Fwd: Appeal on behalf of MEMORIAL (St. Petersburg)
Andrew Grigorenko
Date: Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 5:43 PM
Subject: Re: Appeal on behalf of MEMORIAL (St. Petersburg)
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Some of you may have heard about an alarming event that occurred in the office of the human rights organization *Memorial* in St. Petersburg just days after my Dec. 1 fundraising email (copied below). To be brief, on Dec. 4, masked agents of the St. Petersburg Prosecutor searched Memorial's office, seized computers and various documents, and refused staff requests (guaranteed by Russian law) for a lawyer to be present during the raid or for a written protocol of the seized items.
There has been extensive media coverage of the event. You can find an early example in /The Independent/ (London):
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/state-raids-office-of-human-rights-group-1052542.html
The investigation continues as of this writing. There have been written protests from scholars, human rights activists and others in Russia, Europe, and North America. The most recent information - a statement by Irina Flige, the director of Memorial SPb, following her conversation with representatives of the St. Petersburg Prosecutor - is attached to this email.
These developments make our solidarity with and support for Memorial more urgent than ever. Please consider making a donation as per the instructions below.
Best,
Ben Nathans (and signatories listed below)
Benjamin Nathans wrote:
Homepage: www.memorial-nic.org <http://www.memorial-nic.org> E-mail: gulag...@gmail.com <mailto:gulag...@gmail.com>
Dear Colleague,
We are writing to you with our annual appeal for donations to *MEMORIAL* in St. Petersburg, a human rights organization dedicated, along with other Memorial societies across the former Soviet Union, to the investigation and commemoration of the victims of Soviet terror. Last year, we collected $ 3,400 for Memorial. *
At the bottom of this message, you will find information on how to make tax-deductible donations in the U.S. and Germany (see HOW TO DONATE).*
You may have read the recent front page article in the /New York Times/ (Nov. 27, 2008), describing the "chill over the Soviet security archives," which "has not only thwarted inquiries into events of the 1930s under Stalin," but "has also prevented historians from gaining a better understanding of other aspects of Soviet persecution, like the hounding and the deportation of dissidents through the 1980s." Under the headline "Nationalism of Putin's Era Veils Sins of Stalin's," the article mentions the work of Memorial.
In present-day Russia, Memorial -- an organization founded during the era of /glasnost'/ and /perestroika /-- is one of the very few working on behalf of the memory of the victims of the terror. Memorial in Petersburg is run by seven people—with the help of numerous volunteers—out of an apartment at No. 23 Ulitsa Rubinshteina (Apt. 103), equipped with a unique archive, a small library, a seminar room, an old copying machine, and three computers.
Postal address: NITs Memorial, box 4, 191002,
St. Petersburg, Russia.
Tel.: [++7-812] 575-58-61, Tel. and Fax: 572-23-11.Last December, we told you about the web-based*/ /Virtual Gulag Museum *which has been developed at the Petersburg Memorial since 2003 (www.gulagmuseum.org <http://www.gulagmuseum.org>). This is the one and only museum of the Gulag to appear in Russia, and there is little hope at present that a real museum will open any time soon. This website and the accompanying DVD bring together images of camp artifacts from a number of local history museums in the remote areas near the former prison camps (including the Memorial museum in Tomsk mentioned in the Nov. 27 /New York Times/ article). *Twelve new locations have been added in the past year*. The original website, and the first disc, appeared in 2004. A relaunch of the website and of the disc are scheduled to take place by the end of this year: Virtual'nyi muzei Gulaga. Vypusk 2. DVD – Sankt-Peterburg, 2008. There you will find a new exposition: "The Space of Gulag and Terror"—This exhibition shows traces of the Gulag in the landscape, cityscape, and industrial sites, as well as a catalogue of the sites of mass shootings.
Founded in 1990, the Petersburg Memorial society to this day exists as a grass-roots organization, barely supported by various short-term grants. For years, several scholars (whose signatures you will find below) have successfully mobilized support from friends and colleagues, collecting donations small ($5), large ($1,000), and in between. Donors are students, professors, and lovers of Russian culture in the U.S. and Western Europe. These funds (which have zero overhead) help cover expenses such as electricity bills, photocopying, computer support, and tea for volunteers. Memorial in Petersburg has always been, and remains, very poor.
