Moscow’s Naming Memorial an Extremist Organization ‘Direct Result’ of Putin’s Declining Poll Numbers, Davidis Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 10 – Sergey Davidis, a longtime Memorial activist now in emigration, says that the main cause behind the decision to declare Memorial an extremist organization is connected “with the decline in Putin’s rating and in general of trust in the government” in the Russian Federation.

            Putin’s lack of success in Ukraine and the deterioration of the economy, he says, has led to “the growth of dissatisfaction among broad swath of the population, including those who until now have supported the war” (ru.thebarentsobserver.com/novye-repressii-protiv-memoriala-svazany-s-padeniem-popularnosti-putinskogo-rezima-uvereny-pravozasitniki/448415).

            Given this trend, Davidis continues, “it is becoming especially important for the powers to take steps for the destruction of everything alive and independent which still remains on the territory of the country;” and by declaring Memorial extremist, it can more easily go after all those who are associated with the ideas of that movement.

            The second reason Davidis points to is closely tied to the first and concerns “the desire of the authorities to destroy ties between Russians who have left the country because of their lack of agreement with the policy of the Putin regime and those who remain in Russia while retaining the very same opposition views.”

            Breaking such ties is especially important for the Putin regime which “suffering from conspiratorial thinking” is inclined “to see in everything a plot involving the participation of ‘foreign agents,’” something it imagines Memorial to be and thus to play that up with new waves of repression at home.

            Davidis’ colleague Elena Zhemkova, who was among the original organizers of Memorial, agrees and notes how worried Moscow seems to be about the activities of the Zukunft Memorial organization she leads in Berlin and wants to complicate its life and those of its allies as well.

            The Putin government is “already a real totalitarian regime which in principle does not allow any opinion except its own;” and thus it is no surprise that Memorial which has always acted independently has long been a target, Zhemkova says. The Kremlin’s latest moves, however, are doomed to fail.

            That is because, she says, “the more the powers will try to force us to be silent, the more active we will work.”