Memorial (society) - History

History

Andrei Sakharov wrote that Lev Ponomaryov, Yuri Samodurov, Vyacheslav Igrunov, Dmitri Leonov, Arseny Roginsky and others put forth an initiative to create a memorial complex to victims of Joseph Stalin's repression in the late 1980s. The idea suggested creating a monument, a museum, an archive, a library. This led to an all-Union informal movement which expanded the original goals. It organized a petition to the 19th Conference of the CPSU. The petition resulted in the conference decreeing the creation of the monument to victims of repressions. A decision of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU was earlier ignored.

The Memorial as the historical and educational society was founded at the conference held in the Moscow Aviation Institute January 26–28, 1989.

In 1991 a Civil Rights Defense Center "MEMORIAL" was founded.

A poll was carried out in Moscow streets of the names of the candidates to the Public Council of the society. Among others, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was named, but he refused to join and in his talk with Andrei Sakharov he motivated this decision by his opinion that it was not right to restrict the scope of the project to the Stalin era only, since the repressive era in Russia started as early as 1917.

The Memorial as the International Volunteer Public Organization "MEMORIAL Historical, Educational, Human Rights And Charitable Society" was officially founded by the founding conference held on April 19, 1992.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union the society became international, with organizations in post-Soviet states: Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Georgia, as well as in Italy (since April 20, 2004).