The Power of Memory

Germany | 2016 | 45 Minutes

A documentary film about the way Putin’s Russia deals with its Stalinist past: a society in search of its identity.

How do people in Russia today remember the GULAG, the repressive Soviet camp system in which up to 18 million people were forced to perform forced labour under Stalin? While many victims were rehabilitated under Khrushchev and then in the 1990s and a reappraisal of the past slowly began, today the wheel of history is turning back again: in history books newly introduced by Putin, Stalin is again called an “effective manager” and, according to surveys, 42% of Russians today believe that Stalin’s repressions were necessary for the development of the country. But there are also people who dare to name political crimes, ask about victims as well as perpetrators and who seek their own ways of preserving their memory – for today.

Our film team visits the only GULAG memorial in Russia that is located on the site of an authentic prison camp for political prisoners: Perm-36. The memorial to the history of political persecution Perm 36 in the Perm region was founded in 1994 by former political prisoners and critical historians from the civil rights organisation Memorial and has now become the centre of a fierce social conflict over the “correct” representation of history: Were the prisoners of the Perm-36 camp rightly convicted traitors to the fatherland or victims of an unjust regime? Since the memorial was taken out of the hands of its founders in 2015 and nationalised, it has been undergoing a conceptual reorientation. Now the camp guards are also having their say.

In conversations with former camp guards, neo-Stalinists, civil rights activists and former prisoner and co-founder of the memorial, the film explores the very different perspectives on the history of the GULAG and political persecution in Russia.

Credits

Music: Carlo Suszek, Julia Balabanowa, Wasja Oblomow
Commissioning Editor: Rolf Bergmann
Production Companies: TIME PRINTS and Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg
Partner & Funding: Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship