period, so loathed, that people who tried to get involved and do something in politics, individuals like Sergei Adamovich Kovalyov, considered themselves the opposite of politicians. That is, there were people who entered politics bent on destroying the system, realizing it could not operate as it had before, that radical changes were needed. But, at the same time, we are dealing with a paradox. There is widespread criticism in Russia, not only against Memorial, that in the late 80s and early 90s a window of opportunity opened, and many people did not take advantage of it, for various reasons. And that other people were quick to take their place. And that’s the reason why we find ourselves in the current predicament. But the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the problem is not that someone did not go to the State Duma or did not take up a certain position, because, after all, we had an election for the Russian Parliament. It was by and large a free election, it was not rigged in any way. We clearly see in all the elections that have been organized since 1993 how much ground was gained either by the communists, or by those whom we now refer to as the war party. That is, the moderate and less moderate right. So, one cannot say that if these leaders of Memorial had run in the election, they would have actually obtained a good score. More like the opposite. But, for me, the main thing is not even the failure, it is not the fact that they did not get somewhere, that they did not become politicians, but the fact that at a time when it seemed that there were more opportunities, they chose to follow the path of collaboration and participate in this consensus, to search for political and social consensus. I mean, they weren’t really adamant about it, they set out to destroy the KGB headquarters when there was a crowd in Lubyanka Square, when the Dzerzhinsky monument was torn down. Of course, Memorial wasn't supposed to do that, but the members of Memorial were there when it happened. Although they were part of various committees, they weren’t able to generate a fundamental change so that the documents about the history of terror would be declassified. This was when, perhaps, they should have protested more strongly, withdrawn from those committees, awakened public opinion. But it seems that, in many cases, they walked the rational path, based on the idea that there's no point in arguing, because it's more important that we're here now, and that we'll be able to do various things in the future. So, they chose pragmatism, which, by the way, allowed them to achieve important things. But now, all of that is by no means enough. In the face of such a total failure, you don't feel like looking for the culprits, but rather that point of no return, the failure that started everything.
VERIDICA: What’s next for Memorial?
SERGEY BONDARENKO: The strongest inner feeling is that nothing can ever be the same, that Memorial can't be the same. Because everything has reached a turning point. I mean, the start of this big war [against Ukraine, e.n.] is really a critical point, similar in magnitude to the events of '91 [when, after the August coup, the Soviet Union collapsed, e.n.]. And whereas Memorial is a public, large, complex project, which does not belong to anyone in particular, but rather is a living thing, then it too must undergo a change, because of everything that has already happened. Memorial has huge inertia, a huge legacy, because it’s an institution that works with the past all the time. I would say that Memorial is already a symbol of what happened, of what has already ended. And the Memorial of tomorrow, if that’s ever to happen, will be a Memorial that, I think, will have to work directly with what is happening now, building on the legacy of what Memorial has been over the past decades, building on its vast experience in the field and on the experience of its own shortcomings. As you remember, one of the most popular dissident slogans was “For the success of our hopeless cause!” To me, the most important Soviet writer was Varlam Shalamov. And owing to his prolific works, his own destiny, so to speak, he suffered a great failure. During his lifetime, his books were never read, and the author himself died in virtual anonymity, in a terrible place. What I mean is that certain topics, certain works are inevitably doomed to fail. It would be strange that, nearly three years after the outbreak of the war, Memorial would reach the pinnacle of its activity or that something wonderful would happen to it. Like everyone else in this war, Memorial sustains a bitter defeat. But it seems this defeat is a kind of connection with what will happen next. It is a period with a single outcome: if you fight for something, you lose. And it is clear why this is so. And Memorial will have to rebuild itself around this defeat.
