A Fundraiser for Yuri Dmitriev’s 70th Birthday

[Fundraiser for Yuri Dmitriev’s 70th Birthday]

Yuri Dmitriev is a historian and researcher of Stalinist repressions in Karelia, in the North of Russia, and one of the first political prisoners of the new repressive era in Russia. He searched for the sites of mass executions in 1937–1938 and worked to restore the fates of people who were shot during the Great Terror and died in the Gulag camps. He recognised the terrible nature of the new Russian regime sooner than others did, and spoke openly about it. The conviction of Yuri Dmitriev is an example of the Putin regime’s direct inheritance of the spirit and logic of Stalinist terror.

Since December 2016, Dmitriev has been persecuted on false charges. He has been imprisoned for nine years. His sentence is 15 years. He will turn 70 on January 28, 2026.

For the past four years, the historian has been held in a harsh regime penal colony in Mordovia, central Russia. During his time there, he has been placed in solitary confinement nine times. His health is now in critical condition. We want to raise money to give Yuri Dmitriev and his family a gift for his anniversary. These funds will be used to cover his daily expenses in the colony (purchasing food and necessary items), regular visits from his lawyer, and parcels. This is the least we can do to thank Yuri Dmitriev for his work to restore the memory of the victims of Stalin’s terror and for his uncompromising stance towards the crimes of the present.

Collecte de fonds pour les 70 ans de Iouri Dmitriev

Iouri Dmitriev est un historien et un chercheur spécialiste des répressions staliniennes en Carélie, dans le nord de la Russie. Il compte parmi les premiers prisonniers politiques de la nouvelle ère répressive instaurée en Russie. Pendant des décennies, il a recherché les lieux d’exécutions massives de 1937–1938 et s’est attaché à rétablir l’identité et le destin des personnes fusillées durant la Grande Terreur ou mortes dans les camps du Goulag. Très tôt, il a compris et dénoncé publiquement la dérive autoritaire du régime russe contemporain.

La condamnation d’Iouri Dmitriev incarne, de manière tragiquement exemplaire, la continuité entre la logique répressive actuelle et l’héritage de la terreur stalinienne.

Depuis décembre 2016, il est la cible de persécutions fondées sur des accusations fabriquées de toutes pièces. Incarcéré depuis neuf ans, il purge aujourd’hui une peine de quinze années de prison. Il aura 70 ans le 28 janvier 2026.

Depuis quatre ans, Iouri Dmitriev est détenu dans une colonie pénitentiaire à régime sévère en Mordovie, dans le centre de la Russie. Durant cette période, il a été placé à neuf reprises à l’isolement. Son état de santé est désormais extrêmement préoccupant.

Nous souhaitons organiser une collecte afin d’offrir à Iouri Dmitriev et à sa famille un présent pour son anniversaire. Les fonds permettront de couvrir ses dépenses quotidiennes dans la colonie pénitentière (achats alimentaires et produits de première nécessité), les visites régulières de son avocat ainsi que l’envoi de colis.

C’est le minimum que nous puissions faire pour exprimer notre gratitude envers Iouri Dmitriev, pour son travail inlassable de restauration de la mémoire des victimes de la terreur stalinienne et pour sa position sans compromis face aux crimes perpétrés aujourd’hui.

Сбор средств к 70-летию Юрия Дмитриева

Юрий Дмитриев – историк, исследователь сталинских репрессий в Карелии, на Севере России, один из первых политических заключенных новой репрессивной эпохи в России. Он занимался поиском мест массовых убийств 1937–1938 годов, восстановлением судеб людей, расстрелянных в период Большого террора и умерших в лагерях ГУЛАГа. Он раньше других понял страшную природу новой российской власти и открыто говорил о ней. Осуждение Юрия Дмитриева – пример, проявляющий прямое наследование путинским режимом духа и логики сталинского террора.

С декабря 2016 г. Дмитриева преследуют по лживым обвинениям. Он находится в неволе уже 9 лет. Срок заключения по приговору – 15 лет. 28 января 2026 года ему исполнится 70 лет.

