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

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

A memory about the dissident movement in Russia for decades has served as a prime example of counter-memory (Foucault, 1977), which was meticulously cultivated by groups who have experienced resistance to unfreedom within the USSR as an integral part of their group identity.The radical political turn in Russia of the last years influenced the memory about the Soviet dissident movement directly - which started to be seen as a part of liberal discourse both inside Russia and beyond..
In this panel we propose to examine the new turn in the memory of the dissidents in the USSR through the prism of several approaches. The first part of the panel will deal with new testimonies of dissidents’ history which were taken in today’s. These testimonies give evidence not only about the past but also about the contemporary era, while respondents build parallels and connections between “then” and “now” (Rosental, 2006).
The second part of the panel will be devoted to discussing how the experience of human rights work developed by dissidents are actualized and applied today. To what extent can we trace the transition of Soviet human rights experiences into the much more diverse human rights community of modern Russia? What role does the memory of the Soviet human rights movement play in shaping the identity of today’s human rights activists? What interactions and cross-exchanges have taken place over the last decades between different groups of defenders and activists, including those from vulnerable communities?

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Anna Krasnikova, U degli Studi eCampus (Italy)

Papers

• From Soviet Dissidents to Strasbourg Lawyers: Memory, Identity, Evolution, and Exclusion in Russian Human Rights Legal Experience - Denis Shedov, U of Helsinki (Finland)

• Women Memoirs of the Dissident Experience - Natalia Kolyagina, Sorbonne U (France)

• Soviet Dissidents and Italy: Reception and Memories - Maurizia Calusio, Catholic U of the Sacred Heart (Italy)

• Human Rights Defenders in the Turning Years of Russian History (1986-1993) - Alexey Makarov, NIPC Memorial

Discussant

• Olga Rosenblum, Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (Germany)