List of political prisoners (excluding those persecuted for religion)

About the people on the list

They all have one thing in common: these people, who did not resort to violence or call for it, became victims of deliberate state lawlessness. You can read about our criteria for classifying people as political prisoners here.

Political prisoners in today’s Russian Federation are very different people.

Among them, there are those who are persecuted under “political” articles of the Criminal Code, and there are those falsely accused of purely criminal, non-political crimes.

There are civil and political activists persecuted for their activities, and there are those who ended up behind bars for participating in a scientific exchange of information or reposting on a social network.

There are people who literally became hostages, that is, deprived of freedom because they refused to slander others or in order to influence their relatives and friends, and there are completely random victims of the state repressive mechanism, arbitrarily choosing them to influence society, substantiate propaganda theses, or simply for reporting.

Among political prisoners there are many staunch fighters whose courage in difficult conditions of captivity, and sometimes under torture, commands respect, and there are also some not very pleasant people.

People who find themselves under its pressure need our support and solidarity. We have no right to leave them alone with the machine of political repression.

• Our support and solidarity can take different forms. Disseminating information and drawing attention to specific fates and cases is the least we can do, and yet it is a real opportunity to help political prisoners. Investigators who fabricate political cases, unjust judges and guards are afraid of publicity. Lawlessness, even when carried out by high political will, prefers to act secretly and feels uncomfortable under the light of public attention.
• A possible way to support prisoners is to sign collective petitions and appeals. Even if they are formally addressed to those who are ultimately responsible for political repression, in essence they appeal to society and demonstrate to it and to the prison guards the level of our support for political prisoners. We post links to such petitions and appeals on the Internet.
• No less important are letters to those who are illegally deprived of their liberty. They make them feel our support, allow them to understand that they are not alone. For each of their prisoners, our website contains addresses for regular paper letters and letters via Internet postal services, where available.
• Finally, financial assistance to the prisoners themselves and their families is very important. Payment for legal assistance, parcels to pretrial detention centers and colonies, support for families left without a breadwinner is the most effective manifestation of solidarity. You can help a specific prisoner in the ways that are indicated on our website for each political prisoner separately, or you can donate any amount to help political prisoners in general by clicking on the “Support political prisoners” link on the main page of our website.

Our list of political prisoners is obviously not complete. We strive to ensure that our position on recognizing a particular prisoner as a political prisoner is convincingly substantiated and as objective as possible. In this regard, the study of any case of imprisonment in which there is a likely political motive requires the availability of documents and a certain amount of time. Collecting case materials in itself often takes quite a long time, especially in cases where the investigation and trial are classified.

The absence of a specific prisoner in our lists of political prisoners does not mean that the human rights project “Support for Political Prisoners. Memorial” agrees with his persecution, nor, even more so, approves it.

Likewise, recognising a person as a political prisoner does not mean that the “Support for Political Prisoners. Memorial” project agrees with his views and statements, nor does it approve of his statements or actions.