Appreciation is not difficult. The fact that hardly any other book in this field has made it to four editions in 15 years, including a significantly expanded edition, is proof of its special public esteem. I have great respect for the achievement of sifting through the material on almost 1,000 people in German and Russian archives, preparing it thoroughly and writing it down in the form of short biographies. Despite the progress of research, the book has remained an indispensable reference work that one cannot do without. Its conceptual design as a factual documentation contributes significantly to this.

This success was made possible by exemplary German-Russian cooperation. It involved researchers, relatives, memorial sites, reappraisal initiatives, archives, politicians and institutions. Andreas Hilger and Nikita Petrov in particular laid the academic foundations with their preliminary work. Memorial initiated the project in the course of research into the Soviet and foreign victims of Stalinism at the Donskoye cemetery. Memorial employees carried out the research in the Russian archives. The fact that the FSB’s central archives were still open at that time shows us the authoritarian changes that have taken place in Russia since then. Those who researched politically persecuted people in the FSB archives 20 years ago are now themselves politically persecuted there.

The book and the exhibition met with an immense public response. Many readers, listeners and visitors learned for the first time that Germans had been shot in Moscow after 1950 in the course of proceedings before Soviet military courts. Numerous articles appeared in national and regional media, often combined with the presentation of relevant local biographies of the persecuted. For Berlin, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, special editions with expanded content were published with the biographies of those executed from the respective federal states. The project inspired the publication of a similar documentation for the Austrians shot in Moscow, which appeared in 2009 under the title „Stalin’s Last Victims“.

The project and the reporting triggered local initiatives to permanently commemorate those who were shot. In 2007, for example, the Free University of Berlin erected a bronze sculpture on its campus to commemorate the former students shot in Moscow. Online memorial books for persecuted students were created at the universities of Halle-Wittenberg and Leipzig. In Leipzig, the „Belter Dialogues“, a joint event organized by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Leipzig University Archive, have become established. They commemorate the student Herbert Belter and his comrades-in-arms who were shot in Moscow. Local memorials in memory of young people shot in Moscow have been set up in Werder an der Havel and Altenburg, among other places. In recent years, the memorial project „The Last Address“, in which information plaques are placed at the last residential address of victims of persecution, has also spread in Germany. The project to be honored today very often serves as a starting point and impetus for local initiatives and further research. Last but not least, thanks to the research carried out at the time, the names of the victims can be read out publicly every year on October 30 on the occasion of the Russian Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Political Repression.

The project acted as a catalyst for further research into Soviet military justice and, in particular, its death sentences. For example, a project based in Dresden and funded by the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the Past dealt with the SMT death sentences against German civilians between 1945 and 1947. It is being published this year in a second, expanded and corrected edition. In addition, detailed biographical individual studies have been initiated. A brilliant biography of Arno Esch and his group was published by Natalja Jeske. Klaus-Rüdiger Mai published a highly readable account of the Leipzig Belter Group. The Dresden Documentation Center has also prepared a number of detailed biographies, including that of the Munich communist and concentration camp prisoner Albert Stegerer (FAZ article available). The SMT-dresden.de website publishes comments on twelve petitions for clemency from people sentenced to death in Dresden, including those of Herbert Belter and Albert Stegerer. The petitions for clemency are a difficult and at the same time often productive source, especially with regard to the individual motives for action and the actual activities of the condemned.

Research over the past 20 years has largely confirmed the main findings of the Donskoye project, adding new information and perspectives here and there and correcting details. In some cases, it has been possible to shed light on unknown places of trial. In-depth biographical research shed light on the biographies and involvement of individuals during the Nazi dictatorship. Other investigations shed new light on the accusation of espionage. According to new research on American and German intelligence services, the seemingly trivial act of noting down the license plate numbers of Soviet military vehicles is a not insignificant and thoroughly contemporary technique of military espionage. The same applies to the counting of wagons carrying uranium ore by employees of the Reichsbahn who were later convicted. Individual biographical studies also reveal shocking details of many cases. In the trial against Werner Schneider, for example, his wife testified as a witness against him, although his relationship with another woman may have played a role. Schneider’s mother had to listen to the pronouncement of the death sentence against her son, as she was sentenced to 25 years in a „correctional labor camp“ at the same trial. Inge Müller, widow and mother of a four-year-old daughter, was initially sentenced to 25 years in a correctional labor camp. She served her sentence in the Waldheim prison. For reasons that have not yet been fully clarified, she was taken from there, sentenced to death in an appeal trial for spying for a French intelligence service and executed in Moscow. Her parents asked in Waldheim why they no longer received any mail from their daughter there, but only received an evasive answer. Later, when their daughter was already dead, the prison management asked her father whether he knew where his daughter was, as the prison had no knowledge of her whereabouts. Inge Müller’s daughter only found out about her mother’s terrible end three years ago through the Dresden Documentation Center.

