In the first part of his talk Dr Grigory Vaypan will tell us about the origins of Memorial and how it was founded in 1989 and became a symbol of a country opening up to the world. He will tell us about the vitally important work of Memorial in commemorating the millions of innocent people executed, imprisoned or otherwise persecuted in the Soviet era. And he will describe how Memorial International was “liquidated” by order of Russia's Supreme Court in December 2021 and explain the reasons for this.
Grigory will go on to tell us how, despite this draconian treatment by the RF State authorities (judicial as well as executive), those who are committed to promoting truthful remembrance of the past have not given up, whether operating outside or even inside Russia.
Grigory will also tell us how the Russian Federation is extending the reach of repressive criminal legislation and the scope of its interference with the right to freedom of expression, and will discuss the current plight of what are estimated to be Russia's 1,500-plus political prisoners. Finally, Grigory will explain to us why sharing trauma about past repressions and having a ‘reckoning with the past’ is so vital to the health of a society at all levels and, in Russia’s case, to the country’s development post-Putin into a functioning liberal democracy based on the rule of law.
Dr Grigory Vaypan is a Russian human rights lawyer and scholar. He is a Senior Lawyer at Memorial, Russia's oldest human rights group and laureate of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, and is also a Democracy Fellow with the Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
At Memorial, Grigory conducts litigation, carries out legal research and appears as advocate in legal proceedings concerning transitional justice in Russia, i.e. which seek accountability for large-scale violations of human rights in the past.
Grigory has more than a decade of strategic litigation experience before the Constitutional Court of Russia and the European Court of Human Rights, including as an amicus curiae (literally “friend of the court”), i.e. as an independent advocate in legal proceedings who is not acting for a party but who represents the public interest. He is the recipient of the 2022 Moscow Helsinki Group Human Rights Award for defending human rights in court. Most recently, Grigory has been involved in the legal defence of Russian citizens prosecuted for protesting against Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Grigory holds his first law degree from Moscow State University, an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, and a Ph.D. in International Law from Saint Petersburg State University. He is a former Galina Starovoitova Fellow on Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at the Kennan Institute in Washington, D.C.