The Industrial District Court of Perm sentenced three years of probation to the former head of the Center for Historical Memory, Alexander Chernyshov, in the case of smuggling of cultural property (part 3 of article 30; paragraph “c” of part 2 of article 226.1 of the Criminal Code). This was reported in the telegram channel of the Memorial Society.
The day before, on April 3, the prosecution asked that Chernyshov be given a three-year real sentence. During the investigation, he admitted his guilt.
The former head of the Center for Historical Memory was detained on May 5, 2023 at Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport. First, he was arrested for 15 days under the article of petty hooliganism (Article 20.1 of the Administrative Code), and then sent to a pre-trial detention center. According to the security forces, Chernyshov and the ex-head of the Perm Memorial, Robert Latypov, tried to take documents from the Memorial archives to Germany. The case against Latypov was separated into separate proceedings, he left Russia and was put on the wanted list.
Latypov told Mediazona that in March 2023 they wanted to transfer the archives of the Perm Memorial to Moscow “for safe storage” , but it was intercepted by the FSB. He emphasized that there were no historical documents (case materials, cards of those repressed), but only documents from the Memorial itself.
“That is, these are orders for the organization, these are minutes of meetings, minutes of meetings of the board of the organization, lists of participants, official correspondence, applications for grants,” the ex-head of Perm Memorial explained to Mediazona. At the same time, Latypov adds, all these papers were studied by employees of the Ministry of Justice two years ago during a regular inspection.
The investigation conducted two examinations, one of which established that 30 documents are of historical and cultural value. Latypov put his signature under all these documents.
Perm Memorial in an open letter called the criminal case fabricated: “This is a malicious act on the part of the security forces, the purpose of which is to discredit the name of our organization and the results of its many years of work.”
Hunting the archive. The ex-head of Perm Memorial was accused of trying to smuggle the organization’s papers abroad