Memorial in English

For Memorial, this continuity is not abstract. Many of the practices described in the book — documenting repression, insisting on legal norms, preserving memory — became part of Memorial’s own work.

In interviews, Nathans has spoken about the continuity between the experience of Soviet dissidents and the present — about how their methods and ethical choices continue to resonate.

The book avoids simple moral narratives. It treats dissent not as a decisive moment or a path to victory, but as a long-term practice shaped by law, documentation, and personal responsibility.

Drawing on archives that were inaccessible for decades, Benjamin Nathans reconstructs how a dispersed and often fragile movement managed to exist under constant pressure.

To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause, which won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for History, is one of the most detailed studies of Soviet dissent published in recent years.

What if resistance doesn’t lead to a breakthrough?

Read the full report here:
memorialcenter.org/en/news/repo...

Memorial asks the Committee of Ministers to formally recognise Russia’s failure to implement the rulings — and to spell out what must be done to enforce them.

– the digital iron curtain: pressure on global tech companies such as Google and Apple has increased, alongside regional internet shutdowns and the throttling of platforms like YouTube and Telegram.

– the closure of history: under the new Order No. 38, access to archives on Soviet political terror is restricted, with “national interests” cited to block historical research;

– the war on dissent: laws on “discrediting the military” and “fake news” continue to be used against independent media and opposition figures, including Lev Shlosberg;

The submission shows that Russia has not implemented European Court of Human Rights judgments on freedom of expression and has instead intensified repressive practices.

Memorial identifies three key areas of concern:

Russia lost in Strasbourg — and doubled down at home

On 30 January 2026, lawyers from the Memorial Human Rights Defence Centre submitted a Rule 9.2 filing to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.

Explore the longreads and the gallery, and get in touch if you’d like to contribute.

deadroadmemo.com

While the Dead Road is often seen as a closed chapter, the project also looks at its present-day connections — from repeated attempts to revive parts of the railway to the later reuse of some railway-related infrastructure within the penal system.

DeadRoadMemo is also meant to grow. The team invites researchers, journalists, and others to share materials that can support future research, reporting, and storytelling about forced labour in the Subarctic.

The site brings together longreads, archival documents, and objects from labor camps to explore how the railway came to be known as the Dead Road, how prisoners experienced its construction, and how this history has been remembered — and sometimes distorted — over time.

Our colleagues at Memorial Vilnius have launched DeadRoadMemo.com, a digital museum about the Transpolar Railway — a Soviet railway project in the Subarctic built by Gulag prisoners in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

A Soviet railway project that was never completed as planned — but never fully disappeared

Sign the open letter at memorial-france.org/free-yuri-dm...

A historian, political prisoner, denied medical care.

Free Yuri Dmitriev — now.

Dzyuba said he wanted to speak about something almost forgotten today: mercy. “Poets, musicians, doctors, teachers, journalists are being imprisoned — though they’ve done nothing wrong.”

Dzyuba spoke about Russian political prisoners — including Evgenia Berkovich, Svetlana Petriychuk, Maria Ponomarenko, and Alexei Gorinov — and remembered those who died in prison: Pavel Kushnir and Viktoriia Roshchyna. As he began listing them, the hall broke into applause.

In November, actor Vadim Dzyuba spoke about mercy from the stage of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Later, he has sent the video to our bot — and it quickly spread far beyond the hall.

On mercy — from inside Russia. These are words few dare to say out loud today

This is not a fight over a plaque.
It is a fight over Anna Politkovskaya’s words — words that remain relevant today. See them in the carousel.

Since mid-January, memorial plaques on the building where she lived and was murdered in 2006 have been destroyed and restored again and again — four times so far.

Still fighting over Anna Politkovskaya’s memory

Keeping our work visible matters — it continues when it’s seen and shared. More about how to support Memorial is in our bio.