In early July 1997, DMITRIEV together with Irina Flige and the late Veniamin Joffe discovered a huge killing field of the Great Terror near Medvezhegorsk in Karelia. Subsequently it became known as Sandarmokh.
Weeks later, in early September, he and Sergei Chugunkov identify the Krasny Bor killing field and burial ground not far from Petrozavodsk, the capital of Karelia.
On 5 August 1998, the First International Day of Remembrance held at Sandarmokh, which over the coming years is transformed under DMITRIEV’s guidance into a unique Memorial where individuals, ethnic groups, nationalities and religious confessions are all freely commemorated. Two years later the Karelian authorities endowed Sandarmokh with the status of a monument of history and culture.
In 2002 Karelia’s Lists of Remembrance, a volume compiled by DMITRIEV and his deceased mentor Lieutenant-Colonel (Police) Ivan Chukhin (1948-1997) was published in Petrozavodsk.
In 2008 DMITRIEV and his second wife were allowed to foster Natasha, a sickly and under-developed 3-year-old from a children’s home on terms described later in his defence attorney’s first interview.
The Dmitriev Affair 