“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said, through a respirator mask that covered the lower half of his face.

Gribalev is a leading figure in an environmental group named the Green Alliance. We stood on the outskirts of Pobeda in Leningrad Oblast. Located 50 miles northwest of Russia’s second-largest city, Saint Petersburg, and home to 2,000 people, Pobeda’s name translates as “victory.” The stench in the village was appalling. 

Four lagoons overflowed with thousands of tons of animal waste. Some were dotted with rotting chicken carcasses. These lakes of excrement, containing hazardous amounts of phosphorus, have been created by Udarnik, one of the biggest poultry farms in the area. The facility has been dumping manure onto nearby land since it first began operations in the 1970s. 

The contents of the lagoons have leached into the soil and polluted nearby rivers, discharging between 10 and 20 tons of phosphorus annually, according to estimates from the Finnish Environment Institute. Half of it ends up in the Baltic Sea and flows into the Gulf of Finland, which also takes in the coast of Estonia. The contaminated waters then head south towards Sweden and Poland.

Phosphorus pollution contributes to a process known as eutrophication. This occurs when a body of water becomes overly enriched with minerals and nutrients, which promote excessive algae growth. Such growth can result in oxygen depletion and the consequent devastation of marine life. In the Baltic Sea, eutrophication has led to expanses of dead seabed that adds up to an area roughly the size of Denmark.

Much of the pollution responsible comes from Leningrad Oblast in northwestern Russia. Several countries around the Baltic have pressured the Russia’s government to reduce its discharge of phosphorus, Finland chief among them. Over the years, Russia has presented itself as a partner in this endeavor; a concerned nation, keen to help solve ecological problems. Officials in Saint Petersburg have even trumpeted their own cooperation with other countries around the Baltic. 

But a deeper look into Russia’s role reveals a whole ecosystem of disinformation and denialism. This toxic environment has been created by lobbyists, corporations and politicians, who refuse to entertain the possibility that the dumping of vast amounts of untreated animal waste on Russian soil could possibly lead to pollution and ecological disruption elsewhere. Far from working to address the issue, they have instead dismissed and attempted to discredit the work of independent researchers whose findings run contrary to their own interests.

For years, Udarnik has denied violating environmental laws relating to the dumping of manure to local media, prosecutors and activists. The company also declined to answer questions for this article.

Udarnik is only part of the problem. The area around Saint Petersburg is home to at least 145 large-scale cattle, pig and poultry farms, each with about 172,000 animals. There are more than 10 active poultry farms left in the region. According to researchers, every year a single poultry farm can deposit around 10 tons of phosphorus into the Baltic sea.

Denying the facts

Seppo Knuuttila, a leading researcher from the Finnish Environment Institute, has witnessed the conditions in Pobeda first-hand. He describes them as the worst he has ever seen. 

“Manure lay spread in the countryside, not in such a way that it served as fertilizer. Huge quantities completely covered the ground,” he said. 

Knuuttila has been monitoring pollution in the Baltic since the 1980s and first began surveying possible sources in the area surrounding Saint Petersburg in 2008. “It was pioneering work in Russia, because no one had information on emissions from large animal production plants,” he said. 

When he first identified several large polluters, the Russian reaction was openly hostile. Knuuttila found himself attacked in the Russian media and referred to as a “hooligan and a provocateur” by the state-run news agency Ria Novosti. 

“There was an urgent need for preventative measures, but our results were not received enthusiastically,” he said.

In the spring of 2011, as Knuuttila was working on a project to document emissions in the area, his research revealed a massive spillage of manure into the Ladoga River after a dam broke at the Nevskaya poultry farm in Leningrad Oblast.

The Nevskaya spill first made the news in Finland, but it also received coverage in Russia. “Once it became known to the Russian media, the authorities could no longer hide the company's problems. This may explain the irritation towards me,” said Knuuttila. 