Последние четыре года историк находится в колонии строгого режима в Мордовии в Центральной России. За время своего пребывания там он девять раз сидел в штрафном изоляторе. Его здоровье сейчас в критическом состоянии. Мы хотим собрать денег, чтобы сделать подарок к юбилею Юрия Дмитриева ему и его семье. Эти средства будут потрачены на его ежедневные расходы в колонии (покупку еды и необходимых вещей), регулярные визиты адвоката, посылки. Это то немногое, что мы можем сделать в благодарность Юрию Дмитриеву за его работу по восстановлению памяти о жертвах сталинского террора и за его непримиримость по отношению к преступлениям настоящего.

Source: Memorial France (Helloasso). Thanks to Jessica Gorter for the heads-up. It took me a minute or two to fill out the form to donate money to this fundraiser, and I would urge you to donate as well by clicking on any of the five links (above) in this post. To read my years-long coverage of the Dmitriev Case, go here. ||||| TRR

“The Dmitriev Affair” in NYC (and Online)

US PREMIERE

Through a thick layer of snow in the forests of Russia, historian Yuri Dmitriev searches for unmarked and lost graves. His singular efforts have uncovered mass burial sites of those who were killed under Stalin’s “Great Terror” of 1937. With no help from official channels, he traces the dead and rescues their memory from the eternal doom of oblivion. Dmitriev’s riveting story is a tale of one man’s fight against the erasure of history by the state. – Bedatri D. Choudhury

Both screenings will be followed by a Q&A with director Jessica Gorter and cinematographer Sergei Markelov.

All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.

https://zeppers.nl/en/film/the-dmitriev-affair-in-production

Director: Jessica Gorter

Producer: Frank van den Engel, Elize Kerseboom (line producer), Oksana Maksimchuk (segment producer, Russia)

Cinematographer: Sander Snoep, Sergei Markelov, Alexandra Ivanova, Jessica Gorter

Editor: Katharina Wartena

Language: Russian, English

Country: The Netherlands

Year: 2023

EVENT DETAILS

In-Person Date

Sunday, November 12, 2023 12:15 PM

Venue

IFC Center

BUY TICKETS

In-Person Date

Monday, November 13, 2023 12:15 PM

Venue

IFC Center

BUY TICKETS

Online Dates

Monday, November 13 – Sunday, November 26, 2023

Venue

Online Screening

BUY TICKETS

Source: DOC NYC

Dear friends!

Please join us next Wednesday night, November 15, for a screening of The Dmitriev Affair (2023 | 96 min | Netherlands) by Jessica Gorter, followed by Q&A with the director!

Our screening of The Dmitriev Affair at Hunter College CUNY takes place after its U.S. premiere at DOC NYC on Sunday and Monday, November 12 and 13! Please consider attending these earlier screenings, especially if you cannot make it to ours!

Thank you, as always, and see you soon!

Tamizdat Project

THE DMITRIEV AFFAIR
Film screening and Q&A with the director Jessica Gorter
Wednesday, November 15, 7 pm
Elizabeth Hemmerdinger Center (709 Hunter East Building)
Free and open to the public. RSVP required

The riveting story of Yuri Dmitriev is a tale of one man’s fight against the erasure of history by the Russian state. Deep inside the Russian forests, against the wishes of the authorities, 60-year-old Yuri Dmitriev searches for mass graves from the era of Stalin’s terror against his own people – until one day he is arrested and sentenced to 15 years in a penal colony. Following Yuri closely, the film paints a shocking picture of the way the Russian state rewrites history and treats its citizens.

Yuri Dmitriev exhumes what the Russian rulers would rather forget. After years of searching the pine forests of Karelia in northwestern Russia, he discovers a mass grave containing thousands of people who were secretly executed during Stalin’s “Great Terror” of 1937. It is not the Russian government but Yuri Dmitriev who tracks down their identities in the archives and organizes commemorations for their next of kin. Thanks to his efforts, they finally find out what happened to their lost relatives. Having himself been left at a maternity clinic as a baby, he is a man on a mission: “Every human being has the right to know where they came from and where their family lies buried.”

Trailer for “The Dmitriev Affair” (2023)

While abroad there is increasing recognition for this “archaeologist of terror,” in Russia Dmitriev is discredited as someone collaborating with the West. Then he is arrested, on basis of a fabricated charge. Tragically accurate Dmitriev predicts his own future and that of his country.