Those who signed this appeal know Memorial, its people, and its projects, and we know them well.
Below, we highlight the main projects completed since we last asked you for help in December 2007.
As in previous years, the *Memorial Discussion Project *has led to public presentations and debates on a number of subjects, including "The Era of Forgetting: Memory of the Great Terror after 70 Years," "The Student Movement Yesterday and Today," "My 1968," "The National Question in Contemporary Russia," and "Can the State Foster a Civil Society?"oste...@uni-tuebingen.de <mailto:oste...@uni-tuebingen.de>
In a new project, *Guidebooks for the Terror,* the Petersburg Memorial Society is consulting with 12 Russian cities in the organization of guidebooks for city sites connected with the Terror.
*HOW TO DONATE:*
American donors* *should send checks, payable to the Chekhov Publishing Corporation and – this is important! – indicating *NITs Memorial SPb* in the memo section, to the following address:
Chekhov Publishing Corporation
c/o Mr. Edward Kline
1165 Park Avenue
Apt. 5D
New York, New York 10128
(See below for information on the Chekhov Publishing Corporation and Edward Kline; there are no overhead costs.)
Please include a return address so that you can receive a written receipt for tax deduction purposes.
Germans and other Europeans can wire money directly to NITs Memorial's account at Memorial Deutschland:
Bank fur Sozialwirtschaft Berlin
Account #/Kontonummer: 33 200 00
Routing #/BLZ: 100 205 00
For/Stichwort: *"NITs Memorial" (please be sure to mark that this is for NITs)
*
-------------------------------------
*The Chekhov Publishing Corporation* is a public non-profit educational foundation and an I.R.S.-certified, tax-exempt 501 (c) 3 organization. It was registered in New York State on July 26, 1968, as an Educational-Literary Charitable Corporation whose purpose was to publish and distribute or facilitate the distribution of works of literary, historical and artistic worth in the Russian language; all of the foregoing purposes to be accomplished without profit. While the Soviet Union existed, the CPC published original works by authors who were living in the Soviet Union, including Andrei Sakharov, Joseph Brodsky, Nadezhda Mandelstam, and Lydia Chukovskaya, as well as the dissident journal /A Chronicle of Current Events/. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the CPC no longer publishes books itself, but provides modest financial assistance to non-profit publishers of academic and human rights works in the Russian Federation.* The CPC has no paid employees and charges no fees for contributions received for transmittal to organizations in Russia. Its president is Mr. Edward Kline, who is also president of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation. Those interested in Mr. Kline's bona fides can consult the preface to Volume One of Sakharov's /Memoirs/.*
We will repeat this appeal a year from now and try to ensure that NITs Memorial has stable support from individuals in the West as long as Russian funding remains unavailable.
Thank you for your support: it really does make a difference.
Dietrich Beyrau
Professor
Institut für Osteuropaische Geschichte und Landeskunde
University of Tuebingen
bnat...@history.upenn.edu <mailto:bnat...@history.upenn.edu>
Benjamin Nathans
Associate Professor
Department of History
University of Pennsylvania
ipap...@socrates.berkeley.edu <mailto:ipap...@socrates.berkeley.edu>
Irina Paperno
Professor
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
University of California, Berkeley
jan.p...@uni-tuebingen.de <mailto:jan.p...@uni-tuebingen.de>
Jan Plamper
Dilthey Fellow
Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin
Benjamin Nathans
Department of History
University of Pennsylvania
208 College Hall
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6379 USA
Tel: 215-898-4958
Fax: 215-573-2089
bnat...@history.upenn.edu
Andrew Grigorenko
December 13, 2009
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
We are writing to you with our annual appeal for donations to ****MEMORIAL** in St. Petersburg, an organization dedicated, along with other Memorial societies across the former Soviet Union, to bringing to public awareness the many unknown victims of Soviet terror and to advancing human rights in Russia today. At the bottom of this message, you will find information on how to make tax-deductible donations in the U.S. and Germany (see* HOW TO DONATE*).
As you may recall, at the time of last year's fundraising appeal, the St. Petersburg Prosecutor had just seized computers, hard drives, and various documents from Memorial's office on Ulitsa Rubenshteina in an unannounced raid on December 4, 2008. Irina Flige, Memorial SPb's director, fought this action in a protracted court battle that eventually resulted in a verdict on May 6, 2009, according to which all items were returned and the raid itself was declared illegal. "This result," Flige later wrote, "would not have been achieved without the wave of protest and solidarity from Russia and the world in the wake of the December 4 police raid." What is more, the funds we collected last year helped in this effort in a very tangible way.
