On June 4, Memorial and dozens of organizations and projects — many affiliated with it, some with no real connection at all — were added to Rosfinmonitoring’s register of “terrorists and extremists.” The move followed Russia’s Supreme Court decision of April 9, which declared Memorial “extremist.” Two months on, the consequences of that ruling continue to expand. The response was immediate. Governments, human rights organizations, journalists, and supporters around the world spoke out. As we mark two months since the decision, we want to thank everyone who shared information, signed statements, wrote letters, donated, and stood with Memorial. Your solidarity matters. It helps ensure that Memorial’s work — and the people behind it — are not forgotten. Memorial’s work continues.

It's Pride Month — a time to celebrate LGBTQ communities, but also to remember those who fought for visibility and rights under far more difficult circumstances. Leningrad, USSR, 1983. Perestroika is still years away. The dissident movement has been largely crushed, and prospects for human rights seem bleak. At first glance, it hardly seems like a place where LGBTQ organizations could exist. And yet they did. Even in an authoritarian and deeply restrictive society, some people did more than imagine a different future. They built organizations, found resources, created networks, and developed their own ways of resisting discrimination. They were determined, resourceful, and sometimes deliberately provocative. Together with ComingOut LGBTQ group, we're looking back at the first LGBTQ organizations in the late Soviet Union: underground meetings, samizdat publications, campaigns against criminal prosecution, and debates that shaped the emerging movement. #PrideMonth #QueerHistory

Thinking about writing to a political prisoner, but not sure what to say? Many people hesitate because they think they need to discuss politics or comment on the person's case. In reality, that's usually not necessary — and political topics often don't make it through prison censorship anyway. What many prisoners appreciate most is hearing about life beyond prison walls: a book you've read, a trip you've taken, a new hobby, your studies, your work, or simply how your week has been. These everyday stories help people stay connected to the outside world. We've put together a short guide on why letters matter, what to write about, and how to send your first one.

Yuri Dombrovsky was born on May 12, 1909. Over the course of his life, the Soviet writer and poet was arrested four times, exiled from Moscow to Almaty, and spent more than a decade in Gulag camps, including Kolyma. These experiences shaped his best-known novels, The Keeper of Antiquities and The Faculty of Useless Knowledge — books about fear, justice, and what happens when truth becomes politically inconvenient. Dombrovsky wrote less about the camps themselves than about the atmosphere surrounding them: interrogations, fabricated evidence, constant suspicion, and the slow erosion of trust between people. Arrested for “anti-Soviet agitation,” he witnessed firsthand how law could be transformed from protection into a tool of power. His most famous novel, The Faculty of Useless Knowledge, was never published in the USSR during his lifetime. It first appeared in Paris in 1978 through YMCA Press. Soon after its publication, Dombrovsky was attacked by unknown men near Moscow’s Central House of Writers. He died two months later from injuries linked to the beating, which was never properly investigated. Today, Dombrovsky’s writing remains strikingly relevant in the way it explores the relationship between truth, justice, and the state. In the cards: quotes and excerpts from Yuri Dombrovsky’s works and letters, with commentary on his writing by our volunteer Katya Sh!

On May 9, 1975 Soviet dissident and human rights activist Larisa Bogoraz published an open letter addressed to KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov. In it, she demanded that the Soviet authorities stop concealing the crimes of Stalinist repression and open the archives to the public. “To forget our own recent past,” she wrote, “means not only betraying the memory of millions who perished and suffered, but betraying ourselves and our children as well.” Bogoraz also reminded readers of the “Moscow Appeal” — a call by Soviet citizens to investigate and publicly acknowledge the truth about political terror in the USSR. Fifty years later, these words still sound painfully relevant. Historians from Memorial are still forced to fight for access to archival investigation files. We are publishing excerpts from Larisa Bogoraz’s letter preserved in Memorial’s archive.

“We will end the struggle only when the last of the guilty stands before the judgment of all nations. The destruction of Nazism and its roots is our slogan. The creation of a new world of freedom — a world without war — is our goal.” These words from the Buchenwald Oath — adopted by survivors of the camp on April 19, 1945, just days after liberation — were read aloud in 2015 by 89-year-old Boris Romantschenko during the 70th anniversary commemoration. Seven years later, he was killed in Kharkiv by a Russian shell — on the 23rd day of the invasion that the Russian authorities called “denazification.” Romantschenko survived Buchenwald, Peenemünde, Mittelbau-Dora, and Bergen-Belsen. He later became vice president of the International Committee of Former Prisoners of Buchenwald-Dora and spent decades returning to the camps where he had once been imprisoned, speaking publicly about Nazi crimes and the importance of remembrance. The International Auschwitz Committee called his death “the erasure of memory.” Eva Fahidi, a 96-year-old Hungarian writer and Holocaust survivor, said: “Everything we lived for after the liberation of Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen — everything we defended and told European youth about — has been disgraced by Putin and his generals.” Every year ahead of May 9, Russian authorities speak about “sacred memory” and an “eternal debt to veterans.” Yet among the victims of Russia’s war against Ukraine are the very people who survived and witnessed World War II.

Up to 1.5 million people were killed during the Armenian Genocide. For decades in the USSR, even speaking about it publicly was taboo. Last week, Armenia marked one of its most important dates — April 24, the Day of Remembrance. Every year, thousands of people walk to the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex in Yerevan to lay flowers at the eternal flame and honor those who were killed. Commemorations take place not only across Armenia, but around the world. Visiting Tsitsernakaberd has also become part of official diplomacy — foreign leaders plant trees there, extending a symbolic alley of memory. Since 1999, the Dashnaktsutyun party has held a torchlight march on the eve of April 24. And since the centenary in 2015, the forget-me-not flower has become a widely recognized symbol of remembrance. The genocide has been officially recognized by dozens of countries and international organizations. But this history remains unresolved. Turkey — the successor of the Ottoman Empire — continues to deny the events of 1915, and has supported Azerbaijan in recent violence that led to the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) in 2023. As historian Suren Manukyan puts it: “Genocide is not a tragedy. It is a crime — a crime that remains unpunished.”