Memorial activist Zhemkova: The urge for education

Status: 11/25/2021 5:07 am

The Russian human rights organization Memorial has to officially designate itself as a foreign agent – a stigma for its employees too. What is it that drives you?

By Natalie Sablowski for tagesschau.de

Jelena Zhemkova is actually a mathematician. Despite a successful career in science, the then 26-year-old decided in 1987 to dedicate her life to the memorial cause, as she says. At that time, many people met in the Moscow club “Perestroika” and discussed topics such as politics, law or history. It was a time of social awakening and awakening. It was from this group that the founding initiative of Memorial was formed.

“There was a rumor that millions had been murdered in the GULag system of the USSR. Was that even possible? As a grown woman, I wondered why I didn’t know about any of this.” At that time, says Zhemkova, it was as if a new world was opening up for her – “the country we thought we knew suddenly seemed strange to us”.

A tremendous amount of new information had flowed into them during the period of perestroika. “Suddenly we read Solzhenitsyn’s ‘Archipel Gulag’ or Grossmann’s ‘Everything flows’ and wondered why we didn’t know about any of this.”

In 2004 Memorial – along with other organizations and activists – was awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize. Jelena Zhemkova accepted the award for the organization.

Image: picture-alliance / dpa / dpaweb

Organizational talent in demand

At the time, she exchanged science for a position as administrator at Memorial. Looking back, she admits that she certainly hadn’t dreamed of such a job before. “But the urge to do something for the education was tremendous.” She was the only one in the founding group who could handle numbers and organize.

Today Zhemkova is the managing director of Memorial. She says she was very fortunate to dedicate her life to the Enlightenment. The shock was all the greater when on November 11th a letter from the Supreme Court informed them that the Attorney General’s office was calling for Memorials to be closed.

At that point, says Zhemkova, she was in the process of organizing the handover of her job to the next generation. It is terrible if after 33 years everything that has been built could be destroyed and instead of handing it over you have to worry about rebuilding everything.

The overwhelming burden of bureaucracy

Even before the letter, the “Agents Act”, which enables the authorities to brand independent organizations as foreign agents, had resulted in an “almost intolerable burden” on their work: Disclosing expenses. That presents us with a tremendous amount of bureaucratic effort. ”

In addition, the organization must mark itself as a foreign agent. “With all these laws, the Putin government is poisoning the atmosphere around us,” complains Zhemkova. And the social mood is important for her work.

Too much remains to be done

Regardless of the impending ban, she makes a calm and composed impression. Too much remains to be done for Memorial. Because time is of the essence – contemporary witnesses are dying out, and that is of particular concern to Zhemkova. “When we started our work, we had thousands of living witnesses around us. The archives were locked and we lacked documents, but we had contemporary witnesses as living sources.”

Working with them is based on a strong foundation of trust. “These people shared traumatic experiences with us. Those were difficult interviews. After that, terrible thoughts catch up with you. We don’t leave them alone with that.”

That is why it is important for them, explains Zhemkova, to maintain constant contact with contemporary witnesses, be it through letters, events or a simple phone call. Usually the connection lasted for many years until the end of life. Most of the contemporary witnesses have now died – that is the greatest challenge for their work.

Stalin’s disturbing popularity

Now it is a matter of preserving the evidence of the crimes of the Stalin era and the collected material. It is even more important, says Zhemkova, to educate people. Because many Russians and Russians still see Stalin positively. In 2012, a study by the independent polling center “Levada Center” showed that 28 percent of Russians worshiped Stalin. That makes educating people about his crimes as delicate as it is indispensable. This also applies to today’s crimes. Memorial now also takes care of political prisoners, the rights of LGBTQ people and migrants.

The threatened closure of Memorial will therefore not prevent them from continuing, affirmed Zhemkova. Stalin’s increasing popularity, she says, is wanted by the state. “Here we have to counter this with our work, educate people, explain to them what happened, why it happened – and why it is important that this dark chapter in our history does not repeat itself.”

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