Dmitriev on Solovki, 2005

15 February 202216 February 2022 / editors (JC)

Sergei Bykovsky today posted on Facebook a photo of Yury DMITRIEV in 2005 at Mount Sekirna on the Great Solovetsky Island. Dmitriev’s little foster daughter Natasha was christened on that trip.

That year Yury DMITRIEV received the new Golden Pen of Russia award for his publications about the building of the White Sea Canal in the early 1930s and the Karelian killing fields at Krasny Bor and Sandarmokh which he helped to discover where thousands were shot and secretly buried during the Great Terror.

Timeline (1), 1997-2018

11 December 202012 December 2020 / editors (JC)

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.

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Dmitriev by Lake Onega

28 May 201811 December 2020 / editors (JC)

On 5 May 2018, YURY DMITRIEV and his defence attorney Victor Anufriev were photographed on the banks of Lake Onega, east of St Petersburg.

Dmitriev and Anufriev at Lake Onega in May 2018

“I love with you all my heart”: Yury Dmitriev’s Final Word in court

2 April 201828 July 2020 / editors (JC)

Despite repeated forensic analysis to the contrary, the Russian historian has spent 13 months in pre-trial detention on child pornography charges (writes Natalia Shkurenok).

On 27 March 2018, the final hearing was held in the prosecution of Russian historian and rights defender YURY DMITRIEV. Dmitriev, who has been instrumental in investigating Karelia’s Gulag past, was arrested in December 2016 and charged with producing child pornography, the evidence for which consisted of naked photographs of his adopted daughter.

Yesterday, Dmitriev was given the right to make a final statement before the court, after which the judge left to make a decision. The doors of Room 322 at Petrozavodsk City Court remained closed for 10 minutes. As Yury Dmitriev told the people waiting outside afterwards, instead of a long speech in his defence, he read a short letter from his adopted daughter Natasha.

“Dear Dad, I really miss you!

I hope that they release you soon. Everything is fine with me, I’m studying well. I wish you a belated happy birthday! How are things with you? Write when you can.

I love you with all my heart, your daughter Natasha.”

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“I’m trying to finish what’s most important” (Golgotha, part 6)

18 February 201817 March 2018 / editors (JC) / 1 Comment

Yury Dmitriev in his own words
(conclusion)

I first met students from the Moscow Film School, it seems, at Sandarmokh. They had come for the Day of Remembrance on 5 August. As it happened, one of the buses I’d laid on was empty and they travelled on it to the graveyard and back. They were greatly impressed and began asking me about local history.

Later they wrote me a letter: “Let us help you in some way.” I took up the offer and we went to Peter the Great’s arms factory. The next year they said: “We’d like to help again.” We worked at the Badger’s Hill graveyard. They wanted to help again, and that’s when we started going to Solovki.