Knuuttila said the local environmental chief of Leningrad Oblast accused him of “lying and slandering Russia,” after he had revealed the details of the accident. The official told Knuuttila that she had been in contact with the management of the poultry farm and had been assured that nothing had happened. 

After the incident, Knuuttila analyzed water samples and monitored satellite images of the site. He estimated that between 40 and 50 tons of phosphorus had been released, much of it into nearby waters. 

Neither representatives from Nevskaya nor local government officials replied to interview requests for this article. 

Despite the negative attention, Knuuttila continued his research investigating the source of the pollution from Russia. The worst was yet to come. At the start of 2012, Knuuttila discovered what would later be known as the biggest ever phosphorus leak into the Baltic Sea – a massive 1,000 tons a year, according to his calculations. It emanated from the Russian fertilizer company Eurochem’s Fosforit plant, along the River Luga in Kingisepp, an ancient town located 85 miles southwest of St. Petersburg.

Knuuttila’s efforts to trace the leak back to the source and investigate it led to his arrest by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in April 2012. Knuuttila says he was on an official data-collection trip, taking samples from the river. Eurochem, however, said he had trespassed on factory owned land. 

While detained, Knuuttila was interrogated by the police. Upon his release the following morning, his computer was confiscated by the FSB. 

His arrest escalated into a confrontation between the Finnish and Russian officials. In a sharply worded statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s press officer Aleksandr Lukashevich described Knuuttila’s actions as “unacceptable” and called upon Finland to explain his activities. 

Now, fearing arrest, Knuuttila says he can no longer work in Russia. This has effectively ended his research in the region – at great potential cost to the environment of Leningrad Oblast and the Baltic Sea. 

“Something nasty can happen to me in Russia,” he said. “My work was not completed, even though the results achieved were very significant. If I’d try to take samples or to approach a pollution source, I would almost certainly be re-arrested.”

Denials and fines

Farms such as Udarnik have been dumping manure on the land of Leningrad Oblast since the Soviet era, causing environmental devastation there and in the Baltic sea. It appears to be more convenient and cost effective for them to continue to do so, facing only occasional fines from the local environmental authorities, than to invest in expensive new waste treatment technology. 

“There are no systems for managing the manure. While local supervising authorities impose fines and penalties, they turn a blind eye to the ecological problems, which get worse year after year, worsen year after year,” said Gribalev.

In 2010, Udarnik formally changed its management and its new owners expressed their wishes to do things differently. The company made some promising moves to address the pollution. In 2013, it joined forces with the Finnish environmental organization the John Nurminen Foundation, which focuses on protecting the Baltic Sea, to investigate options for minimizing the risk of runoff from the manure lagoons to the environment.

A joint Finnish-Swedish project was launched to install a large filter system with the ability to rinse the manure and reduce the phosphorus leaking into the Gulf of Finland.

But, according to Marjukka Porvari from the foundation, Udarnik could not afford to fully implement the system. “We had a project ongoing up until June 2017, but manure has been leaking for over 40 years, and it has gotten worse since we were there,” she said. 

Some continue to flat-out deny that untreated manure is harmful to the environment. “They are not doing anything wrong,” said Nikita Melnikov, the billionaire former owner of Sinyavskaya, Russia’s largest egg producer.  “It’s more important to handle the municipal sewage systems than to talk about chicken farms.”

The facilities at Sinyavskaya, also in Leningrad Oblast, house around 3.58 million egg-laying birds and the farm produces over two billion eggs per year. In 2017, more than 3.2 billion eggs were produced in total around the Leningrad region.

Melnikov now works as a lobbyist, shuttling between farm owners and local politicians. As such, he prefers to blame Finland for the pollution of the Baltic Sea. “The poultry farms have no negative impact on the environment. Why is Russia to blame? Finland is responsible too,” he said.

“I’m worried about my children's health”

Local ecologist Gribalev spends much of his time monitoring the pollution around Pobeda. He uses a DIY-laboratory, set up in a van that looks like something from the movie Ghostbusters.

