Autor: Robert

I’ll take a closer look at an organization that was founded in protest against the first McDonald’s in Italy and still advocates for regional cuisine and a better food culture today.

Originally published on 11. August 2022

If you visit the McDonald’s on the Spanish Steps in Rome today, a black and gold plaque reminds you of the year 1986, when, according to the plaque, the first restaurant of the American fast food chain in Italy, opened here.

At the time, however, the opening did not only lead to joy. Many intellectuals and, in general, advocates of Italy’s famous cuisine and food culture were not really happy about the idea of having an American fast food restaurant in Rome’s cultural center.

The Founder

Seven hours by car from the McDonald’s in Rome, in Piedmont, in northwestern Italy, lies the small town of Bra. In 1986, a son of the town, Carlo Petrini, founded Slow Food here. Petrini returned to his hometown after studying sociology and worked as a journalist for changing newspapers, started his own radio station, became politically involved and began writing about food topics in the late 1970s. The goal was to counteract industrialization and the resulting decline in the quality of food and to stand up for “regional traditions, good food, culinary enjoyment and for a moderate pace of life.”

Slow Food continued to grow and grow. The problem of small, traditional food producers losing ground and being replaced by mass producers was, after all, not unique to Italy. Three years after its founding, representatives from 15 countries signed the Slow Food Manifesto.

Let us defend ourselves against the universal madness of ‚the fast life‘ with tranquil material pleasure. Against those – or, rather, the vast majority – who confuse efficiency with frenzy, we propose the vaccine of an adequate portion of sensual gourmandise pleasures, to be taken with slow and prolonged enjoyment.

From the Slow Food Manifesto

Today, the organization that opposed the excessive globalization of food has become an NGO working worldwide. It no longer just connects local farmers, but now works on a wide variety of levels to achieve its goal. To preserve the worlds’ food diversity.

Since 1990, Slow Food has had its own publishing house, which publishes, for example, a guide to “Osterias” that is famous in Italy. A book that brings attention to the best, traditional Italian, small, local restaurants.

Since 1996, Slow Food has organized the Salone del Gusto in Turin. A meeting of small food producers which is now considered one of the most important in the sector.

In 2004, the first Slow Food University, the University of Gastronomic Sciences, was founded in a neighboring town of Bra. There you can study, among others, the Bachelor “Gastronomic Sciences and Cultures”, but also in various other Master and PhD programs.

Buono, Pultio e Giusto

The ways in which Slow Food advocates for its goals may have become more diverse. However, the goal of promoting good, clean, and fair (ital.: buono, pulito e giusto) food for all has remained the same.

Food produced under Slow Food criteria should taste good, be seasonal and part of the local culture. Its production should not harm the environment, people, nature, or animals. And it should have a fair price. For producers and consumers.

It’s not just about what goes on the plate, but also how it gets there.

Slow Food now has more than 100,000 members worldwide. Today, there are 640 McDonald’s restaurants in Italy.

Germans in realistically looking native-american clothing, meeting to build tepees, dance and study foreign cultures. About an unusual hobby, celebrated in the GDR.

Originally published on 17. August 2022

The Origins

Where is the German fascination for Native Americans coming from? H. Glenn Penny, professor for European history at the University of Iowa designated a whole chapter of his book “Kindred by choice” to answer this question. He writes that we can go back until the time of ancient Rome, when searching for the reasons of the German’s “Indian-Fascination”. The Roman senator Cornelius Tacitus described the Germanic people in his piece “Germania” as “a noble tribal population with a clear connection to the woods and grounds of Central Europe”. Again and again, Tacitus described the Germanic people in a way how later German authors would describe Native Americans. Penny remarks that Tacitus‘ and later the work of German Adventure Writers aren’t flawless. Nevertheless, the Roman piece will be mentioned at different points throughout the history of German literature.

Johann Gottfried Herder, for example, argues in his “Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache“ (engl.: Treatise on the origin of language), that Germanic tribes would still live in the woods, like Native Americans, if the Romans hadn’t brought their culture to them by brute force.
In the end, though, a centralized, militarily and economically superior power wins against a loosely connected bunch of tribes. Making a connection to the situation across the Atlantic isn’t that hard.

Native Americans and German literature

But enough with abstract analyses of the collective German psyche. Why and how stories about Native Americans spread in Germany can be proven more tangible. It all probably started with Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859). His books about his American expedition, which started in 1799 and lasted five years, became international bestsellers. According to historian Aaron Sachs, they even became the reference books for Americans who studied Natives in the 19^th century. Humboldts’ expeditions always inspired other Europeans to go abroad and imitate his travels. At the beginning of the 19^th century, these travelers were mainly aristocrats, who also recorded their experiences on paper.

Humboldts famous multi-volume “Cosmos” work, would still be considered a scientific work, though. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) would become one of the most translated American novelists of his time in Germany. Even though Cooper wasn’t the first author who wrote novels about Native Americans, with his writing style and his seemingly authentic portrayals, he struck a nerve with European readers. During the time, when Coopers’ books were very successful in Germany, between the years of 1870 and 1889 over two million Germans emigrated in to the US. Around 1900, 10% of the US population was German-American in the first or second generation. America was the place-to-be. And stories about the West weren’t just selling well, they also were sent by mail in families, where a part was already living there.

Buffalo Bill, an American virtuoso (Ex-Cowboy, bison hunter, gold digger…) developed a kind of circus show called “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West”. He travelled through the US and Europe with a group of real Cowboys, Native Americans, horses, and bison. In 1890 he toured the German Empire and played nearly everywhere in front of sold-out crowds. On posters, he advertised the show with 800 performers and 500 horses. Three Years after Bill’s first tour, a series of novels were released, that shaped the German reception of Native Americans and the Wild West like no other.

The May-Phenomenon

In 1893 Karl May released his Winnetou-series. The literary quality of these books is highly debated; still May is one of the most successful German Adventure-authors of all time. Alone in German, his books were sold more than 200 million times. According to H. Glenn Penny, May basically put all the books about America and its population, that existed before him, into a form that is easily consumable for German readers. All books follow a simple, similar plot line, and every time there are characters with which the German audience can identify itself. Old Shatterhand, one of the most famous characters, is a German living in the US who basically can’t do anything wrong. A German Superman in the Wild West.

Mays’ heroes fought against racism, oppression, and slavery. That didn’t do well among Conservatives in the German Empire, later though, his work was well liked by Adolf Hitler and other powerful National Socialists.

That was one of the reasons why, after World War II, May was viewed critically in the GDR, soviet, East Germany. In 1956 The Berliner Zeitung wrote, May “had been a pioneer of fascist sentiments.” and the Culture-Officials of the GDR seemed to agree. In their opinion, his work was characterized by “chauvinism and racism”. They never really banned Mays books, but the Ministry for Culture decided that they shouldn’t be published or sold. Only 27 years later, the government yielded to demand and allowed to print the still beloved books.

“Indianistik” in the GDR

According to the German dictionary, “Indianistik“ is a “science, concerned with the study of indigenous languages and cultures of North, Central and South America.” The term was also commonly used in the GDR to describe a movement, in which young people organized themselves in clubs to study and engage with the life of Native Americans. The first “Indianistik”-club was founded in 1956 in Radebeul, a small town close to Dresden and Karl Mays hometown. In the GDR, all cultural activities were considered suspect if they did not help build socialism. But the “Indianistik”-clubs were authorized by the SED, the governing party. At first reluctantly, but the party officials realized pretty quick, that there was propaganda-potential. Engagement with Native Americans can raise awareness of the negative effects of U.S. imperialism. The “Indianists” (people in the “Indianistik”-scene) were given a cultural free space and in return gave East Germany an exotic touch.

