The “mission of his life” has been to give a name, burial and homage to those that Soviet history tried to erase from its pages: the dead of the Great Terror of José Stalin.
Yury Dmitriev, the renowned Russian historian who for decades has revealed to the world the ins and outs of those dark years in which thousands of people were locked up in gulags and murdered for political reasons, now runs the risk of spending more years in prison.
A court in the city of Petrozavodsk increased this Monday to 13 years a controversial sentence that has been withdrawn and reimposed on several occasions and that his followers and relatives assure that it is a political conspiracy to prevent him from continuing to expose the crimes of Stalinism.
Dmitriev was indicted in 2016 for “possession of child pornography”, after the authorities confiscated his computer and found photos of his daughter adoptive nude.
The historian and his family assure that the photos are a follow-up of the increase in the body weight of the minor, that she was adopted in conditions of malnutrition, and that the images were taken to follow the development of the girl prior to the visits of the authorities in charge of evaluating the adoption.
Experts assured during the trial that the images did not appear to contain pornographic content and a court annulled a couple of years ago charges against Dmitriev. However, an appeal by the prosecution took the case back to the Supreme Court, which reversed the sentence.
He was then sentenced again to 12 years in prison and the prosecution requested at the beginning of this month another two additional years, what was granted to him this Monday.
“Yuri Dmitriev listens to the latest verdict against him: 15 years ”, wrote on Twitter Memorial , the first Russian human rights organization that has been a benchmark in denouncing the crimes of Stalinism and that is at risk of being shut down by the government of Vladimir Putin.
But who is this historian and why Does your case cause so much controversy?
Who is Dmitriev?
Dmitriev, adopted son of a Soviet military man, was born in 1956 in Petrozavodsk, in the Republic of Karelia, close to Finland.
Located Near the Solovetsky Islands, the birthplace of the gulag, is the region where tens of thousands of prisoners were shot or killed digging the so-called White Sea Channel for Stalin’s first five-year plan.
Almost 700.000 people were executed during that period, according to conservative official estimates.
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During his work as a local government advisor after the Fall of the USSR, Dmitriev had access to documents and archives of the time and discovered the first mass graves that revealed the magnitude of the gulag s and mass murders during Stalinism.
Thanks to his work, two of the largest extermination camps found in Russia were discovered, Sandarmokh and Krasny Bor, where the historian undertook the task of identifying to the victims and create an “informal memorial” in their honor.
He is considered one of the academics who has contributed the most to rebuilding repression and human rights abuses during Stalinism and His work gained him wide recognition both inside and outside Russia.
However, after Putin’s rise to power, Dmitriev became a critic of the new government and the Russia it sought to build, which he repeatedly compared to Stalin’s Soviet Union.
He also questioned the Russian annexation of Crimea and shortly before being arrested, he participated in a project that revealed the scope of the Russian secret police.
According to Memorial, it was all this that led him to earn the enmity of the government and what, finally, he took him to jail.
What are they accusing him of?
This Monday’s verdict ended a series of trials that have dragged on for almost five years.
Dmitriev was arrested for the first time in December 2016, after an “anonymous report” that led the police to his home, where they found the nude photos of the minor.
Dmitriev was charged with illegal possession of “a part” of a firearm the following year.
After experts testified that the images could not be considered child abuse, the historian was acquitted of all charges except the possession of weapons.
However, two months later, the regional Supreme Court annulled the verdict icto based on a researcher’s interview with his daughter, who had 12 years at the time, shortly after he was acquitted.
The case was returned to court with an additional charge of sexual abuse, related to “ inappropriate touching ”, something that the historian has denied.
Several Russian and foreign personalities have condemned his confinement and have denounced that his imprisonment and The charges against him are part of a similar pattern that Putin has used on other occasions against his opponents.
Since he came to power, Putin has tried to clean up the image of Stalin, whom he considers a “strong leader” and has lamented l The fall of the USSR as the “greatest tragedy of the 20th century.”
Monuments to Stalin have started to appear again in various cities across the country and the former Soviet leader led a poll last year as the most “prominent” person of all time in Russia.
Last year, Russian state media began to report, without foundation historical, that the dead of Sandormokh were “Soviet soldiers assassinated by the Finns”.
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