After returning from the manure dumping site outside the poultry farm Udarnik, where he was taking water samples, Gribalev returned to his van where he analyzes the tests.

“Many people fear they will become ill or poisoned," he said, while analyzing data in the village of Pobeda.

According to the Vyborg district´s City prosecutor's office, which has filed a lawsuit against Udarnik, the company has repeatedly violated environmental standards related to untreated wastewater in Pobeda and will be obliged to build sewage treatment plants. According to the prosecutor’s office, the damage caused to the environment is estimated at approximately $68,700.

 In 2018, Grigory Chistyakov, director general of Udarnik, was issued several fines for dumping untreated sewage. The sums ranged from $45 to $450.

The prosecutor’s office declined to comment on the action. Chistyakov, also refused several requests for an interview and did not respond to written questions. 

Last year, local authorities promised to rebuild a wastewater treatment plant in Pobeda, but the project has not yet seen the light of day, owing to local bureaucracy. The reconstruction costs are estimated at up to $5 million. Now, residents say officials are no longer even responding to their complaints, regarding the stench of leaking manure and the lack of wastewater treatment in the village. The project has now been postponed until the end of 2021. 

“They do not want to cooperate with representatives from other organizations or with us villagers,” said local activist Nadezhda Oporova. “It's convenient for those in power. The corrupt poultry farm is the city's source of income, they work together — the authorities and the farm owners.”

The consequences of the Russian media and security forces targeting researchers like Seppo Knuuttila are grave. The total amount of pollutants discharged from agricultural and industrial facilities into the nearby rivers and the Gulf of Finland is unknown. 

“The only existing data has been gathered during international projects, and there have been no such studies carried out since 2012,” said Knuuttila.

He is not surprised to find out that the situation in the area surrounding Udarnik has deteriorated. 

“When nobody monitors such things, there is no risk of being caught. The authorities are not interested, or are bribed and there is simply no incentive for these companies to take better care of the environment,” he said. 

Meanwhile, the Baltic Sea continues to be flooded with phosphorus, fragile marine ecosystems perish and the residents of Pobeda and other places like it suffer. 

As Oporova explained, “I moved here to breathe fresh air. But now I have brown tap water, I can’t drink it and I’m worried about my children's health. It’s all a direct result of the farm owners’ indifference.”

The post Lies and disinformation cover up environmental assault on the Baltic Sea appeared first on Coda Story.

In reality, human rights workers say, authorities delivered the final blow in a bitter campaign by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov to delegitimize and silence government critic Oyub Titiev, the activist who was one of the last people in his homeland brave enough to document abuses of power, extrajudicial killings and torture.

Titiev, the head of Russian rights group Memorial’s Chechen office, says he is innocent of any crime, and says his conviction was based on fabricated evidence.“You don’t need a law degree to see the absurdity of this case,” he said in his closing statement last week.

The tactics against Titiev are part of a longstanding Russian playbook to deploy active disinformation campaigns as well as questionable legal proceedings against government critics, especially human rights workers. In Chechnya, which has suffered through two brutal wars, waves of intimidation by regional authorities against human rights activists and government critics have been particularly terrifying.

Titiev and his Russian rights activists say that this jail sentence carries more grave consequences than his loss of freedom: it could signal the end of any independent rights group in Chechnya.

“These court proceedings are nothing more than a circus!” said Svetlana Gannushkina, a prominent Russian human rights leader who attended Titiev’s final court hearing. ”Kadyrov’s goal is to silence the last opposing voices to his inhuman regime, and ruin Titiev’s reputation.”

Titiev started working for Memorial after the 2009 kidnap and murder of his predecessor Natalia Estemirova. Her killers were never found.