Jessica Gorter is a Dutch documentary filmmaker. She studied directing and editing at the Dutch Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam. Her films are screened worldwide at film festivals, theatrically released and broadcasted internationally. Gorter made her breakthrough with 900 Days (2011) about the myth and reality of the Leningrad blockade. The film won a.o. the IDFA Award for Best Dutch Documentary, the Prix Interreligieux at Visions du Réel and the special jury prize at ArtDocFest in Moscow. In 2014 Jessica received the prestigious Documentary Award from the Dutch Prince Bernhard Cultural Fund for her work. In her other feature-length documentary The Red Soul (2017), the director investigated why Stalin is still seen as a hero by so many Russians. With her latest documentary The Dmitriev Affair (2023) Gorter continues the theme of the films she has been making in Russia since the 1990s: laying bare the consequences for individual lives of the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Directions: At the reception desk of the Hunter West Building, please present your ID to get a pass. From there, take the escalator to the 3rd floor, turn right and walk across the sky bridge to the Hunter East Building, then take the elevator to the 7th floor. Hemmerdinger Center is at the end of the hallway past the turnstiles.

Source: Tamizdat Project email newsletter, 8 November 2023

On This Day, or, Cyka Blyat

Don’t turn off your TV set. Keep watching the “most exciting World Cup ever.” While you do that, actual Russians and some non-Russians (i.e., Oleg Sentsov) are suffering horribly for the near-absolute power Russia’s Emperor of Ice Cream and his retinue have acquired over the last twenty years.

It was this same power (and the money that comes with it) that made it possible for the Emperor of Ice Cream and his pals to buy off FIFA’s bid committee and win the right to host the 2018 World Cup. They invoked this same power to spend more on preparations for the World Cup than any other host country has ever spent.

But instead of doing what enlightened despots have been known to do on such occasions — declaring amnesties, pardons, and ceasefires during Olympic Games and other such celebrations and great sporting events — the Emperor of Ice Cream’s repressive and imaginative secret services have seemingly notched up their civil war against their own people while you stay glued to your TV set, pretending it is possible to separate sports from politics.

Tell that to Yuri Dmitriev, rearrested and recharged for a crime for which he had recently been acquitted. Tell that to the Penza-Petersburg “terrorists,” all of them tortured by the FSB (KGB) into forcing them to give the testimony the FSB wanted to hear, never mind that it is total nonsense, the sick fantasies of the FSB itself, which sees or, rather, pretends to see a “terrorist” hiding under every rock. Tell that to Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker and resident of Crimea, sentenced to 20 years in a maximum security correctional facility in Russia’s Far North for the thought crime of opposing Russia’s occupation of Crimea.

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2018

“The amount of pollution caused by idling cars is incredible.”

—Nigel Havers, “PM,” BBC Radio 4, 29.06.17

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2017. As a blogger quoted on Dictionary.com notes, ‘While there is no exact English translation, the Russian phrase cyka blyat (сука блять in the Russian alphabet) is roughly equivalent to the English “fucking shit” or “bitch whore.” Cyka means “bitch” while blyat is a multifunctional vulgarity along the lines of “shit” or “fuck.” Together, cyka blyat is used to express uncontrollable anger, similar to dropping a series of F-bombs in English.’

It’s frightening how “natural” absolutely neo-Nazi-like racialism has come to seem to so many folks in the Former East. It really beggars the imagination. What went wrong?

And it’s all reproduced and disseminated, whether in private conversation or more impersonal forums like Facebook, with such aplomb and confidence, as if literally no else in the world has thought or could think otherwise. Even broaching, in the most primitive way possible, the idea that races are a “construct” used to dominate some “races” while advantaging others, not something “natural,” will only expose you to instant derision.

What “race” is this bird? Is it white or black? In fact, it’s black, white, and several shades in between. Obviously, this is an absurd conversation, since we superior beings don’t attribute “race” to birds.

But we do attribute it to each other, missing somehow that the whole point, the only point, is power. Natural’s not in it.

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2017

One of the keys to successfully translating contemporary Russian avant-garde poetry into English is having absolutely no sense of colloquial English. The translations should sound leaden, awkward, and dull, as if they had been written by a manager in the Flint, Michigan, water department trying to justify his criminal negligence in an impenetrable and evasive letter to the EPA, to wit:

I feel fear.

I am afraid of something, but I don’t know what.

Wherever you were, you must get

from wherever it was

to the place from which you left.