The clubs, now accepted as “Volkskunstgruppen“ (engl.: folk art group) in the GDR, gave themselves names of Native American tribes. Often the government gave them a specific territory, on which they studied that tribe. “Studyig” in this context means: they build tepees, tried to recreate traditional clothing as realistic as possible and learned about the language, traditions, culture, and history of the tribe.

Organizing the materials for the manufacture of Indian and Western equipment meant a vehement challenge in a land of perpetual shortages.

Sabine Uhlig, former ”Indianist” in an article.

This lack of material became apparent again, when people wanted to read about foreign cultures. Scientific literature about Native Americans was a scarce commodity in the GDR.

At the end of the 1960s, the American Indian Movement (AIM) was established in the US. It brought attention to poverty, racism and many other problems of Native Americans. Even though the GDR-“Indianists” had to fear governmental repression, they showed solidarity with the American movement.

In the 1980s there were around 50 clubs with in total about 1000 members. They met every year at the “Great Indian Council”, later called the “Indian Week” and with that gained some media attention. For visitors of these events, a program was organized. The newest research was presented to the general GDR citizen and shared with other clubs.

Friedrich von Borries and Jens-Uwe Fischer released their book “Sozialistische Cowboys” (engl.: socialist cowboys) in 2008. For research, they toured east Germany and collected reports of contemporary witnesses. What stands out when reading the book: The “Indianistik”-scene was more diverse than you would have thought. In the area around Bitterfeld, the center of the GDR’s chemical industry, people got involved in the “Indianistik”-group to draw attention to environmental pollution. Elsewhere, Western fans simply wanted their peace and quiet, moving into the East German wasteland with their teepees or simple wooden cabins to escape the daily grind of the “workers and farmers” state. As early as the 19th century, Friedrich Engels, in “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.”, discovered communistic potential in Native Americans. Convinced socialists found a place in the “Indianistik”-clubs just as much as those who just wanted to meet regularly to shoot Western guns.

Resistance to the dictatorship, adaptation to the system and enthusiasm for socialism. Everything united in one movement.

“The amateur Indians conveyed a breath of America and took the East Germans into a world that was inaccessible to most people behind the impassable national border. The fact that the Indian movement became so successful, especially in the GDR, is certainly due in no small part to the lack of freedom to travel.” says Sabine Uhlig.

Media from a socialist perspective

When Karl Mays‘ novels and their film adaptions became really successful in West Germany, the GDR government realized that they had to do something. East German Western-fans shouldn’t consume the media of the class enemy. In 1951 the historian Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich won the prize for best youth-literature, issued by the ministry of education, with her novel “Söhne der Großen Bärin” (engl.: “Sons of the big bear”). That book was her first, with a story centered around Native Americans. In the next ten years, five more followed. In order to get involved in the film business, a working group called the “Red Circle” of DEFA, the state owned film company of the GDR, looked for original content to produce their own westerns. And they found Welskopf-Henrichs books.

Until 1983, more than a dozen films were released, mainly starring Gojko Mitić, the “Winnetou of the East”. However, the DEFA-“Indian films” are not classic Westerns. The genre designation of historical adventure films was invented specifically for them.

Dr. Andy Räder, media researcher at the University of Rostock

The success of the film adaptation of Welskopf-Henrichs first “Indian”-novel, is said to have raised the profile of the “Indianistik”-movement by another notch.

Until that point, Gojko Mitić was a relatively unknown, Yugoslavia born, actor. He probably was also chosen for the role in multiple East German movies, because he already had played smaller roles in Western German productions and had a view behind the scenes of their production. The DEFA-“Indian films” became a huge success. “Their popularity was hugely dependent on main actor Gojko Mitić.” He played the main character in 12 out of 14 DEFA-“Indian films”. “For the East German audience, the real person Gojko Mitić merged with the roles as the “Indian” chief,” Dr. Räder says.

