Translated material
Inevitability
On October 4, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation recognized the International Historical, Educational, Charitable and Human Rights Society "Memorial" as a foreign agent
When a person dies, several more generations of descendants come to his grave, families keep his photographs, things made by his hands or books written by him. In addition to life, the executioners take away the right to memory and at least posthumous justice from the victims of genocide. This is the goal - to cut out families, communities, peoples under the root so that there is no one to remember. The genocide does not stop at the very moment of the massacre - it is moved on by the indifference, fear and cynicism of the living, who pretend that nothing like this has ever happened in their country, city and home.
Therefore, the idea of the Yad Vashem memorial complex, created in 1953, was to return the right of memory and the right of speech to the victims, to all the Jewish cultural and historical layer erased from the map of Europe. This is a temple, and a museum, and an educational center, and an archive. This is the second most visited cultural attraction in Israel, despite the fact that the rest are two or more thousand years older.
Memorial International Society is the Russian and post-Soviet analogue of Yad Vashem, only unlike the 18-hectare complex on Mount Herzl, it is still mostly virtual. I think this association also arose among the creators when they chose the name. Memorial speaks for the speechless victims of the communist genocide, it is their voice in the modern world. Unfortunately, it is a very quiet voice. The blame for this, of course, is not the employees of the "Memorial" - they are heroes, but the society and the state.
A quarter of a century ago, repentance was the key word on the political and cultural agenda. But it never took place - neither in Russia, nor in the former satellite countries, where all responsibility for the crimes of the communists was mechanically shifted to the "Russian occupiers."
The declarative division of executioners and victims, usually people very similar to each other, into different nations or even races is a typical feature of genocide. This is how Hitler acted towards the Jews. This is how the Russian authorities now act, declaring an organization that speaks on behalf of the victims a foreign agent, the Kremlin actually excludes the repressed from among the Russians, deprives dead people of their citizenship.
Everyone already knows that there are two nations in Russia: a nation of victims and those who sympathize with them, and a nation of an aggressively obedient majority affected by the Stockholm syndrome, headed by an institution that, in fact, carried out genocide in Soviet times. The division goes back to the depths of the 20th century, transitions from one group to another are not that common. But no one tried to formalize this situation until the Kremlin began handing out yellow stars to the right and left.
However, the nature of all repressive regimes is such that it contains an algorithm of self-destruction. For political mobilization, they need enemies and conflicts - external, internal, whatever. Otherwise, repressiveness itself loses its meaning, and people who have emerged from mobilization psychosis begin to ask about rights and demand money. These conflicts eventually finish off the regimes. A classic example is the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. And then the inevitable happens - the "Memorial" appears on the smoking ruins.