There has been more good news: in October 2009, the European Parliament awarded its annual Sakharov Prize to the entire Memorial organization, as represented by the Moscow-based Oleg Orlov, Sergei Kovalev and Liudmila Alexeeva, in order "to contribute to ending the circle of fear and violence surrounding human rights defenders in the Russian Federation."
Violence and repressions, of course, continue to threaten human rights work in Russia. The establishment in 2009 of a government commission to monitor "falsifications of history damaging to Russia" places in serious jeopardy Memorial’s efforts to discover the full extent of repressions during the Stalin era. In September 2009, M. N. Suprun, a history professor at Arkhangelsk University involved in collecting data on exiles in the Arkhangelsk region in 1945-56, became one of the first victims of this policy: his home was raided, his databases and computer were seized, and he became the subject of a criminal investigation. The St. Petersburg Memorial was among the first to protest and to appeal for his defense (see http://www.cogita.ru/syuzhety/arhangelskoe-delo-professora-supruna/abarhangelskoe-delobb-informacionnoe-soobschenie-nic-memorial).
Founded in 1990, the Petersburg Memorial society to this day exists as a grass-roots organization, supported in part by various short-term grants. For years, several scholars (whose signatures you will find below) have successfully mobilized support from friends and colleagues, collecting donations small ($5), large ($1,000), and in between. Donors are students, professors, and lovers of Russian culture in the U.S. and Western Europe. These funds (which have zero overhead) help cover expenses such as electricity bills, photocopying, computer support, and tea for volunteers. Memorial SPb has always been, and remains, financially strapped.
In the course of 2009, Memorial SPb engaged in a series of historical and human rights projects. Work continues on its virtual gulag museum, including an expanding data-base that draws on materials from over 100 museums across Russia. An international conference at Memorial in April explored the topic "The Right to a Name: Biography in the 20th Century," including a plenary session on "Living Freely in Conditions of Unfreedom." Archival collections at Memorial were a key source for the book /Social Movements in Leningrad in the Perestroika Years, 1985-1991: A Document Collection/ (SPb, 2009). Finally, in light of the last year's police raid, Memorial has embarked upon a major project to scan its unique archival holdings, making them available via the Web to researchers worldwide.
Today, Memorial SPb is still run by seven people—with the help of numerous volunteers—out of an apartment equipped with an unparalleled archive, a small library, a seminar room, an old copying machine, and three computers.
Homepage: www.memorial-nic.org <http://www.memorial-nic.org> <http://www.memorial-nic.org> E-mail: gulag...@gmail.com <mailto:gulag...@gmail.com> <mailto:gulag...@gmail.com>
Postal address: NITs Memorial, box 4, 191002,
St. Petersburg, Russia.
Tel.: [++7-812] 575-58-61, Tel. and Fax: 572-23-11.
*
*HOW TO DONATE:*
*American donors should send checks, payable to the Chekhov Publishing Corporation and – this is important! – indicating ****NITs Memorial SPb** in the memo section, to the following address:
Chekhov Publishing Corporation
c/o Mr. Edward Kline
1165 Park Avenue
Apt. 5D
New York, New York 10128
(See below for information on the Chekhov Publishing Corporation and Edward Kline; there are no overhead costs.)
Please include a return address so that you can receive a written receipt for tax deduction purposes.