But how did they differ from American and West German Westerns?

Dr. Räder says that “there was an attempt to reverse the image of indigenous natives in comparison to American Westerns and to stage them as the sole sufferers of Euro-American expansionism to the West.” The adaptions of Karl Mays novels stayed really close to their written originals and were carried by the performance of Winnetou-actor Pierre Brice. “He embodied the courageous “Indian” chief who worked for peaceful reconciliation between white settlers and Native Americans.” In American Westerns, “’Indians‘ […] were portrayed as stereotypically staged ’savages.’”

The East German films on the other hand were used as anti-imperialist propaganda tools. They “[…] claimed to be more authentic and truthful than the Karl May adaptations and the classic Hollywood Westerns, especially with regard to the image of the indigenous natives. However, this was more in line with the political agenda of the GDR.” But according to Dr. Räder “the history of Native Americans […] can’t be reduced to the victim-perspective as well as the expulsion and genocide by Euro-American settlers.”

Even today, the East German films are very popular. If you turn on MDR, the public TV-station for regions of former East Germany, during the Christmas season, you can hardly escape them.

Dr. Anke Giesen is a board member of Memorial Germany and Memorial International. In an interview with Emerald Press and moritz.magazin, the student newspaper at the University of Greifswald, she talked about the current state of the lawsuit against Memorial International in Russia and the work of Memorial in Germany.

Originally published on 5. August 2022

You can read more on the background of Memorial, its work and the problem it’s facing today, here.

The interview was recorded on the 3rd February 2022 and on some part shortened for a better reading experience.

You can listen to the German version of the interview here.

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Robert: The court ruling from December 2021, which would liquidate Memorial International in Russia, was just the first verdict. You appealed against it. How is the current state of that process, are there any updates?

Anke Giesen: Maybe it’s important to clarify who should be liquidated. That’s Memorial International, the international umbrella organization, to which nearly all Memorial-associations in Russia belong, and every Memorial-group outside of Russia. We appealed the verdict of last December and are anticipating a final ruling at the end of February 2022. We don’t think that there is a big chance the appeal will be granted.

And should Memorial International be liquidated, would that also restrict or forbid the work of all the other Memorial-organizations in Russia?

No. They could still work normally. But we know Russian politics and how it’s working. When they send a signal from the center in Moscow, from the highest court, then provincial governors will say: “Let’s take a cue from them, and now we’re going against our small Memorial-group here in Altai or Krasnoyarsk.” There are already news from Krasnoyarsk, that they have problems with local authorities. That’s why we assume that the verdict from Moscow will start a kind of domino-effect, that will, piece-by-piece, liquidate all regional Memorial-groups. That’s our big concern.

Under the current circumstances, can the different Memorial-groups in Russia work normally?

Yes, the regional associations are working quite normal. As I mentioned, just Krasnoyarsk said that they have problems with the authorities. They don’t issue some papers, that they normally should get fairly quickly. Memorial International in Moscow is also still working normally. Until the hammer drops, they will work regularly. And there are already plans for afterwards. Under Memorial International, there is another umbrella organization called Memorial Russia, that would still remain active. It’s another legal entity. Right now, they are working on redirecting all the work that is done by Memorial International on to Memorial Russia. But then again, there is this concern, that very soon there’s going to be a lawsuit against Memorial Russia. But that redirecting would make a couple more month of work possible, and as long as that is the case, my colleagues will do it.

So the precedent is causing fear to grow, that this was just the first step of a movement against Memorial in general.

Exactly. We think that this decision was made on the highest level. Memorial International was the first civil-society-organization in the Soviet Union, that Gorbachev [the last head of state of the SU, editor’s note] himself registered. Memorials work is widely respected in Russia. Without Memorial there wouldn’t be a lot of knowledge about the repressions under Stalin, the Gulag, the arbitrary mass shootings and organized hunger. Going against Memorial International means that the entire work isn’t welcomed anymore, by the highest level of Russian politics. And yet, you can’t shut down our network all at once. That’s why it’s a network of different, independent legal entities, and you have to eliminate it piece-by-piece. We on the board also expect that to happen. But we are now trying to stall for time. If you can work on for one or one and a half years – That’s a win.