Estemirova’s death was part of a broad crackdown against dissidents and activists under Kadyrov’s tenure. In January 2017, local authorities arrested dozens of homosexuals in Chechnya and killed 27. Journalists like Anna Politkovskaya from Novaya Gazeta have also been killed when investigating abuses in Chechnya, and the Russian newspaper has come under attack by Chechen authorities for its ongoing critical coverage.

Human rights workers and Titiev’s friends say that Titiev’s strong reputation in Chechen society for a long time made the authorities more wary of attacking him directly.

Titiev spent years helping rebuild medical clinics and schools across Chechnya’s mountain villages that had been destroyed by the wars. He was also known to provide pro bono legal assistance to families searching for murdered relatives. Titiev pushed for authorities to investigate kidnappings, acts of torture and killings reportedly perpetrated by Chechen security agencies. He also called for inquiries into war crimes perpetrated during both Chechen wars.

Then, the gloves came off early last year.

Titiev was arrested in January 2018 after local police stopped his car during his daily commute from his village of Kurchaloi to Memorial’s office in Grozny, the Chechen capital. Hours later, after Titiev refused to succumb to police pressure to confess to drug charges, police announced the discovery of marijuana in his car.

Titiev says the police planted the drugs and said the arrest violated procedural norms.

Immediately, news of the arrest and the charges were splashed over local television. Soon afterward, Kadyrov himself went on air and denounced Titiev as a drug addict, without offering any proof.

Kadyrov then followed up with an impassioned denunciation of human rights activists. "They have no clan, no nation, no religion,” he said on the local television channel “Grozny.” “They should know that in our republic their work will be stopped.”

Anna Dobrovolskaya, who works for Memorial in Russia, says the accusation of drug use is particularly sensitive in Chechnya, a conservative society where people take offense to perceived immoral activities.

"To place narcotics on him is what can hurt his trust the most in a Muslim dominated region,” said Dobrovolskaya.

Titiev’s case mirrors the legal troubles of Memorial’s office director in Karelia, Yuri Dmitriev, who also faced a judicial proceedings aimed at silencing him and ruining his reputation, she said.

The 62-year-old Dmitriev was arrested and being tried on the charge of sexually abusing his adopted daughter, after being acquitted on child pornography charges that also involved his daughter. He says the charges are politically motivated and untrue.

”It is a common tactic, a concentrated effort to discredit both Titiev and Dmitriev. The state applies the methods that can hurt the most in the area where the activists are working,” Dobrovolskaya said.

Despite a year-long pre-trial detention and vociferous media campaign against him, the effort to blacken Titiev’s reputation has had mixed results.

In Shali, where Titiev’s court case was held, several local residents said they did not believe the charges against him. Titiev is a former physical education teacher who is known for his pious lifestyle and abstention from drugs and alcohol. ”Nobody here believes that he is guilty,” said an elderly woman in a local café who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.

But the larger goal of silencing dissent may prove more successful.

While he serves his four-year sentence, it’s unclear who will take over Titiev’s work documenting alleged crimes by the Chechen authorities.

Kadyrov has said that all human rights activists will be denied access to Chechnya once Titiev’s trial ended.

Video by Front Line Defenders for HRC Memorial and Oyub Titiev

The post How the last Chechen rights activist was silenced appeared first on Coda Story.

The emotions sparked by this intimate exhibit grow more intense as the viewer stands in front of a handwritten quote stenciled on one of the green walls, repeating the text that thousands of Soviet mothers and wives received years ago:

”With great sorrow and grief we inform you about the death of your son.”

On the 30th anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, reminders of that brutal war are largely confined to out-of-the-way places like the Afghan Exhibit Hall in Petrovo, opened and staffed by a group of Afghan war veterans who don’t want their sacrifice and patriotism to be forgotten.

In today’s Russia, where the Kremlin is flexing its geopolitical muscles, lawmakers are campaigning for a reinterpretation of the Afghan conflict, recasting it not as a tragedy of human and political proportions but part of a valiant and glorious past.