 

Why do you assume that your toothache corresponds to the fact

that you hold your cheek.

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2016

A mace in the backseat of someone’s decked out ride.

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2016

I’m totally wired.

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2016

Russia’s cultural capital, where nice young men like this one are beat up in broad daylight by fascists, and the police protect the fascists.

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2013

More fascists at today’s LGBT Pride event in Petersburg, as photographed by the intrepid Sergey Chernov. He reports that a few of the fascists brought small children with them so that it would be possible to charge the LGBT activists with violating Petersburg’s fascist-inspired law against “gay propaganda” amongst minors.

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2013

Fascists posing as “Cossacks” at today’s LGBT Pride event in downtown Petersburg, where all the gay activists were arrested by the police, unlike the 200 or 300 fascists, who apparently enjoy near or complete immunity for crimes that would get anyone else arrested. Photo by one of the few faithful friends of freedom left in Petersburg, Sergey Chernov.

Photo by Sergey Chernov: “St. Petersburg LGBT Pride event: fascists.”

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2013

Photo by Sergey Chernov: “St. Petersburg annual LGBT Pride event: stoned, beaten and arrested. Central St. Petersburg, today.”

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2013

Going Underground (Continuity)

The “underground” exhibition Continuity [Sviaz’ vremen] has been underway in Petersburg since September. The parents of Yuli Boyarshinov, who was convicted in the Network Case, were involved in organizing it.

The exhibition is dedicated to political prisoners. They produced some of the works on display themselves using improvised means while in pretrial detention centers and penal colonies. Poetry readings and art therapy sessions at which postcards for political prisoners are produced also held in the space.

Bumaga visited Continuity and shows here how the exhibition is organized.

The “underground” exhibition opened in September in a private space. The organizers have already planned to close it several times, but people keep coming. “We didn’t think it would last that long. There is even a poetry reading scheduled for Saturday,” Nikolai Boyarshinov, Yuli Boyarshinov’s father, told Bumaga.

The exhibition features works by current political prisoners, including those involved in the Network Case. Some of the works are dedicated to the victims of the Great Terror.

The living room — the main exhibition space — contains paintings by the artist Ad’u. She says that exhibition spaces are reluctant to take her work. “They say, ‘Well, you know,'” she shares with us.

A portrait of Karelian historian Yuri Dmitriev and maps of Sandarmokh hang under the ceiling. Dmitriev was convicted of “sexual violence” against his adopted daughter. He was scheduled to be released in 2020, but the court toughened his sentence from three and a half years in a medium security facility to thirteen years in a maximum security penal colony.

There are paintings dedicated to Alexei Navalny. A protest action with flashlights, which took place in Russian cities on February 14, 2021, is depicted as a flashlight shining into the sky and signaling for help.

One of the paintings alludes to a protest action by Pavel Krisevich: a man on a cross, under whose feet dossiers of political cases burn. Next to it are drawings by Krisevich himself, which he made while in a pretrial detention center, using pieces of a sheet, improvised materials and homemade paints. In October, Krisevich, who had previously spent a year in pretrial detention, was sentenced to five years in a penal colony.

On the walls of the corridor outside the living room there are portraits of the young men convicted in the Network Case and their stories. Drawings by the men themselves are also presented. Nikolai Boyarshinov says that each of the convicts “has begun to draw to one degree or another.”

In a closet in the hallway there are drawings by the artist cyanide the angry [tsianid zloi]. Since February, he has been producing one image every day about the war and political crackdown. On the closet doors and inside it there are portraits of Sasha Skochilenko and Seva Korolev, who are charged with “discrediting” the Russian army, Kansk Teenagers Case defendant Nikita Uvarov, and scenes of Navalny in a cell.

“Today, Sasha Skochilenko was remanded in custody until June 1. She replaced price tags in shops [sic] with anti-war messages. She faces 5 to 15 years in prison. #FreeSashaSkochilenko,” Photo: Andrei Bok

There are also anti-war drawings in the exhibition. They are painted in yellow and blue colors. They were created by Ad’u, who, along with other artists, was detained during a protest rally in April 2022, when she was painting riot police against the backdrop of St. Isaac’s Cathedral.

There is an art therapy group in the space, which has been led by Nikolai Boyarshinov’s wife Tatiana since May. The group’s members make postcards to fight burnout, stress and fear. They then send postcards to political prisoners.