It has always been said that it is obvious that the trial against Memorial was politically motivated. Can you elaborate, where you see that motivation?

There are basically two main causes.

First there is the historical educational work from Memorial. Vladimir Putin sees himself as the highest historian of Russia right now. During the summer he wrote a text – for historians not comprehensible – about how Ukraine isn’t a sovereign country and is actually part of the great, glorious Russian Nation. His goal is obviously to write the history of Russia as one single successful project from Ivan III of Russia till today. An organization like Memorial, that shines a light on the Stalinist era, the terror under Lenin, the repressions under Brezhnev, is, of course, a thorn in his side. All that and the Gulag, the collectivization of agriculture, the Red Terror and the coercive psychiatrizes cast a shadow on the marvelous history of the Soviet Union and Russia. And to make it clear: For Putin, there is no difference between Russia and the Soviet Union. It’s just one single line from the Grand Principality of Moscow to today’s Russian Federation. And that’s why he wants our work no longer to be civically driven. A civil society organization like Memorial can not be controlled. All governmental organizations that work on historic research, like universities or historical research institutes, can be kept on one line. That’s just not the case with a civil society organization that receives money from outside of Russia – which is also a really important point here.

You can see the second motivation in that Putin also attacks Memorial’s Human Rights Forum. It also should get liquidated. From this, you can see that Putin doesn’t want that people that are, in his opinion, terrorists or extremists in any form get support or legal help if they get arrested. That is the work that the Human Rights Forum is doing.

Basically, the two main motivations are to prevent a staining of the Putin-written Russian history and help for the political opposition.

A lot of media in Europe reported about the verdict from 2021. How was the reaction in Russia?

It’s always hard to say: “The reaction in Russia was so-and-so…” You can say: The educated people in bigger cities were shocked. They know and respect Memorial. In provinces far away from Moscow, people have to fight to survive, because they don’t have enough food, the salaries are too low, and they don’t have good hospitals. These people probably didn’t worry a lot about the verdict. It’s the educated circles that are also maybe critical of the government in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, that talk about it and take note.

In the reports about the ruling, I often read about Memorial, the “moral backbone” of Russian society. Would you agree with that description?

At least for the people that think critical about the Russian state. But I would even say it is true for bigger circles. We have to see: Incredibly many people lost relatives during Soviet-times. They starved to death, froze to death in the Gulag, were forcibly relocated and died there or because they got arrested and got shot afterwards. That shapes a family history. Memorial as an organization started in the 1980s, at Soviet-times, to unravel these stories and gave those people, that mourned losses, a voice. And after decades of the tabooization of this topic, that was a tremendous release for many. A lot of former Gulag-inmates that survived didn’t even tell their kids about it. The kids shouldn’t talk about it in school, so they didn’t put themselves and the families in danger. Memorial broke the endless silence about this great suffering and started a work of “never again”. That means: How do we shape societies, so that this never happens again. A situation in which get arrested and shot in masses, in which people betray their neighbors to safe themselves. That’s why Memorial has a high reputation.

The liquidation of Memorial International would mean the end of the work Memorial is doing. Is there already a plan, what to do after you got the most time out of this system of different legal entities?

Right now, we try to digitalize our archives as much as possible and put all of it on foreign servers. The isolation of the Russian internet is another big threat. That would mean that, when you are in Russia, you can visit western websites really difficult. And in the other way around as well. There is that big risk that everything the Memorial-organizations collected, like regional items, files, letters from the Gulag could get confiscated by the government. That’s why we try to take photos of it all, or scan it and then put it on the internet, where it’s still available for historic research. And we are looking into giving the historic items to museums of regional history. There are still a lot of these museums that take good care of it.