In today’s Russia, where the Kremlin is flexing its geopolitical muscles in foreign lands, lawmakers are campaigning for a reinterpretation of the Afghan conflict, recasting it not as a tragedy of human and political proportions but as part of a valiant and glorious past.

In 1979 when the Soviet Union ordered scores of armored divisions across the farcically named Friendship Bridge linking Uzbekistan to Afghanistan, the nation was at the height of its power. Over the next decade, the war killed an estimated 1 million civilians, 90,000 Afghan fighters and more than 14,000 Soviet soldiers.

In 1979 the Soviet Union ordered scores of armored divisions across the farcically named Friendship Bridge linking Uzbekistan to Afghanistan. Over the next decade, the war killed an estimated 1 million civilians, 90,000 Afghan fighters and more than 14,000 Soviet soldiers.

When the final Soviet soldiers retreated across the same bridge in February 1989, the nation was on its knees, economically and emotionally. The vast majority of Soviet leaders and citizens criticized the war as a disaster, marking a turning point in Soviet history. Mikhail Gorbachev, as chairman of the Supreme Soviet, signed a resolution of “moral and political condemnation” of the invasion, a position backed by the Congress of People’s Deputies.

Thirty years later, the mood in Moscow has changed significantly.

Duma deputies are planning to call a vote Friday, the anniversary of the withdrawal, to overturn this resolution and redefine the Afghan war “on the basis of political impartiality and historical truth,” according to a draft law approved in November by a majority of lawmakers from the ruling United Russia parties and the Communists.

Col. General Vladimir Shamanov, the head of the Duma’s defense committee, says this new law is necessary to preserve the honor of those who served in the war.

“Thirty years have passed, but all of us still ache in some way from those events not only because we did not expect such an end to [the military operation] but also because of the assessments that were made too fast.” Shamanov said in astatement. “Neither the leadership of the state nor servicemen and civilians deserve such assessments.”

Revising this painful chapter comes at a time when Moscow is again seeking influence in the war-torn country. Last week, the Kremlin hosted peace talks between leading Afghan political figures and the Taliban, men who were among the anti-Soviet resistance fighters that helped push the Red Army out of their country decades ago. Some in the delegation have been linked to terrorism and war crimes as well.

For people like Igor Erin, a retired sergeant who served in Kunduz, Afghanistan, who is now the director of the Afghan exhibit hall in Petrovo, the Duma move smacks of cynicism.

Igor Erin, a veteran who runs a small Afghan war museum, says nobody actually wanted to fight. Even so, he says he owes it to his fallen comrades to prevent the tragedy of war from being forgotten.

He and his former comrades at arms have struggled for years to keep open their small memorial. Created by volunteers in 1993, it now receives funding from the state, while most other museums of the Soviet-Afghan war are private.

Most of the 7,000 visitors each year are Moscow children, who are taught at school that the war was part of a benign foreign policy. Erin says his fellow citizens are not taught about the human cost of the war to the Afghan people and the Soviet veterans like himself who have lived with trauma and disability, largely without support from the government.

Some political analysts see the Duma initiative to reshape the legacy of Afghanistan as part of a larger campaign to burnish their Soviet past, and they doubt such a move has any popular backing. It is unclear if the Kremlin will approve the new resolution or not.

”The political establishment do not perceive the invasion as a success. So why are they pretending? Their views about the Afghan war are almost eye to eye with the majority of the population,” said Alexei Malashenko, a leading Moscow-based Middle East expert, the chief Research Director of the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute.

In Petrov, Erin and his volunteers on Friday will be holding their own commemoration of the anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal.

He says Afghanistan was a war that nobody actually wanted to fight. Even so, he says he owes it to his fallen comrades to prevent their deaths and the tragedy of war from being forgotten.

”We want a bigger museum. We need more money but the government has other priorities,” Erin said.

The post Russian Afghan vets try to preserve tragic lessons of war appeared first on Coda Story.

