Memorial (society)

Memorial (Мемориал) is an international human rights organisation, founded in Russia during the fall of the Soviet Union to study and examine the human rights violations and other crimes committed under Joseph Stalin's reign. Subsequently, it expanded the scope of its research to cover the entire Soviet period. Prior to its dissolution in Russia in early 2022, it consisted of two separate legal entities, Memorial International, whose purpose was the recording of the crimes against humanity committed in the Soviet Union, particularly during the Stalinist era, and the Memorial Human Rights Centre, which focused on the protection of human rights, especially in conflict zones in and around modern Russia. A movement rather than a unitary system, as of December 2021 Memorial encompassed over 50 organizations in Russia and 11 in other countries, including Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Germany, Italy, Belgium and France. Although the focus of affiliated groups differs from region to region, they share similar concerns about human rights, documenting the past, educating young people and marking remembrance days for the victims of political repression. Memorial emerged during the perestroika years of the late 1980s, to document the crimes against humanity committed in the USSR during the 20th century and help surviving victims of the Great Terror and the Gulag and their families. Between 1987 and 1990, while the USSR was still in existence, 23 branches of the society were established. When the Soviet Union collapsed, branches of Memorial in Ukraine remained affiliated to the Russian network. Some of the oldest branches of Memorial in northwest and central Russia, the Urals and Siberia later developed websites documenting independent local research and published the crimes of the Soviet regime in their region. After the Russian foreign agent law was passed in July 2012, Memorial came under increasing government pressure. On 21 July 2014, the Memorial Human Rights Centre was declared a "foreign agent" by the Ministry of Justice.

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