Continue reading →

Historian Yuri Dmitriev Transferred to Maximum Security Penal Colony

Karelian historian and human rights activist Yuri Dmitriev, who was sentenced to fifteen years in prison in late 2021, has been transferred to a maximum security penal colony in Mordovia, Interfax reports, citing Dmitriev’s attorney Viktor Anufriev as its source.

The historian will serve his sentence in Correctional Colony No. 18 in the village of Potma. Dmitriev must spend another ten years in the colony [to serve out his sentence].

The first criminal case against Yuri Dmitriev was launched in 2016. The historian was accused of making child pornography involving an adopted daughter. He denied any wrongdoing. The court acquitted Dmitriev, but in 2018 new charges were filed against him. In addition to making pornography, he was accused of sexually abusing his daughter and illegally possessing a weapon.

Yuri Dmitriev
Photo: Peter Kovalev/TASS. Courtesy of Radio Svoboda

In the summer of 2020, a court in Petrozavodsk sentenced Dmitriev to three and a half years in a maximum security penal colony. In September of the same year, the Supreme Court of Karelia toughened Dmitriev’s sentence to thirteen years in a maximum security penal colony. In December of last year, the court increased Dmitriev’s sentence to fifteen years in a penal colony. The court found him guilty of producing child pornography, committing indecent acts, and illegally possessing a weapon. He had previously been acquitted on all three charges.

A historian and the head of the Karelian branch of Memorial, Dmitriev and his colleagues discovered, in the 1990s, the killing fields at Sandarmokh, where people were shot during the Great Terror. In total, about 150 grave pits were identified and marked, in which the remains of approximately four and a half thousand people could be located.

A journalistic investigation [by Proekt] alleged that the historian’s persecution was linked to Anatoly Seryshev, an aide to President Vladimir Putin, who previously headed the Karelian FSB, where he was charged, among other things, with purging the opposition from the region.

Source: Sever.Realii (Radio Svoboda), 10 May 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader

Russian Supreme Court Rejects Yuri Dmitriev’s Appeals Request

Screenshot of the Russian Supreme Court’s decision to reject Yuri Dmitriev’s request for a review of his verdict

Russian Supreme Court Refuses to Review Historian Yuri Dmitriev’s Verdict
Current Time
October 13, 2021

The Russian Supreme Court will not consider the cassation appeal of the head of Memorial’s Karelian branch, Yuri Dmitriev, who was sentenced to thirteen years in a high-security penal colony on charges of violent acts against a child. This was reported on the court’s website, and human rights activist Zoya Svetova also reported the denial of the request on Facebook.

“Request to transfer the case (cassation complaints, submissions) for consideration at a session of the cassation court has been denied,” the case card on the court’s website says.

This past summer, more than 150 cultural and academic figures sent an open letter to Russian Supreme Court chief justice Vyacheslav Lebedev asking the court to take Dmitriev’s case from the Petrozavodsk courts and render their own verdict.

Svetova reminded her readers that the criminal case against Dmitriev, who was accused of sexual crimes and distributing pornography, has been tried in the courts of Karelia for four and a half years. Twice the courts acquitted the historian, and twice the verdict was overturned.

“That is, [Russian Supreme Court] Judge Abramov read the file of a case in which the Karelian historian was actually acquitted twice, and then these sentences were overturned, but he decided not to review anything at all. That is, he didn’t allow the case to go to the cassation court, so as not to IMITATE justice. Because the outcome had been the same in the cassation court. This is another new low for justice,” Svetova commented on Facebook.

Historian Yuri Dmitriev, who was the first to investigate the mass graves from the Great Terror in Sandarmokh, was initially arrested five years ago, in 2016. He was charged with producing child pornography (punishable under Article 242.2 of the Criminal Code) and committing indecent acts (punishable under Article 135.1 of the Criminal Code) against his adopted daughter, a minor. The charges were occasioned by nude pictures of the child found at Dmitriev’s house, which, as he explained, he had taken so that the children’s welfare authorities could verify at any time that the child was healthy and not injured.

In 2018, he was acquitted of the charges of producing pornography and committing indecent acts, but was sentenced to two and a half years of supervised release for possession of a weapon (punishable under Article 222.1 of the Criminal Code): during a search of Dmitriev’s house, police had found part of the barrel from a hunting rifle.

