Abstract

In the context of the cultural climate that characterized the long years of the Soviet experience and, after 1991, Russian society, the article reconstructs the origins and activities of the International Memorial Association of Moscow. Memorial was the first research center on the victims of Stalinist terror, and with its peripheral offices, including Memorial Italia, was devoted to promote research on the history of political repression in the USSR in the twentieth century, thus keeping the memory of the Gulag alive through the publication of diaries, letters and other documentary materials. The Association has also long worked to disseminate information, studies and research regarding human rights issues and their violation in Russia and in the other states born from the dissolution of the USSR, a commitment which, after its closure at the behest of the government of the Russian Federation, earned her the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.