We don’t want, that the people of Russia and the global historic research lose these treasures.

Anke Giesen

And then there’s obviously the idea of just founding new organizations, that are named completely different, but do the same work. Because the work in itself wouldn’t be forbidden. These verdicts aren’t really about the work, they are about Memorial not marking itself as a foreign agent on its website, some Facebook-posts and ancients flyers. Right now, the state wan’ts to prohibit Memorial’s work in completely different ways, like it did with Nawalny. That’s why the idea of founding new organizations, and then waiting for what happens, exist. It’s like the story of the tortoise and the hare…

…like shell players. You have to create a little confusion…

…yes, you look for new ways to work, and the state is looking for new ways to prevent that from happening. Should it come to personal persecutions or threats, then we obviously have to think about how to get the people out of Russia in the fastest way possible.

Today, Memorial advocates for human rights in former Soviet-countries.

Yes, this work is mostly done by the Human Rights Forum, which is also under legal attack in Russia. This work is very much about getting legal assistance for people, that worked in politics, the opposition or in general: For people that Russia declares in some way or form as an “extremist” or “terrorist”. It’s about getting them an attorney when they get arrested, imprisoned or go on trial.

And Memorial is also working in other European countries like Germany?

At least the eastern part of Germany has a history of Soviet-repression. There were random arrests from people, that were accused of being spies or doing anti-Soviet-propaganda. Especially in the time from 1945 till 1953. These people were arrested on the bases of Soviet laws. They were sentenced to up to 25 years of detention in the Gulag, or brought to Moscow and got shot there. We are committed to the memory of these people. For example: On the memorial day of political prisoners in Russia, the 29th/30th October, we publicly read the names of the victims in Berlin and other cities in Germany.

There is also an initiative called “Die letzte Adresse” [the last address]. It’s basically the Soviet-version of “Stolpersteine”. [Stolpersteine are golden stones in sidewalks, in Germany and other European countries. They are engraved with the names and often the date of birth and death of victims of the holocaust., editor’s note] We place plaques on the last addresses, where the people lived that got innocently deported to and killed in the Soviet Union, that commemorate them. But right now we realize that this isn’t that easy. GDR propaganda portrayed these victims as Nazi-criminals. Some descendants, to this day, think that it would shed a bad light on them if they have such a plaque on their house. We also have some problems with politically left-leaning people, because they don’t want these plaques. But that’s the point where we have to do our educational work. Not every victim of the Soviets has automatically an involvement in the Nazi regime. There were 16-years-old boys that got abducted in 1948. It’s just not possible that they were involved in the Nazi regime.

We also do projects together with Memorial-organizations from Russia, Ukraine or Czech Republic. The goal there is to create instructional material about Soviet-repressions. We have a summer school in Georgia, where students from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Germany discuss disputed events during World War II. They exchange opinions, perspectives and write historical texts about it.

Now we also started bringing awareness to Russia Germans, that live in Germany. They often come here with horrific family histories. They often got deported from the black-sea-region, from the Volga-region, to Kazakhstan or other Central-Asian countries. They have been discriminated against for years. And now they live in Germany, with these experiences, and nobody knows about it. And that’s why we have to bring awareness to it. We also did a research-project about how Russia-German families cope with these traumas.

Last question: How does Memorial finance itself?

In Russia, Memorial lives from donations or from project funds from foundations. Since Putin’s history-politics in the last couple of years, sadly, Russian foundations nearly stopped financing Memorial at all. And that means, that Memorial-organizations have to make a decision. Either you cook on a tiny flame, or you receive money from foreign foundations. For example from the German political foundations or in the past also from National Endowment for Democracy. That was an American foundation, nowadays undesired, and you can’t receive any money from them anymore.