Dmitriev’s adopted daughter was immediately removed from his custody after the first arrest, and since then she has been living with her grandmother.

In June 2018, Dmitriev was arrested again: a new criminal case was opened against him, this time into commission of violent acts, and the lower court’s initial acquittal in the case was also overturned. According to the new charges, Dmitriev had not only photographed the girl, but also touched her crotch. Dmitriev himself said that he was checking the dryness of the child’s underwear. (The girl had suffered from bedwetting.)

The new trial ended in July 2020 with an acquittal on the indecent acts and pornography charges. However, the Petrozavodsk City Court ruled that Dmitriev was guilty of committing violent acts and sentenced him to three and a half years in a high-security penal colony.

In September 2020, the Karelian Supreme Court, after considering the appeals of the defense and the prosecution against the verdict, increased Dmitriev’s sentence to thirteen years in a high-security penal colony.

On the day of the third cassation court hearing in the Dmitriev case, the investigative journalism website Proekt published an article in which it named a possible “high-ranking curator” overseeing the case. According to Proekt, it could be the Russian presidential aide Anatoly Seryshev, who was head of the FSB in Karelia from 2011 to 2016.

Очень серый кардинал

Translated by the Russian Reader

Over the Transom

From a friend in Leningrad:

“L. and I got our second covid shot today. There are no queues here. The majority of the population, as you know, is afraid and has no plans to be vaccinated, and no public awareness campaign is underway. L. telephoned the clinic, and they signed us up for the next day!”

Meanwhile, according to the Moscow Times, the pollocracy rolls on, scientifically confirming all our worse fears about the deplorable Russisch hoi polloi (some of which may be true if only in the sense that “independent polling” in Russia is meant to reinforce the authoritarian “mindset” it pretends to unmask by asking “ordinary people” whether they’ve stopped beating their wife):

Nearly two out of three Russians believe the conspiracy theory that the coronavirus is a bioweapon created by humans, a survey by the independent Levada Center polling agency said Monday.

According to Levada’s results, 64% of Russian respondents said Covid-19 was artificially created as a new form of biological weapon. That compares with 23% who said the virus emerged naturally and 13% who couldn’t answer.

[…]

Vaccine hesitancy is also on the rise, with 62% of respondents saying they don’t want to get Russia’s Sputnik V jab compared with 30% who do. Younger Russians were more skeptical of the domestically manufactured vaccine than their older counterparts by a 74-to-56 margin.

Among the most cited reasons for declining interest in Sputnik V are fears of side effects, incomplete clinical trials and the sense that “there’s no point” in a vaccine, Levada said.

Still, four out of five Russians said they or someone they know had already gotten sick with Covid-19, while 28% said they have not come across anyone who got sick.

Levada conducted the survey among 1,601 respondents from 50 regions between Feb. 18-24.

Completing this depressing picture, Masha Gessen finally admits to what I’ve long thought was the reason that she and lots of other “liberal” Russians had nothing to say about the Yuri Dmitriev case and other sketchy frame-ups of Russia’s undesirables (e.g., the Network Case defendants and the Jehovah’s Witnesses) perpetrated by the country’s insecurity services: because when the Kremlin and its info cronies target “heinous” political prisoners and dissidents, it works. Proper people like Gessen don’t want to have anything to do with their solidarity campaigns. To wit:

The Russian regime has used both its vast media infrastructure and its judicial system to vilify its opponents. An army of Kremlin trolls appears to be working to keep Navalny’s old xenophobic statements in circulation, and on occasion it seems to have manufactured new ones (I am not repeating the fake here). Perhaps the most egregious example of smearing a political opponent is the case of the memory activist Yuri Dmitriev, who has been convicted of sexually abusing his adopted daughter. There is little doubt that the persecution of Dmitriev is political, but the charge is so heinous that I, for one, have refrained from writing about the case. Amnesty hasn’t named Dmitriev a prisoner of conscience, either. As the Kremlin continues to crack down on the opposition, I would expect many more opposition activists to be revealed to be indefensible, as though only morally impeccable people had the right to be free of political persecution.

