FW: Letter re: Police raid on office of MEMORIAL in Petersburg

[Grace Morsberger]

Yes. Grace Morsberger, PhD Slavic Languages and Literatures, UC Berkeley

On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 7:36 AM, Robert Chandler <kcf19 at dial.pipex.com>wrote:

> Subject: Letter re: Attack on Memorial
>
> If you wish to add your signature to this letter (which will be sent in
> English and in Russian), please reply to this email (o.figes at ntlworld.com)
> with a 'Yes' and add your preferred academic title, honorary degrees,
> honours, etc. (don't be shy - these may actually help).
>
> Also - do please circulate to anybody you think may want to sign:
>
> Orlando Figes
>
> ----------
>
>
> Dmitrii Medvedev, President of the Russian Federation
> Valentina Matvienko, Governor of St Petersburg
> Ella Pamfilova, Chairwoman of the Presidential Human Rights Commission of
> the Russian Federation
> Vladimir Lukin, Russian Federal Ombudsman for Human Rights
>
> Minister of Internal Affairs, Rashid Nurgaliev
> Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov
> Yuriy Chaika, General Public Prosecutor of Russian Federation
> Sergey Romanyuk, Public Prosecutor of Leningrad region,
>
>
>
>
> 5 December 2008
>
>
>
>
>
>
> We, the signatories of this letter, members of the British and American
> scholarly community, wish to express our deep concern at the actions of
> members of the Public Prosecutor¹s Office of St Petersburg on 4 December
> 2008 during a raid of the premises of the Research and Information Centre
> ³Memorial² in St Petersburg, ul. Rubinshteina 23-105, which resulted in the
> confiscation of the Centre¹s electronic archive.
>
>
> RIC ³Memorial² is renowned for its research into the history of repression
> under Stalin, the phenomenon of the Gulag and unofficial movements of the
> 1950s-1980s in the USSR. The staff of RIC ³Memorial² helped to establish
> the
> fate of many thousands of people, citizens of the USSR and other countries,
> who fell victim to the repressions during the 1930s-1950s. Many of us know
> members of RIC ³Memorial¹s² staff in person or have used the organisation¹s
> archive.
>
>
> A total of eleven hard drives were confiscated. These drives hold several
> databases containing: biographical information on more than 50,000 victims
> of Stalinist repression; the results of the search for execution and burial
> sites of victims of repression (several hundred sites described or
> photographed); the photo collection (over 10,000 photographs) and
> accompanying textual material of the ³Virtual Gulag Museum², which is a
> unique online source linking more than one hundred local Russian museums.
> Also confiscated were the database to the oral history archive and an
> electronic collection of photographs, including scans of historic materials
> from private archives. What is more, the prosecutors took a hard drive and
> documents belonging to the art historian Aleksandr Margolis, a member of
> ³Memorial² and the director of the ³International Charitable Foundation for
> the Renaissance of St. Petersburg-Leningrad², who is known for his
> commitment to the preservation of St Petersburg¹s historic architecture.
>
>
> The scholarly community fears the loss of a unique collection, which has
> been amassed over the course of more than twenty years of dedicated
> research. This collection is of priceless value for future generations of
> researchers in both Russia and the wider world and must not be compromised
> or destroyed.
>
>
> We are dismayed at the way the results of scholarly research and
> researchers
> are being treated by the authorities of St Petersburg and urge you to take
> action to ensure the electronic archive is immediately returned to its
> rightful owners.
>
>
> Yours sincerely,
>
>
>
> ------ End of Forwarded Message
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
>  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
>                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------