Germans and other Europeans can wire money directly to NITs Memorial's account at Memorial Deutschland:
Bank fur Sozialwirtschaft Berlin
Account #/Kontonummer: 33 200 00
Routing #/BLZ: 100 205 00
For/Stichwort: *"NITs Memorial" (please be sure to mark that this is for NITs)
*-------------------------------------
****The Chekhov Publishing Corporation** is a public non-profit educational foundation and an I.R.S.-certified, tax-exempt 501 (c) 3 organization. It was registered in New York State on July 26, 1968, as an Educational-Literary Charitable Corporation whose purpose was to publish and distribute or facilitate the distribution of works of literary, historical and artistic worth in the Russian language; all of the foregoing purposes to be accomplished without profit. While the Soviet Union existed, the CPC published original works by authors who were living in the Soviet Union, including Andrei Sakharov, Joseph Brodsky, Nadezhda Mandelstam, and Lydia Chukovskaya, as well as the dissident journal ////A Chronicle of Current Events//. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the CPC no longer publishes books itself, but provides modest financial assistance to non-profit publishers of academic and human rights works in the Russian Federation.* The CPC has no paid employees and charges no fees for contributions received for transmittal to organizations in Russia. Its president is Mr. Edward Kline, who is also president of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation. Those interested in Mr. Kline’s bona fides can consult the preface to Volume One of Sakharov’s ////Memoirs//.*
Benjamin Nathans
Associate Professor
Department of History
University of Pennsylvania
Irina Paperno
Professor
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
University of California, Berkeley
Jan Plamper
Dilthey Fellow
Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin
President of General Petro Grigorenko Foundation
www.grigorenko.org
Andrew Grigorenko
Subject: Appeal on behalf of MEMORIAL (St. Petersburg)
Dear
Friends and Colleagues,
We (three academics from the US and Germany, Ben Nathans, Irina
Paperno and Jan Plamper) are writing to you with our annual appeal
for private donations to The Research and Information Center
MEMORIAL in St. Petersburg—an organization dedicated, along with
other Memorial societies across the former Soviet Union, to
bringing to public awareness the many unknown victims of Soviet
terror and to advancing human rights in Russia today.
As you are probably aware, new laws and government regulations aimed at limiting and stigmatizing the activities of human rights groups and other NGOs (non-government organizations) have taken effect in Russia in recent days. We offer a brief description of these new laws below. Memorial and several other human rights groups have announced their decision to openly disobey the new laws, to force their judicial review, and thus test their constitutionality.
Each
year, we turn to friends and colleagues for donations small ($5),
large ($1,000), and in between -- with zero overhead.
THIS
YEAR, WITH THE NEW LAWS, OUR INFORMAL, GRASS-ROOTS DRIVE
IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER.
At the bottom of this message, you will find information on how to make tax-deductible donations in the U.S. and in Germany and the EU. (see HOW TO DONATE).
Information about donors is kept strictly confidential.
WHAT DID MEMORIAL DO IN 2012?
Its activities include an annual conference, several seminars (at
least one of them for young people), a continuing archival project
digitalizing the Memorial collection of biographical materials,
several public exhibitions, several field expeditions, an on-going
oral history project, including on the fate of the Russian Germans
in Leningrad in the 1940s (which has no financing of any kind),
and more.
We will highlight one continuing project.
Memorial continued to work on the VIRTUAL GULAG MUSEUM (a
pilot version was launched in January 2010): http://www.gulagmuseum.org/start.do
In November 2012, the English and German versions were unveiled.
http://www.gulagmuseum.org/start.do?&language=2
(English)
http://www.gulagmuseum.org/start.do?&language=3(Deutsch)
All work has been done by volunteers, mostly from the US,
UK
and Germany.
The English and German versions are still partial: more resources,
financial and human, are needed to create synchronized variants.
There is a new thematic exhibit on the Polish victims of the Stalin terror: http://www.gulagmuseum.org/poland
<http://www.gulagmuseum.org/poland>
A new
Museum resource is a "Chronograph" (a detailed chronology of
political repression from to 1917 to 1991 prepared by the Petersburg
members). Memorial is hoping that readers will send corrections
and additions: http://www.gulagmuseum.org/getFile.do?object=71032051&language=1
When this chronology extends to 2012, it may include information
on the most recent repressive measures:
“FOREIGN AGENT” LAW TAKES EFFECT IN RUSSIA
The
law, requiring Russian nongovernmental, nonprofit organizations
(NGOs) that receive financing from outside Russia to identify
themselves as "foreign agents," was passed on July 21, 2012, two
months after the inauguration of President Vladimir Putin, who has
accused foreign governments of provoking the anti-Kremlin
demonstrations in the months leading up to the elections. In
addition, recent amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation
expand the definition of the crime of State treason to include
“providing financial, technical, advisory or other assistance to a
foreign state or international organization […] directed at
harming Russia's
security.” To date, no definition has been given for what
constitutes “assistance” and what may be construed as “harming
Russia’s security.” Many groups, such as Memorial (in Moscow, St. Petersburg,
and Krasnoiarsk), For Human Rights, and the Moscow Helsinki Group,
have decided to defy the new law and to challenge it in court. If
foreign aid becomes unavailable, some have indicated that they
will move entire organizations into private apartments and rely
solely on volunteers while continuing their activities.
