Writer Ludmila Ulitskaya in
the courthouse corridor on 11 October 2017.

This 4-minute clip from the Meduza news website also includes footage of Dmitriev  on Solovki, and speaking at at Sandarmokh on 5 August 2014.

You cannot fool the people forever …

ULITSKAYA

“This trial is of extraordinary significance./ symbolic. At the end of this month a memorial is being unveiled in Moscow to the victims of political repression. Simultaneously, in Petrozavodsk a man is being prosecuted who has done as much as anyone for those same victims …

“He is one of the great people of  our day. He not only speaks the truth, he acts the truth. It is thanks to him that the place where thousands of people were killed has been established, that they have been decently buried, and Books of Remembrance have been compiled about them.

“Today I looked at the Book of Remembrance at Krasny Bor. It’s amazing. We used to have illusions that the Soviet regime exterminated the intelligentsia or used these killings to resolve the problem posed by a particular nationality … When you hold that list in your hands you realise that everyone was affected. Anyone might be added to the list because Moscow issued a quota for 20,000 arrests and executions, and then 100,000 arrests and executions …”

DMITRIEV

At Sekirnaya gora (Solovki), 2007//

Instructing his helpers that they would have to clear an area of 200 square metres, removing the trees and blueberries which had grown up over the burial pits of those shot there.

“I’m wearing a warm shirt, and another one under that – not because I feel the cold, but because the mosquitoes here at Sekirnaya gora have a very nasty bite … I pity the rest of you!”

Speaking on 5 August 2014 at Sandarmokh

“The time has truly arrived when to come here and remember those who were killed by the regime means to take a stand. And that stand is not always appreciated by our political rulers.

“You cannot fool the people forever … They can deceive us, they can scare us with their prison, they can send us to the camps, they can kill us. But this regime cannot lock up all the people, it cannot kill everyone. One day this regime will have to answer for all it has done.

“Dear brothers and sisters, we need to do something about this regime. Most important of all, is do not be afraid. The worst they can do is to kill you …”