This year, the Nobel Peace Prize honors defenders of human rights in Eastern Europe: The Nobel Committee awarded the prestigious award to the Belarusian politician and human rights activist Ales Byaljazki, the Russian human rights organization Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties (CCL). The award winners made an “extraordinary contribution” to documenting war crimes, human rights violations and abuse of power, said the chair of the committee in the justification for the decision.
Alexander Cherkasov is the chairman of Memorial, an organization that was officially liquidated in Russia this year. Just now, the human rights activists received the Nobel Peace Prize – after ten years of having to be content with a nomination. In an interview with the star, Cherkassov explains why the day of the award is very symbolic, how the reprisal machine works in Russia and how thousands of people are still resisting.
Mr Cherkassov, did you expect that the Nobel Peace Prize would go to your organization this year?
Cherkasov: We have been nominated for the Nobel Prize for so many years. Because of that, we stopped considering it as a real possibility that we could actually get the award. Let alone this year. The year Memorial was liquidated. A court hearing was also scheduled for October 7 over the seizure of Memorial’s Moscow office. So we had something else in mind. The award was therefore an immense surprise.
The news that you have received the Nobel Peace Prize came just as the court was in session in Moscow. How did the representatives of the judiciary react?
As it was to be expected. True to the Soviet propaganda slogan: “The servants of world imperialism have nothing to say to us.” The judge briefly interrupted the session and gave advice – with herself, of course. She’s not allowed to hold counsel with anyone else. And after that round of deliberations with herself, she made the only right decision: to confiscate our office.
The International Society for Historical Enlightenment, Human Rights and Social Welfare Memorial, Memorial International for short, is an international human rights organization. It is affiliated with over 80 decentralized regional human rights organizations throughout Russia, other post-Soviet countries and other parts of Europe, including Germany.
The focus is on the historical processing of political tyranny, advocacy for the observance of human rights, help for political prisoners, and social welfare for the survivors of the Soviet labor camp system (Gulag). The human rights organization, founded in January 1989, has received numerous awards for its commitment, including the alternative Nobel Prize (Right Livelihood Award) in 2004. On October 7, 2022, Memorial was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On the same day, a Moscow court ordered the confiscation of Memorial offices.
The highest court in Moscow banned Memorial International at the end of December, and the organization will be liquidated. The reprisals against the activists are continuing, and many of them have left the country. Chairman Alexander Cherkassov is also currently in Georgia.
The date of awarding the prize fell not only on the court date, but also on Putin’s birthday. How might he have reacted?
You know, I don’t care at all. He generally reacts nervously to reality. Any reality. But the date is indeed symbolic. October 7th is the day of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya. The Nobel Prize was awarded to all of Russian civil society, all of civil society in three countries in Eastern Europe where it is threatened. War is raging in Ukraine, mass reprisals are raging in Belarus, and civil society is being stifled in Russia. The prize was also awarded to all those who were not allowed to live to see this day.
Journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered on October 7, 2006 in the stairwell in front of her apartment in Moscow. She reported on the war in Chechnya, on corruption in the Russian Ministry of Defense and the High Command of the Armed Forces in Chechnya. There are suspicions that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov ordered the assassination as a birthday present from Vladimir Putin.
For you, the award ceremony is not just a reason to celebrate, but a holiday with tears in your eyes, as a well-known Russian song says.
Naturally. The historian and journalist Natalia Estemirova did not live to see this day. We worked with her in Chechnya. Our colleague Yuri Dmitriev is innocently in prison. Many were forced to leave Russia. And Memorial was liquidated. So this prize was actually awarded to us post mortem.
Will the award help you continue the work despite Memorial’s legal liquidation?
The prize is not just a symbol for us. He notes a certain unity in civil society that transcends national borders. The three award-winning organizations work together, we belong to an association. The memory of this is very important for the rulers of all countries.
The award will help each of the honored organizations. And, of course, financial resources are also needed. For example, let’s remember Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He had used his prize money to help political prisoners.
But the Nobel Prize did not protect either Alexander Solzhenitsyn or Andrei Sakharov. In Russia, the Nobel Prize does not provide a magical shield. If an order comes from above, it will be fulfilled.
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) was a Russian writer and system critic. In February 1945, he was unexpectedly arrested at the front by military counterintelligence and transferred to Moscow’s Lubyanka prison because he had criticized Stalin in letters to a friend. Without a trial, he was sentenced to eight years in prison and subsequent “eternal banishment”. He spent his imprisonment in the Gulag work camps. Among other things, he processed his experiences in the novel “The First Circle of Hell” (В круге первом). On December 10, 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in Stockholm. However, the reprisals did not end after his release from prison. Among other things, in 1971 the KGB poisoned Solzhenitsyn unnoticed with a ricin gel. This caused a serious illness that was only later identified as a result of the attempted murder.
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (1921-1989) was a Soviet physicist, the “father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb” and dissident. In 1970 he founded a committee to enforce human rights and in an open letter to the government demanded democratization of the Soviet Union. Sakharov took care of political prisoners and campaigned for the self-determination of ethnic minorities. On December 10, 1975, Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. After protests against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, Sakharov was arrested on January 22, 1980 and exiled to Gorki, where he had to live under KGB supervision.
The question is repeatedly asked in the West as to why there is no great resistance in Russia to the Putin regime. Is awarding the Nobel Prize to your organization a reminder that this resistance does exist?
This question can be asked so easily when sitting in Berlin or Paris. But the reprisals machine works like this in Russia: There are maybe a few hundred prosecutions for anti-war actions. Not much at first glance, but there are other measures. In July, around 3,000 minutes were drawn up for administrative offences. However, according to the law, a prosecution will be instituted as soon as a second record of this kind arises. This means that 3,000 people face prosecution as soon as they take to the streets.
In Soviet times, there was a similar tactic. For every political prisoner there were about a hundred people who had been warned that they were being reprised for administrative offences. It was a way of showing people how not to behave. This practice was used between 1959 and 1987 in all Soviet countries. And so we don’t have the conditions of 1937, the great Stalinist terror. But the conditions of 1973.
So the regime relies on stoking the fear of criminal prosecution.
Absolutely. In addition, there is the fact that there is no longer a death penalty, but instead there are political murders. Only recently, Alexei Navalny’s team uncovered a series of poison attacks on members of the opposition. So there are more executions.
And the conditions in the prisons must not be forgotten either. In some people die, in others they are tortured. So we see the return of the reprisal machine that was effective 50 years ago.
What way is left then to resist?
Even 50 years ago there were no mass demonstrations. But there was something else, for example, help for political prisoners. And even today there is something else, for example massive aid to Ukrainian refugees. Just because thousands aren’t taking to the streets doesn’t mean there aren’t thousands helping Ukrainian refugees in Moscow alone.
There are no mass protests, so they all support Putin. And if everyone supports Putin, then everyone bears the collective blame for the war with Ukraine. But that’s a very simple way of thinking. Conditions in Russia are different from those in countries where people have fortunately been able to get used to a free life.
