In the article for Russland-Analysen, researchers Andrii Nekoliak (Dutch Team of the MEMOCRACY) and Elizaveta Klochkova (OVD-Info), describe the practice of application of the Russian 2014 “memory law” (Article 354.1 of the Russian Criminal Code). The authors assess recent prosecutorial decisions to initiate charges for ‘rehabilitating Nazism’ against individuals in Russia. They point to dubious, controversial nature of such legal practice.

In her article Anastasiia Vorobiova describes educational reforms enterering into force since 01 September 2023 and how they will influence educational rights of Russian children.

MEMOCRACY team member Dr. Dovilė Sagatienė has published a blog post on challenging the ‚Post-Soviet‘ label and colonial mindsets. For Lithuania and the Baltic region at least, the NATO Summit in Vilnius was a chance to emphasize the strong European identity and to challenge the deep colonial mindsets, which overlooks Eastern European perspectives in favor of those built in Moscow since the beginning of the 20th century.

In a new blog post for Verfassungsblog, researchers Andrii Nekoliak (Dutch Team of the MEMOCRACY) and Elizaveta Klochkova (OVD-Info), describe how the Russian Federation is using its “memory law” to put pressure on potential critics of the Russian attack on Ukraine. This Russian law is used to create a mood of paranoia and fear among the population, and a feeling as if the country were in a besieged fortress. The authors think that Russian regime may increasingly use Article 354.1 to purge anti-war dissent. 

MEMOCRACY team members, Dr. Andrii Nekoliak and Dr. Dovilė Sagatienė, have published a blog post on the political and legal symbolism of May 9 in East European ‘region of memory’. The blog entry takes a stock of legal measures by Lithuania and Ukraine to countervail Russia’s decades-long mnemo-political aggressiveness. The authors position both nations as sharing a number of common mnemo-political characteristics since obtaining national independence in 1991. They trace the evolution of war symbols legislation in both countries in the face of Russian aggressiveness in the region.  

Anastasiia Vorobiova, a research assistant in the MEMOCRACY team at the Polish Academy of Sciences, has published a blog post in Verfassungsblog about rights of children, school curriculum, and memory politics in Russia.