A man who returns memory
The history of Yury Dmitriev case

A small crowd occupies the court building of a Russian provincial town Petrozavodsk. They cannot hear what is going on in the courtroom — it is a closed hearing. The accusations are serious — production of child pornography, corruption of a minor, possession of an illegal firearm. Nearly no one here, though, seems to believe that the man on the bench is guilty. Instead, there are talks of intimidation by government actors that do not like his activities in analysing and publicising the scope of political repression — including indiscriminate arrests and mass murders — in the Stalinist 1930s. Prosecution demands 15 years of imprisonment for the head of Karelian Memorial organisation, Yury Dmitriev.
Grave digger
It is 1997, the middle of the forest in Russian Karelia, in the northwest of the country. A group of draftees is engaged in, to their mind, quite senseless work — they are digging pit after pir where they are ordered to, always finding nothing. Suddenly, all the laughter stops and they are crying out in terror — this time they have found something, and that something is human remnants.
That mass grave that was found by soldiers under the command of Yury Dmitriev in 1997 is known as Sandarmokh — in total, 236 communal pits were found there, containing remains of more than 9,000 people — who were tried, shot and buried in secret during the Great Terror of 1937 and 1938 — in most of the cases, their families would never know what happened to them.
Yury Dmitriev started working on finding the remains of repressed people and deanonymization of their names from the late 1980s, when he worked as an assistant of a deputy of Congress of People’s Deputies of the Soviet Union. That time he worked only on reburial of remains as mass graves were discovered accidentally. Later he started to work on establishing identities of buried in mass graves people. In 1988 he joined the group of Karelian historians-enthusiasts, who called themselves Memorial after the international group.
In the same 1997, Dmitriev and his colleagues found another mass grave near Petrozavodsk, this time in a place known as Krasny Bor Forest. During 1998, memorial cemeteries were established both there and in Sandarmokh, and Dmitriev had continued efforts to identify victims well until his arrest.
In more recent years, Dmitriev focused his efforts on researching the circumstances of the creation of the White Sea–Baltic Canal, an enormous 1930s project that was mostly built by GULAG prisoners working in horrific conditions — explaining the mass graves abound in the forests surrounding it.
All this work is done with the help of Memorial, a non-profit founded in 1989 with initial goal to investigate and publicize the scope of human rights abuses in 1930s and beyond. Dmitriev was among the first Memorial activists and heads its Karelian chapter.
Besides searching for new mass graves, Dmitriev and broader Memorial movement have dedicated enormous efforts to establishing identities of every person unjustly tried during the Stalinist years — nearly every region of Russia now has a so-called “Memory Book”, containing bios of every known terror victim — from real political activists to peasants, whose only guilt was expressing displeasure at crop failures, caused in part by government’s policies.
“Now officially, I’m the editor of the Memory Book. The Government decision published and so on, regularly they call me for a report… but they pay nothing. So I work as a watchman. We’ve spent nine years on the work, I can’t give it up. Those nine years, actually, let them pass. Because it’s the knowledge, which people need, who wait, try to find their relatives” told the historian in an interview to Memorial.
Dmitriev, now 62, says that his work is “to return memory”, to return names to those who were buried in mass graves as nameless “traitors”, and to give their families an opportunity to visit their resting place, thus mending old wounds.
Yury Dmitriev was detained on December 13, 2016, the police seized his phone and computer. Child Protective Services picked his adopted child from the school and took her to a shelter.
The Girl
Yury Dmitriev was born in 1956 in Petrozavodsk and became an orphan early in his life. He was adopted by a military officer and spent most of his childhood in Dresden, where his father’s division was quartered. This is why, his friends say, he decided to adopt an orphan himself even after having two children of his own (both have reached adulthood quite a time ago) — to continue this line and give back for the good that was done to him.
The process was not easy — he was refused several times because of his age and had to push through all the way to the Supreme Court. Finally, in 2008 he adopted Natasha (name changed), then 3 years old. That costed him his second marriage — after three years, his wife wanted to return the girl to the orphanage, but Dmitriev was firmly against it.