Igor Yakovenko: The Execution of Yuri Dmitriev

The Public Execution of the Historian Dmitriev
Igor Yakovenko’s Blog
September 30, 2020

Three days before the Karelian Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the “case” of the historian Yuri Dmitriev, the program “Vesti” on state TV channel Rossiya 24 ran a segment in which “shocking pictures” of Dmitriev’s foster daughter were aired. The voice of reporter Olga Zhurenkova shook with anger as she said that “hundreds of Internet users were shocked by these terrible pictures that appeared on the Internet on the morning of September 26,” that “the Internet is boiling with indignation” at this monster who “ruined a child’s life.” The security services got into Dmitriev’s computer and pulled out photos of his foster daughter. Then the security services leaked these photos to the Internet for thousands to see. After that, Rossiya 24 showed them on TV to millions. And they also showed a video in which the foster daughter hugs Dmitriev: the girl can clearly be identified in the video, and just to make sure, Rossiya 24’s reporters called her by name.

This goes to the question of who actually ruined the child’s life and why they did it.

Rossiya 24’s handiwork lasts 4 minutes, 48 seconds. The state channel’s reporters managed to pack into this amount of time all the hatred that the ideological heirs of Stalin’s executioners feel towards the man who for many years studied and presented to the public the traces of the latter’s crimes. In all his previous trials, Dmitriev and his defense team managed to fully prove his innocence. And the prosecutors were well aware that he was innocent, so to concoct and pass a monstrous sentence on him, they recreated the ambiance of the show trials during the Great Terror. Back then, the “people’s anger” was fueled by newspaper articles, demonstrations outside the courtroom, and meetings at factories where shockworkers demanded that the Trotskyite-fascist Judases be shot like mad dogs. Now, in the third decade of the 21st century, the Internet and TV organize the “people’s anger.”

The appeals hearing in Dmitriev’s case was orchestrated like a special military operation whose goal was to prevent the human rights defender from getting out of prison alive. To accomplish this, in addition to organizing the “people’s anger,” the authorities virtually deprived Dmitriev of legal counsel. His lead defense attorney, Viktor Anufriev, was quarantined on suspicion of having the coronavirus, while the court-appointed lawyer said that it was a mockery to expect him to review the nineteen volumes of the case file in three days. Despite the fact that Anufriev petitioned to postpone the hearing for a specific period after his release from quarantine, and Dmitriev declined the services of the court-appointed lawyers, the court, contrary to normal practice, refused to postpone the hearing, and so Dmitriev was left virtually with no legal representation.

Yuri Dmitriev’s work touched a very sensitive chord in the collective soul of Russia’s current bosses, who see themselves as the direct heirs of those who organized the Great Terror, which, they are firmly convinced, is a purely internal matter of the “new nobility.” It is virtually a family secret. They believe that Dmitriev—who not only investigated the mass murders at the Sandarmokh killing field, but also invited foreign journalists there and published lists of those who were killed—is a traitor who deserves to die.

Moreover, the Dmitriev case has come to embody one of the most important amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation adopted this past summer. Namely, the new Article 67.1, which establishes a completely monstrous norm: “The Russian Federation honors the memory of the defenders of the Fatherland [and] ensures the protection of historical truth.” In other words, the task of protecting the “historical truth” is assumed not by historians, but by the state, that is, by the apparatus of violence and coercion.

In fact, the Dmitriev case has been a demonstrative act of “historical truth enforcement.”

The fact is that on the eve of Dmitriev’s trial, members of the Russian Military History Society attempted to write a “correct history” of the killing field in Sandarmokh. They dug up mass graves and hauled away bags of the remains for “forensic examination,” subsequently that they were Soviet soldiers who had been shot by the Finnish invaders.

There should be no blank or black spots in the history of the Fatherland: everything should shine with cleanliness, resound with military exploits and feats of labor, and smell of patriotism. To this end, MP Alexei Zhuravlyov—the man who recently told Russian TV viewers that Europe has brothels for zoophiles where you can rape a turtle—introduced a bill under which you could get three years in prison for “distorting history.” To Zhuravlyov’s great disappointment, his legislative initiative was not appreciated.

