No One Should Doubt Putin Behind Decision to Suppress Memorial, Preobrazhensky Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton Dec. 28 – Memorial, both a child and a motor of perestroika, was one of the co-creators of the new Russian many hoped would take shape after 1991, a country committed to ensuring that memory of Soviet repressions would be preserved and human rights defended Ivan Preobrazhensky says.

            But after his constitutional coup in 2020 Vladimir Putin left no doubt that there was no place for those ideas or those who promote them in his dictatorship, the Russian commentator argues. Human rights ceased to be more important than national laws, and talk about the past could occur only on a basis the Kremlin approved.

            Thus there can be no doubt that Putin and no one else was behind the decision to suppress Memorial and all that it has promoted for some many years. Russian prosecutors and courts only acted as the executors of the Kremlin leader’s desires (dw.com/ru/kommentarij-likvidacija-memoriala-perehod-rf-v-jepohu-nasilija/a-60286092).

            What has happened with the destruction of Memorial and the new threat of war from the Kremlin camarilla is that Russia has been thrown back to where the Soviet Union was in 1989. As a result, the struggle for human rights must begin again – and in beginning again, those concerned about those rights need to recognize and avoid the mistakes of the past.

            Among the greatest of these Preobrazhensky says are getting too close to the state which will inevitably betray it and recognizing instead that the actions of the police state facing them will only bring more people to their side over time.