Month: March 2020

A glimpse of Dmitriev

/ editors (JC)

The hearing took place today, despite quarantine measures announced in connection with the Covid-19 outbreak.

Yury DMITRIEV in corridor of Petrozavodsk City Courthouse, 23 March 2020

Supporters caught a glimpse of Yury Dmitriev as he was escorted along the corridor. To judge by his appearance, he had recovered from his sickness. “He looked well and had put on weight,” Anatoly RAZUMOV told the Petersburg Human Rights Council over the phone from Petrozavodsk.

Dmitriev was glad that the new edition of his book, Sandarmokh, a Place of Remembrance, was being acquired by libraries in Russia, and sent greetings to all concerned about his situation.

The next court hearing has been scheduled for Tuesday, 14 April. As usual, today’s hearing took place behind closed doors. Dmitriev’s detention in custody was prolonged today until 28 June.

“Unsolved Mysteries”, A Review

/ editors (JC)

The second front in the Dmitriev Affair

Even before Yury DMITRIEV was arrested in December 2016, an alternative explanation of the mass burials at Sandormokh had appeared (see below, Appendix).

Promoted by two historians at Petrozavodsk University, Sergei Verigin and Yury Kilin, it suggested that among those executed and buried in the forest near Medvezhegorsk were not only victims of Stalin’s Great Terror (1937-1938) but also Red Army soldiers shot by the Finns during the Continuation War (1941-1944).

Recent books about Sandarmokh by Yury Dmitriev and Sergei Verigin

Late last year a slender 86-page volume (with illustrations) by Professor Verigin and fellow author Armas Mashin appeared. Entitled The Mysteries of Sandarmokh: Part One, What lies Hidden in the Wooded Glade, it was published by the controversial Finnish author Johan Backman.

In a review on 27 February 2020 on the Karelia News website, Irina TAKALA of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Karelian Centre discusses this brochure as a piece of historical research, and assesses its contribution to the ongoing debate about the past reality and current meaning of the Sandarmokh killing fields.

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