[aaus-list] Request to sign petition re: Police raid on office of MEMORIAL in St. Petersburg

[Natalia Pylypiuk]

Dear Colleagues,

Our British and American colleagues have initiated the petition  
below.  It concerns the police raid of the premises of the Research  
and Information Centre “Memorial” in St Petersburg,  Russia, which  
took place two days ago. The letter is self explanatory; please see  
text below.

I have signed the letter, and have promised to collect signatures in  
Canada, Italy and Ukraine. For this reason, I have also requested that  
the authors of the letter change its first sentence to read:

<We, the signatories of this letter, members of the British, American,
Canadian and Ukrainian scholarly community, wish to express...>

If you decide to support this quest, please reply to this e-mail asap,  
addressing it to
Orlando Figes <o.figes at ntlworld.com> and stating:

> 'Yes' and add your preferred academic title, honorary degrees,
> honours, etc. (don't be shy - these may actually help).


Sincerely,
Natalia Pylypiuk (MLCS)

||||||||||||||
To:

Dmitrii Medvedev, President of the Russian Federation
Valentina Matvienko, Governor of St Petersburg
Ella Pamfilova, Chairwoman of the Presidential Human Rights Commission  
of
the Russian Federation
Vladimir Lukin, Russian Federal Ombudsman for Human Rights
Minister of Internal Affairs, Rashid Nurgaliev
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov
Yuriy Chaika, General Public Prosecutor of Russian Federation
Sergey Romanyuk, Public Prosecutor of Leningrad region,

5 December 2008


We, the signatories of this letter, members of the British and American
scholarly community, wish to express our deep concern at the actions of
members of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of St Petersburg on 4 December
2008 during a raid of the premises of the Research and Information  
Centre
“Memorial” in St Petersburg, ul. Rubinshteina 23-105, which resulted  
in the
confiscation of the Centre’s electronic archive.


RIC “Memorial” is renowned for its research into the history of  
repression
under Stalin, the phenomenon of the Gulag and unofficial movements of  
the
1950s-1980s in the USSR. The staff of RIC “Memorial” helped to  
establish the
fate of many thousands of people, citizens of the USSR and other  
countries,
who fell victim to the repressions during the 1930s-1950s. Many of us  
know
members of RIC “Memorial’s” staff in person or have used the  
organisation’s
archive.


A total of eleven hard drives were confiscated. These drives hold  
several
databases containing: biographical information on more than 50,000  
victims
of Stalinist repression; the results of the search for execution and  
burial
sites of victims of repression (several hundred sites described or
photographed); the photo collection (over 10,000 photographs) and
accompanying textual material of the “Virtual Gulag Museum”, which is a
unique online source linking more than one hundred local Russian  
museums.
Also confiscated were the database to the oral history archive and an
electronic collection of photographs, including scans of historic  
materials
from private archives. What is more, the prosecutors took a hard drive  
and
documents belonging to the art historian Aleksandr Margolis, a member of
“Memorial” and the director of the “International Charitable  
Foundation for
the Renaissance of St. Petersburg-Leningrad”, who is known for his
commitment to the preservation of St Petersburg’s historic architecture.


The scholarly community fears the loss of a unique collection, which has
been amassed over the course of more than twenty years of dedicated
research. This collection is of priceless value for future generations  
of
researchers in both Russia and the wider world and must not be  
compromised
or destroyed.


We are dismayed at the way the results of scholarly research and  
researchers
are being treated by the authorities of St Petersburg and urge you to  
take
action to ensure the electronic archive is immediately returned to its
rightful owners.


Yours sincerely,

[most recent signatories]

Prof. Jeffrey Brooks
Professor of Russian History
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore MD 21218

Grace Morsberger, PhD Slavic Languages and Literatures,
UC Berkeley

Robert Chandler, Poet and Translator,
editor of Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida.

Professor Natalia Pylypiuk, PhD,
President of the Canadian Association of Slavists (2000--04),
Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta,
Canada

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