At the time of adoption, Natasha was weak and under-nurtured. Once, when mustard plasters gave her skin spots like bruises, a kindergarten nurse called child protection services. To prevent any further accusations of mistreatment, Dmitriev started to photograph the girl once a month naked — this would also allow him to follow her development. This practice is recommended to adopting parents and was mention during the parenting courses he and his then wife took. As the time went, he started to take the pictures rarer and fully stopped in 2016, when the girl was 11.
The First Trial
The prosecution incriminated nine photos of Natasha to Yury Dmitriev, which it considered to be pornographical. There’s no common version of how the police got the photos. First, the biological child of Dmitriev, Ekaterina Klodt, suspected the partner of the historian — Irina Korneichuk. Irina moved to Yury in the summer of 2016. The daughter told that the relationship was were not simple, and Irina once stayed for night at her place, though Irina could have also been the person who prevented the break-in into the flat and possible leaking of the data from the Dmitriev’s computer.
On November 29, 2016, district police officer came to Yury Dmitriev and called him for a talk at 10 am the next day. The police officer was surprised as Irina was at home and asked who was she. Later after the visit of the officer, the dean of local clinic called Irina and asked her to get tested the next day at 10 am.
Irina Korneichuk told to Novaya gazeta: “we looked together [with Yury Dmitriev] where everything was: my clothes, a computer mouse. Because it was very strange: the officer, and and this call from the clinic. Yury was critical, told: they will plant something on”. I came back after 1 pm. He was already at home. Said: “So what? There was someone”. And we started to search. We thought that someone planted something on him: drugs, guns. The talk with the officer he described: three hours of talking about nothing.”
On December 4, 2016, Irina was hospitalized and had a surgery on December 6. After the release from the hospital, when Dmitriev was already detained, she came back to her home in Voronezh.
Korneichuk suspected that IT repairman Dmitry Bogush leaked Dmitriev’s data. He often helped the historian with his computer and told that they know each other from 1989. Bogush disagreed with the idea of the side hacking of the Dmitriev’s computer. He told that every time he was at the computer he didn’t find out any side activity. Bogush claimed that it was possible to come to Dmitriev’s flat and copy all the files from the hard drive, but not during that time while the historian wasn’t at home. “And the main thing: someone should know beforehand that there’s something on the computer.”
In the interview to Novaya Gazeta Bogush insinuated that he had copies or Dmitriev’s old hard drive, but he denied to tell the origin of the data. He claimed that he didn’t know which of the photos the investigation considered as child pornograhy.
In summer 2017 an expert Dubkin of the ministry of Internal Affairs testified in the court. He took part into Dmitriev’s flat searching and the detaing of the historian. During the interrogation, Dmitriev asked Dubkin how an expert could have found the photos, which the investigation required, in 30 seconds, when the historian couldn’t find documents for long as they were in a mess. Dubkin told that in the time of the searching was an officer, who showed him the files.
The criminal proceedings were in fact initiated on December 2, 2016 after anonymous report to the police that Yury Dmitriev took pictures of his naked adopted child and specifies the address of the historian, but didn’t name him/herself, even if it’s forbidden to report anonymously on the criminal case under the 141 article of the Russian criminal code.
Dmitriev was arrested and placed in pre-trial detention in December 2016. He spent a year behind the bars and even underwent psychological expertise — and was deemed sane. In December 2017, the court agreed to let him be placed under house arrest.
Novaya Gazeta / Sofia Pankevich
As the case was concerned with a potential abuse of a minor, the trial was held behind the close doors — so there is not much information about its details. What we know is that experts who evaluated the photos around which the whole case was built could not reach a consensus on whether they were pornographical.
The Dmitriev case caused a public outcry. About 41 thousand people signed a petition in support of the historian, the Karelian Journalist Union made an appeal to the Karelian Investigation Committee, as people considered the case to be fabricated. Many public figures, including filmmaker Andrei Zvyagintsev, musician Boris Grebenshchikov, writers Lyudmila Ulitskaya and Dmitry Bykov supported the historian. Different sources approved that Dmitriev could be detained for his promise to create the Karelian hangman’s list — the project of Memorial aimed on publishing the names of people involved into repressions and deaths of innocent. A close friend of Dmitriev, historian Anatoly Razumov told: “Yury is prosecuted for Sardamokh”.