So you are in a dilemma. Either your founding is minimal, or you have to identify yourself as a foreign agent, because you receive money from outside of Russia. That on the other hand would stigmatize you in the eyes of people that don’t see all of this through. And right now there are some Memorial-organization that go this minimal-founding route and aren’t that easily attackable and others decided to accept the foreign money and can do bigger projects.

Thank you for your time.

Russia wants to ban Memorial, an organization, that works on raising awareness of the terror under the Soviet regime. An article about history, political motivation and foreign agents.

Originally published on 26. April 2022

It’s the end of December 2021, when Russia’s highest court in Moscow took the first step in the process of banning one of the country’s most important human rights organization.

Justice Alla Nasarowa upheld the complaint of the public prosecution, which wanted to liquidate Memorial International because of numerous violations of Russia’s “Foreign Agent Law”.

But from the beginning

Terror on their own people in Russia, later in the Soviet Union, was a phenomenon that took place at least since 1918. Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin, who came to power one year prior, due to the October Revolution, recommended in a decree: “to isolate the class enemies of the Soviet Republic in concentration camps [and] to shoot on the spot anyone involved […] in conspiracies, revolts, and uprisings.” During Lenin’s lifetime, the first concentration- and labor camps were built.

After Lenin’s death in 1924, Josef Stalin took over power. Repressions against the population became even worse. Alleged opposition members were persecuted, arrested, tortured, sent to labor camps (Gulags) or killed. Even the high-ranking officers of the military and Comrades of Stalin’s party weren’t safe. At the peak of the “Great Purge” in 1937/38 “more than 1,5 million people got arrested, 700,000 of them got executed”, according to Stalin-researcher Jörg Baberowski. Deutschlandfunk writes that, between 15 and 20 million people were killed by Stalin’s persecution and deportation measures. The exact number of victims is considered as difficult to estimate.

Back to Memorial

Memorial is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), that raises awareness to these human rights violations during the soviet-regime. It was founded in 1987, by, among others, Nobel-Peace-Prize-winner Andrej Sacharow. Today, Memorial interviews contemporary witnesses, creates archives, produces learning-material about the time for students, and builds memorials. This work is widely respected among Russians. But it doesn’t fit the picture of Russian History, that the Russian government around president Wladimir Putin, is drawing right now. Putin stages Russia as the glorious victors of World War II. Crimes against the own population that were committed by the dictator of the Soviet Union at that time, just don’t fit his history-writing. But that can’t be enough for a lawsuit, even in Putin’s Russia. So why is Memorial being charged?

The Foreign Agent Law

In Russia, recipients of payments from outside the country, have to mark themselves as “foreign agents”. Those affected are mostly journalists or organizations like Memorial. They finance themselves through donations from foreign countries. The law is widely criticized internationally. It can quickly pave the way for critics of the government being tagged as foreign agents.

Memorial rejected the categorization as foreign agents, by the Russian judiciary. It paid multiple fines in the past because it didn’t mark flyers, websites and social-media-posts in compliance with the law.

What happens now?

Memorial appealed against Decembers verdict. Therefore, it isn’t final. But there is not much hope of the verdict being overturned. That means if it stands like it is right now, Memorial International would be liquidated. Memorial International is the big umbrella organization, under which national and local Memorial-organizations are assembled. The liquidation of the umbrella organization wouldn’t mean the dissolution of all subsidiaries. Memorial could still keep on working at the lower levels. But: The verdict would be a sign, to all the other Memorial-teams, that they aren’t safe. You can read more on that topic in the interview with Anke Giesen, board member of Memorial International.

The verdict from December was widely criticized. Michail Gorbatschow, the last president of the Soviet Union, who modernized, opened the country and initiated the end of the Cold War supported Memorial, during his presidency. He also criticized the verdict.

The ban of Memorial was the end of a series of actions that pressured free media, the opposition, and other critics of the Kremlin.