Even before the Moscow City Court’s verdict to ban the Memorial Human Rights Center, adopted on December 29, the German media broadly commented on the decision of the RF Supreme Court to liquidate the historical and educational society International Memorial, announced on December 28. The publications condemn this decision, while noting that it was not unexpected in the light of previous attacks by the Russian authorities on the organization.
According to German newspapers, the Russian court only announced a verdict that was handed down to him from above. A number of publications note that International Memorial suffered not for its refusal to bear the label of a “foreign agent”, but for the culture of historical memory, unacceptable for the Putin regime. The most vivid statements of the German media about the verdict of “Memorial” – in the DW review.
Der Spiegel: “Memorial’s verdict shows how history can be talked about”
According to Der Spiegel journalist Christian Esch, a whole era ended in Russia on December 28. “By a court decision on the liquidation of the International Memorial Society, Putin’s state crossed the line. It is about nothing more than the question of who owns Russia’s past. Previously, it belonged to its citizens, now it belongs to the state.”
Formally, Memorial was liquidated for the fact that not all of its materials were labeled “foreign agent”, which Russia condemns many NGOs. In fact, the decision shows how it is possible and how it is impossible to talk about the history of the country. The border is drawn where the Russian state could be harmed, and that is up to Putin’s officials, not society.
It is still possible to honor the memory of the victims of Stalin’s repressions; Putin himself regularly lays flowers on their graves. However, state criminals cannot be blamed, it is impossible to speak separately about the victims of repression among Poles, Balts and Ukrainians, just as it is impossible to draw parallels with modern events. Memorial, however, not only investigated the state crimes of the Soviet past, but also those committed in the North Caucasus in modern times. And this is taboo. “
The Der Spiegel journalist draws disappointing conclusions: “Thirty years after the collapse of the USSR, Putin’s Russia found something similar to an ideological vocation: it is not in a picture of the desired future, but in a given construction of the past. This means that the main lesson of Soviet times, which Russia learned with the help.” Memorial “- that the life and dignity of every person must be protected against the interests of the state – now it should be forgotten again by instructions from the very top. The sad circle has closed.”
SZ: “Russian authorities despise civil society”
The ban on Memorial shows how contemptuous the Russian authorities are of civil society, writes Süddeutsche Zeitung journalist Frank Nienhuysen in his comment “Cogs instead of active builders.” “The liquidation of the organization, unfortunately, did not come as an unpleasant surprise. The court announced the verdict, or rather, the judge pronounced what the Prosecutor General’s Office had previously stated, and before it had actually anticipated the Kremlin with his harsh and hasty accusation against Memorial,” writes SZ.
“The Russian state has long been taking steps against its critics. The” Foreign Agents “Law is a relatively new tool that is constantly being refined and applied against ever larger groups. Yes, Memorial refused to bear the stigma of” foreign agent ” fines, notes Frank Nienhuizen. “However, with a radical decision to ban the organization now pays for the fact that its vision of history contradicts the Russian state. It wants to prevent the increasingly favorable view of the Soviet past from being questioned.”
FAZ: “Russia has become a dictatorship”
When Memorial was created in the late 1980s, its initiators thought not only of the past, writes the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: “In memory of the victims of Stalin’s repression, they wanted to contribute to the creation of a new Russia, which relies on law instead of arbitrariness and violence. The liquidation of Memorial shows what is important for the current rulers of Russia.
The verdict became the final point of development, as a result of which Russia from an authoritarian state with a number of free niches turned into a dictatorship. The liquidation of Memorial was a logical continuation of the arrest of Navalny and the destruction of his organizations. The growing repression within the country and the increasingly aggressive behavior of the Putin regime outside of it are inextricably linked. “
taz: “A state of total control is being built in Russia”
The Russian authorities are building a new state, the taz newspaper writes in its commentary: “A state that relies on total control, humiliates doubters, sends them to jail, expels them, demands admiration from each and every one.” As the newspaper notes, at the court session, in reality, it was about the work of Memorial and the convictions of its employees, and not about the labeling of a “foreign agent”.
“The state policy of historical memory in Russia excludes memory in its understanding by Memorial. In the state sense, history is glitter and glory, a kind of heroic epic, as President Putin likes to write about it. It is taboo to question it. Memorial exists.” longer than the modern Russian state. The abolition of the organization by the decision of the governed Russian justice system bears witness to the end of a country that emerged in the early 1990s in an effort to find a more humane life. “
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