Russia seeks 15 year imprisonment of Gulag historian Yury Dmitriyev

Russian prosecutors have demanded 15 years of imprisonment of a respected historian over alleged sexual assault, a move which his allies say has been trumped up to silence him. Yury Dmitriyev, a Gulag historian had reportedly spent decades digging mass graves of people killed under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

However, the 64-year-old historian has been subjected to years-long prosecution. He was first arrested in 2016, on charges of child pornography. However, he was released after spending more than a year in a pre-detention trial. In 2018, he was finally acquitted of his charges, only to be detained again after a higher court overturned his “not guilty” verdict. This time he was charged with sexual on his adopted daughter.

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According to reports, Dmitriyev's previous case centred on naked photographs of his then pre-teen adopted daughter Natalya which were seized during a search of his home following an anonymous tip-off to police. However, activists and supporters have for long claimed that it is the Russian government's attempt to muzzle out an outspoken historian who has many times highlighted the darkest chapter of the nation’s history. Dmitriyev is known for helping open the Sandarmokh memorial in a pine forest in Karelia in memory of thousands of victims — including many foreigners — murdered in 1937 and 1938.

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Over 10 lakh died in Gulag

According to official Soviet estimates, more than 14 million people passed through Gulag between 1929 and 1953, with a further 7 to 8 million being deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union. According to a 1993 study of recently declassified archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag (not including labour colonies) from 1934 to 1953. More recent archival figures for the deaths in the Gulag, Labor Colonies, and prisons combined for 1931–53 were 1.713 million. 

Image credits: rferl.org

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