What is the International Memorial Association?

Memorial will keep researching, documenting and analyzing all manifestations of political violence, past and present, in the former USSR and other countries affected by the crimes of Soviet and post-Soviet regimes.

Memorial will at the same time fight for human rights, promote building and maintaining civil societies, and democracy-driven, law-bound governments.

from the declaration of the International Memorial Association

On May 16, 2023, fifteen organizations of the Memorial network from Russia, Ukraine, the European Union and Israel established the International Memorial Association, which is registered in Geneva. The Association unites Memorials from different cities and countries and continues the work and best projects of International Memorial, which was banned by the Russian regime just before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Memorial emerged as a civic movement in many cities and republics across what was then the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, when society’s demand for truth increased dramatically. The first chairperson of Memorial was human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov.

Board of Memorial International Association: Štěpán Černoušek, Giulia De Florio, Anna Gavina, Sergey Krivenko, Irina Scherbakova and Nicolas Werth (chair).

BEFORE 2022

The purpose of the work done by Memorial is pursuing the truth, investigating and documenting crimes committed by the Soviet government against the citizens and peoples of the USSR and international crimes. Soon after Memorial was created, another mission naturally emerged: advocating human rights and documenting state crimes committed in the former USSR.

This work of never-ending exploration and reflection can never truly be completed. But it must be done, and only then can Russia become a peaceful neighbor for other countries and a place where the rights of all people and groups are equally respected.

NOW

2022 and the years that have followed have made us see new connections and features of similarity between the crimes of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. What are the historical roots of Russia's war against Ukraine? What are the consequences, still relevant even if invisible, of the Soviet regime’s crimes: its oppression of peoples, deportations, discrimination of women, LGBTQ+, political dissenters, religious and language groups, and many other forms of unfreedom?

What are the traditions of resistance to unfreedom that today's civil activists can draw on to fight Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, to fight for civil liberties and for a fair trial for all state criminals?

In 2022, Memorial was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize together with the Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatski and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties. We take this prize as an admonition that Russian civil society is expected to act up.

WHAT WE DO

Memory

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Having first emerged as an initiative to erect a monument to victims of state crimes, Memorial works to commemorate state terror in public spaces. These include the annual “Return of Names” campaign, memorial plaques set up by the “Last Address” project, and guided tours to sites associated with the history of Soviet terror.

Human rights

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Memorial fights for the observance of human rights and freedoms in the post-Soviet space. Among other things, Memorial members have documented and investigated war crimes in Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Transnistria, Tajikistan, Chechnya, and Ukraine.

Research

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Memorial conducts research work on the history of state crimes perpetrated in the USSR, collecting and publishing information about victims of state terror, documents, testimonies, and objects. Much of the archives, though not all of it yet, has been digitized and is available as searchable databases.

Public projects

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Memorial talks to the society and communities within it about the past, which many find uncomfortable, through publications, lectures, conferences, and exhibitions. We share knowledge and experience and work together with others who search for truth about the past and the present and who believe in a more just future.