Sandarmokh*

Dmitriev recognized New Righteous of the Nations

/ editors (JC)

Yury DMITRIEV, renowned historian of the Soviet Terror, Head of the Karelia branch of Memorial and Russian political prisoner has been named one of the new Righteous to be honoured on the European Day of the Righteous on 6 March 2024.

Yury Dmitriev (b. 1956)
(photo, Anna Artyemeva)

This is the latest of very many international awards or other forms of recognition of the historian whose persecution has been widely condemned as in reprisal for Dmitriev’s tireless work in ensuring that both the victims of Stalin’s Terror and the perpetrators, are known. Dmitriev will be turning 67 in January 2024 in conditions that seriously undermine the health of men half his age, and publicity is vital if there is to be any hope of securing his release.

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Dublin Protest outside Russian Embassy

/ editors (JC)

by Crew of the Northabout yacht and other Irish “Grandfathers for Human Rights“

On Thursday, 10 February 2022, the crew of the Northabout yacht, which sailed through the White Sea Canal in 2012 and met Yury DMITRIEV, held a silent protest against his unjust and heavy sentence outside the Russian Embassy in Dublin.

Crew members travelled with DMITRIEV to Sandarmokh and learned of his work.

Yury DMITRIEV with Dr Michael Brogan (left) and Colm Brogan, 2012

Afloat: Ireland’s sailing, boating & maritime magazine,
10 February 2022

WHY DMITRIEV? (1)

/ editors (JC)

In 2002, five years after the tragic death of Ivan Chukhin, Yury DMITRIEV published the Commemorative Lists of Karelia. This Book of Remembrance named 14,308 individuals — most of them shot (11,275); others sent to the Gulag (1,958). The task on which Chukhin and Dmitriev had embarked almost a decade earlier was completed.

Why we should admire Yury Dmitriev

Police investigator and Duma deputy Chukhin also gained access to detailed execution reports in the local FSB archives. These indicated the approximate location of thirteen execution and burial sites scattered across Karelia.

Most were small but two were of particular size and importance. Over 3,000 had been shot, “near Petrozavodsk”, the capital of Karelia. The other site, “near the Medvezhya Gora rail station”, accounted for several thousand more and was located not far from the headquarters of the White Canal camp system (Belbaltlag). Shortly after Chukhin’s death, Dmitriev together with Irina Flige and the late Veniamin Joffe found and identified the killing field near Med Gora, today famous as Sandarmokh. Soon afterwards locals led him to a similar site 20 miles from Petrozavodsk: this became the Krasny Bor memorial complex.

30 October 2021, Krasny Bor

Dmitriev’s achievements could not be gainsaid. Russian and foreign awards followed: in 2005 he was given the new Golden Pen of Russia award; in 2015 he was awarded Poland’s Gold Cross of Merit; and in November 2016, the month before his arrest, he received the Honorary Diploma of Karelia, the highest award in the gift of the head of that Republic.

Why the FSB hates and detests him

Long before 2016 there were signs of official irritation with what Dmitriev did and said.

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“He deserves a medal for what he did!” [1]

/ editors (JC)

Over the past five years Yury DMITRIEV has become known far beyond his native Karelia, throughout Russia and around the world.

He has received prizes since his first arrest in December 2016, from the Moscow Helsinki Group and most recently the Norwegian Sakharov Award.  His work was recognised earlier by awards in Russia (2005), Poland (2015) and in Karelia itself (2016), where the head of the republic Hudolainen gave him its highest award.

Dmitriev with his foster daughter Natasha, b. 2005 (photo Novaya gazeta)

The exclamation quoted in the title of this post refers not to Dmitriev’s work on the Karelian Book of Remembrance, however, or to his discovery of Sandarmokh and Krasny Bor and their transformation into memorials, but to the crimes of which he has been accused.

A British acquaintance with good Russian and a direct knowledge and experience of children’s homes in Russia was indignant when she heard of his case. He had rescued and restored to health a neglected little girl, just as he himself had been rescued in childhood from a similar fate: “They should give him a medal, not put him in prison!” she exclaimed.

JC

He deserves a medal for what he’s done [2]