The New York Times has reported that, in the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 21, graffiti appeared on Memorial’s building in the center of Moscow, reading “Foreign Agent. ♥ USA.”
On the response by MEMORIAL and other Russian human rights organizations to the new laws, see http://www.cogita.ru/dokumenty/o-zakonah-ob-nko
HONORS:
On March 28, 2012, Memorial St. Petersburg was awarded the Freedom of Expression Award by the Index on Censorship in London. See the press release:http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2012/03/memorial-win-the-index-40th-anniversary-award/
"Index singles out The Research and Information
Centre Memorial, which logs the brutal repression suffered by
millions in former Soviet countries, for their continued
dedication to guaranteeing freedom of information. The centre has
demonstrated a fierce commitment to protecting human rights. It
not only chronicles the crimes of the Stalinist period, but
monitors current threats against those who speak out against
injustice. Memorial’s remarkable archive includes letters,
diaries, transcripts, photographs, and sound files. Individuals
with first-hand experience of Stalin’s
terror and the Soviet gulag have donated documentation they had
hidden during this brutal period. The centre is a living tribute
to the survivors of Soviet Russia, preserving documentation that
many have tried to bury, and continue to conduct their work
despite constant threats."
MORE
INFORMATION ON "MEMORIAL" IN ST. PETERSBURG:
Founded in 1990, the historians at Petersburg Memorial society
(full name NITS Memorial, or Nauchno-informatsionnyi tsentr
Memorial) to this day function as a grass-roots organization,
funded in part by various western foundations. For years, several
scholars (including those whose signatures you will find below)
have successfully mobilized support from friends and colleagues.
Memorial in St.
Petersburg has always been, and
remains, financially strapped. Today, as before, Memorial is run
by a handful of people—with the help of numerous volunteers—out of
an apartment on ulitsa Rubinshteina 23, equipped with a precious
archive, a small library, a seminar room, a copying machine, and
several computers.
Homepage: <http://www.memorial-nic.org>
We the undersigned know Memorial, its people, and its projects,
and know them well. Irina Paperno
and Jan
Plamper visited
Memorial in St.
Petersburg this summer. We appeal to
you to assist Memorial with its important work.
Please
feel free to forward this petition to friends and colleagues not
included in our mailing list.
HOW TO DONATE:
American
donors should send checks, payable to the Chekhov Publishing
Corporation and – this is important – indicating NITs MEMORIAL SPb
in the memo section, to the following address:
Chekhov Publishing Corporation
c/o Mr. Edward Kline
1165 Park Avenue
Apt. 5D
New York, New York 10128
Please include a return address so that you can receive a written receipt for tax deduction purposes.
Bank für Sozialwirtschaft Berlin
Routing #/BLZ: 100 205 00
Thank you for helping to ensure that Memorial in St. Petersburg has stable support from individuals in the West as long as Russian funding remains unavailable.
-------------------------------------
The Chekhov Publishing Corporation is a public non-profit educational foundation and an I.R.S.-certified, tax-exempt 501 (c) 3 organization. It was registered in New York State on July 26, 1968, as an Educational-Literary Charitable Corporation whose purpose was to publish and distribute or facilitate the distribution of works of literary, historical and artistic worth in the Russian language; all of the foregoing purposes to be accomplished without profit. While the Soviet Union existed, the CPC published original works by authors who were living in the Soviet Union, including Andrei Sakharov, Joseph Brodsky, Nadezhda Mandelstam, and Lydia Chukovskaya, as well as the dissident journal /A Chronicle of Current Events/. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the CPC no longer publishes books itself, but provides modest financial assistance to non-profit publishers of academic and human rights works in the Russian Federation. The CPC has no paid employees and charges no fees for contributions received for transmittal to organizations in Russia. Its president is Mr. Edward Kline, founding president of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation. Those interested in Mr. Kline’s bona fides can consult the preface to Volume One of Sakharov’s /Memoirs/.
Benjamin Nathans
Ronald S. Lauder Endowed Term Associate Professor
--