Terror, Rehabilitation, and Historical Memory: An Interview with Dmitrii Iurasov

D mitrii Iurasov, a founding member of Memorial, a nonstate association (neformal) dedicated to reviving country's historical memory and preventing resurgence of mass state repression, travels around Soviet Union giving lectures to packed auditoriums on events of As such, he serves as de facto liaison between Memorial in Moscow and more fifty affiliates in cities as far away as Magadan and Vorkuta. To a great many people, he is Memorial's public face. Iurasov, who turned twenty-seven in 1991, was twelve years old when he began to study what he calls the repressions. Since that time he has compiled a file from archival and published sources that currently contains a quarter million index cards, each with data on life and fate of a particular victim. Only Scientific Information Center of Ministry of Internal Affairs has a more substantial record of people who, in Memorial's formulation, were subjected to state terror. When asked to write an article about Memorial and his involvement in it, Iurasov preferred that it be done as an interview. What follows is a slightly abridged translation of Iurasov's responses to questions put to him over course of several days during a visit he made to United States in fall of 1990.1 Iurasov speaks in a extremely loud voice and evinces what many take to be a disarming degree of self-assurance. He also possesses something of a photographic memory. His narrative of formation of Memorial-a story that remains in dispute among various founders and early participants-can only be considered