Gulag Historian Sentenced to 13 Years in Penal Colony

Dmitriyev was set for release from prison this November. (Wikimedia Commons)

A court in Petrozavodsk, Russia, increased the sentence of Yury Dmitriyev, a Russian historian specializing in Soviet-era oppression, to 13 years in a penal colony on September 29. The lengthened sentence comes less than three months after the court’s initial ruling on July 22, in which Dmitriyev received only three and a half years in prison. Due to his time spent detained before the July trial, had the court not extended his sentence, Dmitriyev would walk free this November. The government initially arrested him after an anonymous tip brought police to conduct a home raid, during which they uncovered explicit photographs of his young adoptive daughter, which in turn lead to charges of sexual abuse and child pornography.  

Dmitriyev and his wife adopted their daughter when she was three years old and extremely malnourished. While the anonymous tip called photos of her on Dmitriyev’s computer pornographic, Dmitriyev and his family claim they served to track the child’s physical health in the event that social services tried to remove her from the home. Stored in a file entitled “child’s health,” the photos also included height and weight measurements that roughly corresponded with visits from a social worker. 

Dmitriyev works as a historian known for his work uncovering mass graves of Stalin-era victims, and he leads the Karelia chapter of the human rights group Memorial. In 1997, under Dmitriyev’s leadership, the group unearthed a mass grave of more than 6,000 people killed in the late 1930s, victims of Stalin’s secret police. The site, now known as the Sandarmokh memorial, has earned protected status for its historical significance. 

Dmitriyev’s case has attracted the attention of many legal and human rights advocates, as well as government officials who feel that politics may have interfered with the ruling. Rebecca Ross, spokesperson for the American Embassy in Moscow, tweeted: “The Karelian Supreme Court’s decision to prolong historian Yuri Dmitriyev’s already unjust sentence by an outrageous 10 additional years is another step backwards for #humanrights and historical truths in #Russia.”

Ross’s concerns about the obfuscation of historical truths in Russia have precedent. In 2018, Russian state-backed historians began an excavation in the Karelia forests in an area extremely close to the Sandarmokh memorial. The group, the Russian Military-Historical Society, claims that the area actually marks the spot where Finnish forces executed Red Army soldiers during World War II.

Under the direction of Vladimir Putin, the Russian rhetoric of remembering Stalin has shifted to glorify the dictator’s role in industrializing the country and defeating the Nazis, choosing not to dwell on the atrocities committed during Stalin’s time as leader. Dmitriyev’s decades of historical work pose a significant threat to this propaganda. On its website, Memorial has extensive information about Dmitriyev’s work as a historian and echoes calls of his conviction’s illegitimacy: “The persecution and prosecution of Yury Dmitriyev fits with the manifestly obvious societal tendencies… It’s clear as day that the Dmitriyev case is part of the authorities’ comprehensive strategy of suppressing both the action of civil society and the memory of inconvenient events from the past.” The Kremlin has thus far rejected these allegations and claims not to be involved in the case.