The attitude of the Karelian authorities towards the Sardamokh were changing since the discovery of the mass grave. In 1997 the Karelian government supported the idea of creating the memorial. In 2010, on memory day, patriarch Kirill came, in 2016 the Karelian officials didn’t come for a first time.
On April 5th, 2018, Dmitriev was found not guilty, except for the possession of an illegal firearm, and sentenced to a two-year conditional term. The verdict was met as a rare moment of common sense for the Russian justice system.
Not Over Yet…
But the trials were not yet over for Dmitriev. The prosecution has appealed the first ruling and on the 14th of June the Supreme Court of Karelia overrode the decision. This was partly based on the words of Natasha’s grandmother who insisted on the appeal and of the girl herself, who had said to a psychologist that she is “upset” and “disgraced”. Anufriev claims that the girl’s statements were made under pressure. Now the case is to be brought before the Petrozavodsk city court again.
On June 27th, Dmitriev was detained while trying to leave Petrozavodsk. His lawyer said that he had been going to a local cemetery; a government-affiliated TV channel claimed that he was trying to flee to neighbouring Poland. Next day, it became known that another criminal case had been opened against Dmitriev — this time he is charged with sexually abusing a person under 14 years old and can be sentenced to 20 years in prison.
On the 21st of August the court decided again that Dmitriev should stay in detention while prosecution is working on the case. His lawyers say that the preliminary investigation is finished and they expect the trial to start in October. Memorial maintains that Dmitriev is being persecuted for political reasons.
Who Is So Displeased By Truth Seekers?
There is no consensus in the Russian society about the Stalin’s Big Terror in 1937–1938 when more than 1500 thousand people were repressed and about 600 thousand were executed.The last survey on the repressions by VTSIOM showed that 11% of the population consider them to be partly justified, when 87% absolutely or partly unjustified, when in the same 2017 38% of the respondents named Stalin “the most outstanding person of all times” in a survey by Levada-Center. In February 2017, 46% in the survey by Levada-Center of the respondents answered that they treat Stalin with “admiration”, “respect” and “sympathy”.
Highest government officials, including President Putin himself, repeatedly asserted in public that “there can be no justifications for [Stalinist] crimes”, and in October 2017, Putin even opened a monument commemorating victims of the Stalinist era in Moscow downtown, when in the interview to Oliver Stone he called Stalin a “complicated figure” and that he’s against his demonization and forgetting about “the horror of Stalinism”.
In October 2016 the Ministry of Justice recognized the international Memorial organization as a “foreign agent” as the organization got money from foreign sources and the ministry found “signs of political activity” in the organization’s functioning. The “signs” were found in five statements, published of the Memorial site. Three of them — critics of the “foreign agents’” law. The forth was about protest on the participation of the Russian army in the Ukrainian war. The last one — about the killing of Boris Nemtsov.
In March 2015 the director of GULAG Museum in Perm claimed that the local authorities took over the museum and removed mentions of Stalin’s crimes. A non-governmental organization managed the museum, it claimed about the self destruction after the conflict with the local authorities. “The memorial won’t disappear, but the museum is seized by new people, appointed by the authorities, and they has totally changed it. Now it’s a museum of prison system, not about political prisoners. They speak neither about repressions, nor about Stalin” told the director of the museum Victor Shmyrov to BBC.
In early June, reports surfaced that in some regions the documents on the Stalinist era trials had been destroyed — apparently, by orders of several federal government agencies, including the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Some Memorial activists accused the federal government in a direct attempt to cover the extent of atrocities committed then.
For now, Natasha stays with the family she was born into, and Dmitriev is in detention. The outcome of his next trial — and the future of his relationships with his youngest daughter — hangs in the balance.
Illustration by Alexandra Pyatina
