“Overcoming the past in the present”
Speech following the presentation of the Pax Christi award to Memorial
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Russia’s history policy is not oriented to preserving remembrance, but to “patriotic education”, the strengthening of the state, and the assertion of the notion that the state is a priori and always in the right. Memorial counters this with the idea of civic responsibility, in which the past and the present are combined to create a whole. The reappraisal of the past is indissolubly intertwined with the present-day promotion of human rights.
(Osteuropa 11-12/2017, pp. 137–145)