The immense importance of the project for relatives and their families will be confirmed by anyone who has had anything to do with them. A few years ago, the daughter of the shot architect Gerhard Lindner, who grew up as an orphan with relatives after the early death of his young wife, came to see me. She told me that until the first publication of „Shot in Moscow“, she had grown up believing that her father had left his wife and family for another woman. During archival research in Moscow, I was able to take photographs of the memorial at the Donskoye cemetery and the names of those shot there for some relatives, which were extremely important to them.

Even 20 years after the first publication, there are still a number of unanswered questions. In view of the limited access to the investigation files, but also to documents from Western services, the motives of those convicted and the specific accusations and activities are still often in the dark. In particular, we know very little about the convicted women, who make up around six percent of those shot. The approximately ten percent of those sentenced to death who were subsequently pardoned also deserve more attention. How did the pardon shape their future lives? What questions did they ask themselves during sleepless nights?

The importance of the project for our image of the Soviet occupation and the GDR should not be underestimated, especially in view of the differentiating shifts in emphasis in recent years. New findings on the conviction of Nazi and war criminals by the Soviet military justice system and on the actual extent of Western espionage activities have changed the emphasis in academic discourse. In contrast, the Donskoje project continues to document resistance and opposition to the enforcement of the communist dictatorship at the beginning of the GDR. The convicts portrayed in the book were not „victims of a violent history of the Cold War“, as Ronny Heidenreich recently wrote in his review of another recent book. They remained primarily victims of an inhumane political system that violated basic human rights and mercilessly persecuted its critics and opponents as „enemy elements“. This practice was one of the drops that broke the camel’s back on June 17, 1953.

Even 20 years ago, when the FSB was still making its archives available for historical reconnaissance, there were already signs of the strengthening of authoritarian forces in Russia. Alexei Navalny writes in his memoirs about the year 2005 that open political debates were already a thing of the past: „Systematically and day by day, the Kremlin robbed Russian citizens of a freedom they had just won, and censorship returned. Every political talk show had to adhere to a blacklist of people who were not allowed to be invited …“ A footnote in the foreword to the 1st edition of the Book of the Dead from 2005 points out that the practice of rehabilitating victims of political repression in Russia is changing. Rehabilitations from the 1990s have since been declared invalid and plaques from the „Last Address“ project have been taken down again. The Russian State Archives in Moscow, which only two years ago granted us permission to publish applications for clemency, declared last year that copies would no longer be made as cooperation had been suspended due to an order from the Federal Archives Agency. The state’s half-hearted „unmasking of Stalinism“, which Andrei Sakharov called for in 1968, has now turned into open glorification. Two months ago, a relief depicting Stalin in life-size was unveiled at Moscow’s Taganskaya metro station. It is a replica of the sculpture entitled „Gratitude of the People to the Leader and Commander-in-Chief“, which was removed in 1966 in the course of de-Stalinization and the fight against the personality cult. Yesterday, the „Yabloko“ party’s application for a protest rally was rejected on the grounds of preventing the spread of the coronavirus.

What can we do to counter this? On the one hand, we must continue our efforts to investigate and communicate historical facts using all analog and digital channels. For example, by making printed information digitally accessible, as with the digital version of the Book of the Dead, which has been online at donskoje.ffdigitalservices.com/ since last year. This also includes the online version of the exhibition on the subject to be presented today. In addition to remembering human tragedies and suffering, we also need to preserve testimonies of human greatness and dignity in our memories. In his plea for clemency, Heinz Domaschke from Dresden did not ask for mercy for himself, but for his fellow convicts. One of them, 18-year-old Manfred Günther, was indeed pardoned, survived Workuta and was released in 1955.

Another possibility is to spread the courageous words of those who are speaking out against the Putin regime today. Quite a few of them, such as Yuri Alexeyevich Dmitriev, have spoken out about Stalinist crimes. Last year, Uta Gerlant published some so-called last words of political defendants in court in Russia for Memorial Germany. I would like to conclude by quoting Svetlana Prokopyeva, who was sentenced by a military court five years ago. „I am not afraid to criticize the state. I’m not afraid to criticize the law enforcement agencies (…) Because I know that if I don’t say it, if nobody says it, it will be really scary. (…) The more ideas we discuss and the broader the spectrum of opinions, the easier it is for society to make the right decisions and choose an optimal development path. The easier it is to prevent a new humanitarian catastrophe, against which humanity is not immune.“

This insight applies not only to Russia, but always and everywhere.