The beginning
After the collapse of the USSR, in which by that time almost all political prisoners had been released by Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision, for a while it seemed that this notion remained in history or in the news from other countries. The activities of the Memorial Society, established in 1988, at that time, centred on the rehabilitation of the victims of Soviet political repression and on compiling as complete a list of them as possible.
This does not mean there were no politically motivated criminal cases in the 1990s. The conflict between the Russian leadership and the national-patriotic opposition in 1992-1993, which escalated into the tragic events of October 1993, and the two wars in Chechnya led to massive human rights violations, including the prosecution of obviously innocent people.
Some high-profile criminal cases were perceived by many people as politically motivated. Depending on their views, different parts of Russian civil society considered victims of political persecution politicians Viktor Anpilov and Valeria Novodvorskaya, and writers Alina Vitukhnovskaya and Yaroslav Mogutin. The treason cases against environmentalist Alexander Nikitin, journalist Grigory Pasko, and scientist Igor Sutyagin, brought by the FSB without sufficient grounds in the second half of the 1990s, also resonated.
Yet for a long time it seemed that, despite individual excesses, political repressions were just an element of historical memory.
The return of mass repression after Putin came to power
After former FSB director Vladimir Putin came to power, political repression quickly became systemic. Already a few days after his inauguration, searches began in a formal economic criminal case against its owner to put pressure on the then-independent NTV television channel.
Already during Putin’s first term (2000-2004), the fabrication of criminal cases against Chechens and other residents of the North Caucasus suspected of involvement in the armed underground was put on the stream. Later, this trend continued to a large extent with the persecution of various groups of Muslims throughout Russia. The authorities quickly shifted to using criminal repression as a regular tool for political, economic, and propaganda purposes. This approach was symbolised in those years by the Yukos case, in which at least 15 shareholders, employees and partners of the company were imprisoned.
In 2004-2005, the Russian authorities took new steps towards a virtually overt return to authoritarianism. The inability to conduct normal political activity and pressure on legal political organisations led to the formation of the so-called non-systemic opposition, which united in 2006 in the Other Russia coalition. Members of liberal, left-wing and other organisations within the coalition became constant targets of pressure from the Department for Combating Organised Crime (UBOP) of the Russian Interior Ministry, and later the infamous Centres for Countering Extremism (CCE), which became the official political police.
Eduard Limonov’s supporters were subjected to particularly brutal persecution: the National Bolshevik Party, which united them, was banned, and dozens of its activists were prosecuted in politically motivated cases. Some Natsbols became victims of street violence: they were beaten or killed by security forces and co-operating far-right football fans and criminals.
The launch of Memorial’s political prisoners’ support programme
The growing scale of repression and its normalisation in the 2000s attracted increasing attention from civil society and human rights activists. Memorial, which has been monitoring human rights violations in contemporary Russia and beyond since the early 1990s, was no exception. The various programmes of the Memorial Human Rights Centre have recorded more and more cases of fabrication of criminal cases against its applicants: residents of the North Caucasus, Muslims, immigrants, and many others.
All this logically led to the realisation of the need to keep lists of victims of not only historical, Soviet, but also contemporary Russian repressions. It should be noted that Memorial had previously had experience in monitoring political repression in the CIS countries and had prepared reports on the situation in Georgia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and other countries.
For this reason, in the summer of 2008, the Memorial Human Rights Centre, together with the informal public association Union of Solidarity with Political Prisoners and the Civic Assistance Committee, launched the programme ‘Support for Political Prisoners and Victims of Illegal Criminal Prosecution’.
Initially, Memorial used its own criteria when compiling lists of political prisoners, but in 2013, its representatives – along with other human rights defenders from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and other countries – developed Guidelines on the definition of a political prisoner. From that time until now, Memorial has been using the approaches formulated in this document.
The Guidelines are based on the first officially formulated definition of a political prisoner, contained in PACE Resolution 1900 (2012). The new criteria for recognising political prisoners differ little from those used by Memorial in the past but are more extensive, detailed and precise.
