From Soviet Dissidents to Strasbourg Lawyers: Memory, Identity, Evolution, and Exclusion in Russian Human Rights Legal Experience

• In Event: Memory of Human Rights Work in the USSR: Contemporary Testimonies and Legacy in Practice

Abstract

This paper explores the historical roots and contemporary identity of Russian human rights lawyers, focusing on how the narratives and memory of Soviet-era human rights activism have shaped the professional legal community that emerged around the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Russia. Drawing on data from the Human Rights in Eastern Europe and Russia (HuRiEE) project—which examines the everyday mobilization of human rights—this study is based on approximately 80 interviews with Russian human rights lawyers, ECtHR applicants, and experts (2023–2024), as well as archival research on the Soviet human rights movement from the late 1960s through the post-Soviet transition of the 1990s. It examines lawyers’ narratives of entry into human rights work, their self-perceptions, and reflections on their professional role. The study also investigates the extent to which Soviet dissident experiences and legal traditions have influenced this community’s values and practices. As Russia undergoes profound legal and political transformations—marked by escalating repression, the full-scale war against Ukraine, and its withdrawal from the ECtHR’s jurisdiction—these historical continuities and ruptures take on new urgency in the face of the deepening human rights and security crisis in the region.

Author

• Denis Shedov, U of Helsinki (Finland)