Seriously...

Historian Catherine Merridale witnessed the birth of Memorial in 1989 as the Soviet Union died. An organisation devoted to recovering the past of the Soviet Gulag and soon documenting the new transgressions of the Russian state and its imperial wars. Even as Russia wnet to war against Ukraine it sought to close Memorial down, silence its voice and reshape history. But months after the invasion Memorial shared in the Nobel Peace Prize, only adding to the Russian government's ire. It has closed its archives and offices and pursued leading figures in Russian Memorial through the courts, declaring them responsible for 'rehabilitating Nazism'. Merridale tells a personal story of the opening of history that Memorial was essential to and the tragedy of its closing and the closing of the past. The Kremlin's current occupants are no more willing to consider the victims of state repression - largely Stalin's repression - than their Soviet predecessors were. The story of Memorial, the association, established in 1989,