A museum emblematic of Russia’s post-Soviet human rights movement has shut its doors in Moscow amid a clampdown on freedoms since the onset of the Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine.
The Sakharov Center, dedicated to Nobel Prize-winning rights advocate Andrei Sakharov, is being forced to vacate its premises by the end of the month after nearly 30 years in operation.
Despite the growing number of rights groups being muzzled, supporters say they are confident of dark times passing and the Sakharov Center and other rights organizations eventually making a return.
Photo: AFP
“I’m sure it won’t be for long,” said Yan Rachinsky, cohead of top rights group Memorial, which was shuttered by authorities in late 2021.
Rachinsky said he saw “no future” for modern Russia without the Sakharov Center, which features a permanent exhibition on Soviet repression.
Moscow shut down Memorial just months before Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year.
In January, a court also ordered the closure of Russia’s oldest human rights organization, the Moscow Helsinki Group.
Kremlin critics say that authorities are widening a historic crackdown on dissent with most opposition figures behind bars or in exile and top rights groups shut down.
Rachinsky spoke to reporters on Sunday when the center held its final public event.
About 100 people attended, including representatives of Russia’s embattled rights community.
“You can’t kill ideas or human communication,” political activist Yulia Galyamina said.
Rights activist and poet Elena Sannikova recited a poem, saying that Russian authorities appear to have forgotten how Soviet-era repression ended.
“David will defeat Goliath, and a new dawn will break,” her poem says.
Established by Sakharov’s widow and rights advocate Elena Bonner, the center has leased the premises from Moscow authorities free of charge since the 1990s.
In 2014, Russia designated the venue a “foreign agent,” a label with Stalin-era connotations. It is now being evicted due to the recent tightening of the legislation that prohibits “foreign agents” from receiving state aid.
Since its establishment in 1996, the center hosted hundreds of debates, exhibitions and other events.
In 2015, thousands of people gathered there to pay their last respects to opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated near the Kremlin walls.
Despite the eviction, the Sakharov Center plans to build an online presence, while its archives are to be stored in a warehouse and remain accessible to researchers.
Sakharov Center director Sergei Lukashevsky, who has left Russia for Germany, said that a display dedicated to Soviet-era crimes could not exist in the country at present.
“In the conditions of today’s censorship creating such an exposition would mean coming under attack very quickly,” he said.
Lukashevsky said that authorities planned new checks on the center, suggesting they could result in a formal shutdown.
During a visit last week, several employees packed dozens of items that made up the center’s permanent exhibit on the history of political repression and the Gulag system of prison camps into boxes.
The center’s exhibition hall, adjacent to the main building, hosted a temporary display dedicated to Bonner, Sakharov’s second wife.
Svetlana Gabdullina, a 44-year-old English teacher, said that her visit to the exhibition was a protest of sorts and a search for like-minded people.
“I will now start crying. Russians can be reasonable and civilized, and contribute to things that are important in this world,” Gabdullina said, her eyes tearing up.
Another visitor, Alexei Frolov, who studies nuclear physics, said he had a keen interest in Sakharov, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1975.
The 19-year-old praised the father of the hydrogen bomb as a “hero and genius,” saying he remained true to his principles “until the end.”
Valentin, who declined to provide his last name, said the center’s closure marked a grim new milestone.
“It is not often we witness the death of a museum,” he said. “We all hope this is not the end, but even if the museum is reborn, it will be a different era.”
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