Increase in repression in 2012-2022
The establishment of the programme in 2008 and the expansion of its activities in 2010 coincided with a period of comparative stabilisation in the repressive activity of the Russian state.
The establishment of the programme in 2008 and its expansion in 2010 coincided with a period of relative stabilisation of repressive activity by the Russian state. The number of politically motivated criminal cases and political prisoners remained relatively stable during the years of Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency. The slogan ‘Freedom to Political Prisoners’ united a variety of activist groups, but it continued to be about the release of a few dozen people. For example, the organising committee of the rally for fair elections on Bolotnaya Square on 4 February 2012 demanded the release of 39 people: this list was based on data from Memorial, with a few names added.
Everything changed with Vladimir Putin’s unconstitutional return to the Russian presidency in the spring of 2012. Since then, the number of political prisoners and other victims of political repression has grown steadily, except for a brief period in autumn-winter 2013 before the Sochi Winter Olympics, when the authorities tried to reduce international condemnation of repression in Russia. The result of this short and very limited thaw was the 2013 amnesty, which resulted in the release of some of the defendants in the Bolotnoye case, the Pussy Riot band members and some other political prisoners, as well as the pardon of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev and the release of some other political prisoners, including the crew of the Arctic Sunrise. In the spring of 2014, following the victory of the Euromaidan in Kyiv, the overthrow of Yanukovych, the annexation of Crimea and the start of Russian aggression against Ukraine, political repression quickly took on an even greater scale than before.
Important milestones in the sphere of political repression in 2012-2022 were:
- The case of the alleged mass riots on Bolotnaya Square on 6 May 2012, used both to suppress the movement for fair elections and to pass dozens of repressive laws;
- A sharp tightening of articles on participation in terrorist organisations and communities at the end of 2013, led to a sharp increase in the number of political prisoners – in particular, this included hundreds of supporters of the Islamic religious and political organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami and other Muslims;
- Since March 2014, a wave of cases against Ukrainian citizens and Russians sympathetic to that country;
- Repressions against participants of the so-called ‘Revolution of 5.11.17’, which took on a mass character and turned into a regular fabrication of criminal cases on the creation of terrorist and extremist communities allegedly consisting of opposition members (e.g., the cases of ‘Network’ in St. Petersburg and Penza, ‘Novoye Velichiye’, ‘BARS’);
- The banning of Jehovah’s Witness organisations in April 2017 and the beginning of mass repression against them the following year;
- A series of criminal cases against participants in various protest movements in 2019, including in Moscow and Magas;
- Repressions against Alexei Navalny’s associates and participants in rallies in his support after his return from Germany, where he was treated after being poisoned. This largest wave of repression in decades turned into a sweep of the political field that continued until the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.
- Repression after 24 February 2022 and the beginning of the independent work of the project
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops on 24 February 2022 was followed by a sharp increase in political repression and military censorship was introduced. According to OVD-Info, criminal cases in connection with anti-war or pro-Ukrainian positions were brought against at least 1,000 people.
On 5 April 2022, a court decision to liquidate the Memorial Human Rights Centre, issued on 29 December 2021, came into force. With the consent of the Council of the Memorial Human Rights Centre after its liquidation, our team began independent work as an independent human rights project ‘Support for Political Prisoners. Memorial.’ Decisions to recognise persecuted people as political prisoners, which had previously been made by the Memorial Human Rights Centre Council, were now made by a new expert council, which included some of the former members of the Memorial Council and some other Russian human rights activists.
We retained the same approaches and working methods, managed to continue our work under difficult conditions, launched new social networks, a website, and started crowdfunding to support both the new political prisoners and the work of the project as a whole.
In 2022, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Ukrainian Centre for Civil Liberties, Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatski, and Memorial – organisations and associations that continue the work of the liquidated Memorial and International Memorial.
We are particularly proud that the Nobel Committee explicitly acknowledged the work of the Programme ‘Support for Persons Prosecuted for Political Motives’ and the project ‘Support for Political Prisoners. Memorial’, stating that “Memorial has become the most authoritative source of information about political prisoners in Russian prisons”.