It is a memorial to more than 9,000 victims of Stalin’s “Great Terror”, who were shot and buried here by the Soviet dictator’s secret police between 1937 and 1938.

This striking piece of rock also serves as an unofficial monument to the work of the Russian historian who erected it and chose those words chiseled into its surface: Yuri Dmitriev has devoted his life to uncovering the truth of what happened at Sandarmokh, and putting names to these mass executions.

The pine forest beyond is dotted with simple tombstones and homemade memorials, adorned with plastic flowers. Black and white photos of the victims are pinned to the trees. That their descendants have been able to commemorate them in this way is thanks to Dmitriev’s tireless research, together with his colleagues from the Memorial human rights group.

So far — after 30 years of sifting records extracted from Soviet archives and digging up remains in the forest — they have documented the names of 6,441 people executed here, from 58 different nationalities. And the work goes on.

Except that now the history of Sandarmokh is being challenged.

A group of Kremlin-backed Russian historians are proposing to erect a new monument alongside the memorial to Stalin’s victims — to honor the Soviet Red Army. The “Russian Military Historical Society” says Red Army soldiers were the victims of war crimes committed here by neighboring Finland, when it occupied parts of Karelia during World War II in cooperation with Nazi Germany. Many of the skeletons in the forest, the society claims, may, in fact, be Soviet troops executed by the Finnish army — and it says its archaeologists have now dug up evidence.

Critics, though, say this is another Kremlin attempt to rewrite history, aimed at burying, or at least diluting, Sandarmokh’s association with Stalin. It is part of a strategy, they argue, to rehabilitate the Soviet dictator and emphasize his role as the victorious leader of what Russians call the “Great Patriotic War” to rally patriotic feelings. And it comes amid what Dmitriev’s supporters say is a concerted effort to discredit both him and his colleague, Sergei Koltyrin, the director of the museum associated with the Sandarmokh district museum

This September, the Russian Military Historical Society held a news conference in Moscow to declare what it called the “success” of its investigations at Sandarmokh. The assembled government-backed historians announced that during excavations at the site over the summer they had recovered the remains of five Red Army soldiers — who they said had been shot at point-blank range by Finnish troops in the 1940s.

Of more than 64,000 Soviet soldiers captured, it is estimated that at least a third died in Finnish-controlled prison camps from starvation, exposure and disease.

The announcement was notable too for the fact that Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin has previously preferred to ignore or even obstruct investigations into the fate of Soviet-era prisoners-of-war (POWs), regarding them as a stain on the Great Patriotic War narrative.

Amongst the evidence the historians cited was the discovery of green cloth, which they said had come from Finnish army coats that some Soviet POWs had ended up wearing.

Professor Mikhail Myagkov, one of the society’s historians, highlighted the range of foreign bullet casings he said had been found. “Remington, and the caliber 45, and Finnish rifles,” he reported before adding “and Soviet bullets.” But the presentation was far from conclusive.

There is no doubt, however, that Soviet Red Army soldiers captured by the Finns were treated terribly in the early years of what was known as the “Continuation War.” Of more than 64,000 Soviet soldiers captured, it is estimated that at least a third died in Finnish-controlled prison camps from starvation, exposure, and disease. At least 1,000 were shot trying to escape.

But this happened on Finnish territory, where the vast majority of Soviet POWs were kept, according to Antti Kujala, Professor of Finnish and Russian history at the University of Helsinki. There is no evidence of the Finns imprisoning Red Army troops at Sandarmokh, let alone executing them there. What’s more, according to Finnish archives, most Soviet POWs were given brown overcoats that had originally been procured from Britain before the conflict.

Far more likely, says Professor Kujala, is that the Russian excavations uncovered the remains of more political prisoners murdered by Stalin’s NKVD secret police (the forerunner to the KGB). “You can never reach 100 percent certainty in such cases,” he said, “but I still believe that the Military Historical Society has found the victims of the Great Terror from the 1930s.”