And really, why send someone down for three years for promoting “incorrect history,” when you can send them to a maximum security penal colony for thirteen years, which for the 64-year-old human rights activist is tantamount to a death sentence. It was this verdict that was issued by the Karelian Supreme Court by order of the heirs of those who organized the Great Terror.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Yuri Dmitriev. Photo by Igor Podgorny/TASS. Courtesy of the Moscow Times

Prominent Gulag Historian’s 3.5-Year Prison Sentence Lengthened to 13 Years
Moscow Times
September 29, 2020

A Russian court has lengthened the term prominent Gulag historian Yuri Dmitriev must serve in prison to 13 years, the Mediazona news website reported Tuesday, a surprise increase of a lenient sentence for charges his allies say were trumped up to silence him.

Dmitriev was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison in July after a city court in northwestern Russia found him guilty of sexually assaulting his adopted [sic] daughter, a ruling his supporters viewed as a victory given the 15 years requested by prosecutors.

The Supreme Court of the Republic of Karelia overturned that ruling and sentenced him to 13 years in a maximum-security penal colony, Mediazona reported, citing the lawyer of Dmitriev’s adopted [sic] daughter.

Under his previous sentence, Dmitriev, 64, would have been released in November as his time already served in pre-trial detention counted toward his sentence.

Human rights advocates condemned the Karelia Supreme Court’s ruling, calling it a “shame.”

Dmitriev has vehemently denied the charges against him.

The head of the Memorial human rights group’s Karelia branch, Dmitriev is known for helping open the Sandarmokh memorial to the thousands of victims murdered there during Stalin-era political repressions in 1937 and 1938.

An “Acquittal” (of Sorts) in the Yuri Dmitriev Case

yuri dmitriev
#YuriDmitriev

Yevgenia Litvinova reports that Karelian historian and human rights activist Yuri Dmitriev was found “guilty” by the court today and sentenced to three and half years in prison. She remarks that this is tantamount to an “acquittal” because the prosecution had requested a sentence of fifteen years for Dmitriev. With time already served (in remand prison, where he has been nearly continuously since the spring of 2017), Dmitriev should be released from police custody in November.

It’s pointless to discuss the “crimes” of which Dmitriev was convicted today, because the charges were trumped-up and the trial was a sham. The real reason that Dmitriev was arrested and put through this hell was that he unearthed a massive NKVD execution/burial ground in a wooded place called Sandarmokh, a place that in the years since it was discovered has become a memorial to the victims of Stalin’s Great Terror.

A state now “led” by people who happily let themselves be called “Chekists” and are most certainly “ex” KGB officers could never forgive Dmitriev for a crime like that.

You can read all about Dmitriev, his persecution, and Sandarmokh by clicking on this link. \\ TRR

Photo courtesy of Yevgenia Litvinova

A Death Sentence for Yuri Dmitriev?

Yuri Dmitriev. Archive photo courtesy of 7X7

Karelian Supreme Court Refuses to Release Historian Yuri Dmitriev from Remand Prison Where Coronavirus Has Been Discovered
Denis Strelkov and Sergei Markelov
7X7
May 7, 2020

The Supreme Court of Karelia has turned down an appeal by the defense to not extend local historian and head of the Karelian branch of Memorial Yuri Dmitriev’s arrest in police custody, 7X7 has been informed by Dmitriev’s lawyer Viktor Anunfriev.

The defense had asked the court to change the pretrial restraints imposed on the 64-year-old Dmitriev because the local historian was at risk for the coronavirus infection since a couple of months ago he had suffered a severe cold. On April 30, Artur Parfenchikov, head of the Republic of Karelia, wrote on his social media page that two prisoners in Petrozavodsk Remand Prison No. 1 had been diagnosed with COVID-19.

More than 150 people, including famous actors and musicians, scientists and teachers, had signed an open letter expressing concern for the health and well-being of Dmitriev, who in the late 1990s uncovered at Sandarmokh and Krasny Bor the mass graves of Soviet citizens executed during the Great Terror of the 1930s.

In April 2018, the Petrozavodsk City Court acquitted Dmitriev on charges of producing child pornography. The charges were made after nude photos of his foster daughter were found during a police search of his house. Dmitriev claimed that he had taken the snapshots at the request of social and health services to keep track of the girl’s health. Expert witnesses at the trial testified that they did not consider the pictures pornographic. Two months later, the acquittal was overturned by the Karelian Supreme Court, and Dmitriev was charged, in addition to making the pictures, with sexual assault.

Translated by the Russian Reader