"Saturday Medusa"

In memory of Arseny Roginsky

On December 18, the historian and founder of the Memorial society Arseny Roginsky, one of the brightest and most important people in the modern history of Russia, died. We have selected several links that will help you learn more about it.

Roginsky's last word at the trial . In August 1981, Roginsky was arrested and accused of forgery of documents. We were talking about signatures on the so-called “relationships” - directions that had to be obtained from scientific institutes and other organizations in order to gain access to the archive.

The criminal case was a response to Roginsky’s dissident activities - together with his colleagues, he published an underground historical collection “Memory”, which was published including abroad. Roginsky was sentenced to four years in the camps.

In his last speech, which is known as “The Position of the Historian in the Soviet Union,” he tried to explain why researchers should be freely allowed into the archives, and not put up with endless obstacles: “Only the free study of these archives and their free publication will help us find out the truth about our past."

Book about the collection “Memory”. The collection “Memory” (five voluminous issues were published from 1976 to 1982, you can see the table of contents here ) is one of the most important publications of Soviet self- and tamizdat. In fact, this is the first independent historical collection in the USSR. Basically, it was devoted to the study of a completely forbidden topic - Soviet terror. An important feature of the collection was its strict scientific nature. It was Roginsky who always insisted on how important it is to observe the laws of historical research, regardless of its topic. This principle has become one of the key ones for Memorial.

Lecture by Roginsky on statistics of terror . The scale of Soviet repression is one of the main areas of Roginsky's research. And how good it is that there is YouTube - and we can not only read Roginsky’s texts, but also listen to his lectures and interviews. It is no coincidence that almost everyone who wrote about Roginsky these days, along with all his endless merits, noted how charming and kind he was.

On the scale of political repression in the USSR under Stalin: 1921-1953

Video from the founding meeting of Memorial, 1989. “Memorial” emerged around the idea of perpetuating the memory of the victims of political terror, including erecting a monument (it took almost 30 years for the “Wall of Sorrow” to appear in Moscow). It was a large-scale grassroots movement - people who were allowed to speak wrote hundreds of letters to Memorial. They talked about their dead loved ones and asked for details. Gradually, Memorial branches appeared throughout the country and many of them are still operating - despite pressure from the state.

Trailer for the film about Arseny Roginsky. The documentary film directed by Lyudmila Gordon and cinematographer Mika Altskan is called “The Right to Memory.” After Roginsky's death, the authors published a fragment of a conversation with his main character. Among other things, he talks about what prevents Russian society from overcoming the trauma of repression.

Several texts in memory of Arseny Roginsky:

Statements from colleagues at Memorial

In memoriam on the Memorial website

Your editors at Meduza