“I still believe that the Russian Military Historical Society has found the victims of the Great Terror from the 1930s.”  

Professor Antti Kujala, Helsinki University

Since making that announcement, the historical society — which is under the direct control of the Russian culture ministry — has been notably quiet. Its press office says only that the results of its investigations are still being examined. A request for an interview with Professor Myagkov went unanswered, and Sergei Barinov, the man in charge of the excavations at Sandarmokh, declined to comment for this story.

Nonetheless, if the goal was to spread competing narratives and to deflect attention from Stalin, then the Russian Military History Society has already proved itself.

Originally founded by Tsar Nicholas II as the “Imperial Russian Military Historical Society,” it ceased functioning with the Russian Revolution in 1917. Putin issued a decree in 2012 reviving it with a stated mission to “promote the study of Russian military history and counteract attempts to distort it,” as well as to “raise the prestige of military service, and education of patriotism.”

If the goal was to spread competing narratives, then the Russian Military History Society has already proved itself.

Even if the details are wrong, highlighting the fact that Finland has dark chapters in its past helps encourage “whataboutism,” experts on Russian opinion-influencing operations say, and makes it easier to neutralize discussion of Stalin’s crimes.

The Russian government has tried to protect Stalin’s image in other ways. Last month, it sought to ban an annual ceremony organized by the Memorial human rights group to commemorate his victims outside Lubyanka in Moscow, the longtime headquarters of Russia and the Soviet Union’s security services. It’s a sign of the depth of feeling around the issue that the authorities were forced to back down — with hundreds of people gathering in the square outside Lubyanka to pay tribute to the millions who died in the dictator’s purges.

Putin has made his own views clear, attacking what he called the “excessive demonization” of Stalin in an interview last year as “one means of attacking the Soviet Union and Russia.”

This political connection between Stalin's historical reputation and attacks on Russia may impact most the scholars and activists who challenge the Kremlin's preferred revisionism. There has been no let up on Memorial activists such as Yuri Dmitriev, the historian, and Sergei Koltyrin, the district museum director. The 62-year-old Dmitriev is now on trial for sexually abusing his adopted daughter, after being acquitted earlier this year on child pornography charges that also involved her. Koltyrin — who has openly dismissed the government historical body’s claims to have found the remains of Soviet POWs at the site — was detained last month.

However, many who have relatives buried at Sandarmokh are troubled by the Russian government’s attempts to distort and bury history.

”I’m against the new diggings at the mass burial site,” said Alexei, who discovered several years ago that his grandfather is buried there, thanks to Memorial’s research. “The Military Society ignores crucial historical events in order to create a new version of the truth,” he said.

Alexei lives near Sandarmokh and witnessed the Military Historical Society’s digging this summer. But he asked for his family name to be withheld for fear of being persecuted for speaking out.

He remembered how Barinov, the man in charge, had highlighted the fact that some of the skeletons they found had their hands tied together, suggesting that was a sign of “how the Finns killed the POWs,” shooting them from behind.

But that was a well-known signature of the NKVD’s execution methods. The archives show that at Sandarmokh they forced their victims face-down into pits — which they often had to dig themselves — before shooting them in the back of the neck. Professor Kujala agrees. “In my opinion, the fact that these five killed people had their hands tied behind their backs point to the NKVD.”

Alexei is receptive to the government on one point though — on how much responsibility should be laid at Stalin’s door. “The repressions? They were not Stalin's fault,” the 37-year-old said when asked who he believed had orchestrated the massacres at Sandarmokh and elsewhere.

And time may be with the government, as memories recede each year. A recent survey by a state-run pollster found that half of Russian young people aged 18-24 lack any knowledge of the killings during Stalin's purges — though they did say they would like to know more.

Another version of this article was published in the Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet

The post Digging up a new story for Stalin appeared first on Coda Story.