Welcome to the twenty-eighth edition of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. My guest today is Natalia Soprunova, a mathematician, teacher and mother of four children. Her story is so inspiring that it is immediately obvious how much Putin’s Russia has lost as a result of the wave of emigration that followed the start of the invasion of Ukraine. Very soon it will be the third anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian armed forces and the beginning of a full-scale war against a sovereign state. Hundreds of thousands of citizens of the Russian Federation left their country after 24 February 2022. Each had their own reasons, their own fears and dilemmas. Each had a different choice. Today, we hear the story of one of them – Natalia Soprunova. This podcast was recorded on 13 January 2025.

• Tell us a little bit about yourself, about your family. What has been important to you in your life? What moral principles have you followed.
• You are a mathematician and educator. Tell us about your professional career in Russia and how it developed.
• What was your inspiration when you decided to found your private school – Moscow School Workshop – in Moscow? How did it differ from state schools?
• Could you have imagined that your professional world could experience a complete collapse so quickly and irrevocably?
• Why did you decide to leave Russia? When you learned war had broken out – what did you think and when did you make the decision to leave and why? What was your main fear and your main reason?
• Tell us how it was. You have, after all, four children….
• What is the fate of the children who studied with you at the Moscow Workshop School? And your teachers?
• You and your family now live in Berlin. Tell us about the journey that took you there…
• You joined the Russian Lyceum, which already existed in Munich. What kind of school is it?
• How did the idea of Online Master School come about? Is it a virtual continuation of your school in Moscow?
• What does this teaching work mean for you? And for the children and their parents?
• Your experience as a teacher and the practical application of a new approach to teaching children – is that relevant to today’s Russia? What do you think about the system of education now in Russia?
• How do you see the future? Yours and the future of your children?
• These days some people are returning to Russia – the reasons are different: residence permits are not renewed or not granted, there are no jobs or sources of income. What do you think about this?
• What is your attitude to people who have not left Russia?
• Would you return to Russia? What would have to happen for this to become realistic for you? And the children? Is this new generation already lost to Russia?

Welcome to the twenty-sixth edition of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. In this episode, you can hear the second part of my interview with Irina Shcherbakova, one of the founders of “Memorial”. I first spoke to her in October of this year [you can listen to podcast #24 on our website here, where you can also find links to our YouTube channel and other platforms]. Since we last spoke, there has been another blow to the impartial study of Russian history. On 14 November, the Moscow Museum of the History of the Gulag was shut. The official reason given was that it was a fire risk. This would seem to be the most recent link in the chain that has seen the shutting down of unauthorised interpretations of Russian history. Before that, the Perm-36 museum was declared a foreign agent and then seized by the local authorities; “Memorial” was declared a foreign agent and then closed in 2021; and, in parallel, the authorities took control of all public initiatives, such as the Immortal Regiment, honouring the memory of war victims. The main theme of our conversation today is: what role does insistence on the ‘correct’ interpretation of history play in the political and social life of Russia – and why is controlling the historical narrative so important for the Putin regime? This podcast was recorded on 18 December 2024.

My questions:

• What were the Putin regime’s first attempts to take over control of Russia’s history? This process seems to have begun almost immediately after the mass protests of 2011-12. What was its purpose?
• Particularly pronounced in President Putin’s third term, was the appearance of articles by various Russian scholars devoted to promoting an ‘authorised’ interpretation of history. In 2014, an article of the criminal code penalising the rehabilitation of Nazism was adopted, which also banned the dissemination of ‘information known to be false’ about the activities of the USSR in World War II. What are the goals of these initiatives from the point of view of the authorities? Was Memorial’s work directly affected by these new laws? Were you personally affected by them in your own work?
• Why is the Great Patriotic War of such importance for Putin’s goals regarding the country’s history? When did it become such a significant part of the regime’s policies?
• The Immortal Regiment was a very interesting civil society initiative to preserve the memory of those who died in the Great Patriotic War. How have the authorities used this in their favour? And why?
• In 2021, Memorial was forced to suspend its activities. The following October, Memorial received the Nobel Peace Prize. Tell us about your emotions and memories of that time.
• How do you explain why it was that Putin needed to close down Memorial? After all, a couple of months later his full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.
• Do you remember how you learnt about the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army? Did it take you by surprise?
• How did you make your decision about whether to stay in Russia or to leave?
• There are new history textbooks for schoolchildren now in Russia, access to archives is limited, and the state closely monitors how the country’s history is interpreted, especially in the public arena. What independent sources of historical information remain accessible in Putin’s Russia?
• What happened to Memorial’s invaluable archives after the organisation was shut down?
• How do you see the future for Russia? Under what circumstances would you consider returning to your homeland?

Welcome to the twenty-fourth edition n of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. There is a well-known saying from the late Soviet period: “Russia is a country with an unpredictable past”. It resonates anew, this time in Putin’s Russia. My guest today is Irina Shcherbakova, a historian, who has been associated with the Russian grass-roots organisation “Memorial” since its foundation in 1988. After graduating from the Faculty of Philology at Moscow State University in the 1970s, she worked in the field of oral history, collecting the testimonies of victims of Stalinism. Through her work, Irina Shcherbakova has gained a deep understanding of how first the Soviet and later the Federation of Russia’s regimes’ interpretation of Russian history has changed over the years. From glasnost in the Gorbachev era, when Memorial was founded, to the present day, the past in Russia has indeed been “unpredictable”. It is about this and other more personal matters that I hope to talk to our guest today.

This podcast was recorded on 10 October 2024.

My questions:

• Tell us a little about yourself. Who were your parents? What moral guidelines or role models did you take with you from your childhood?
• Back in the 1970s, you began collecting the testimonies of victims of Stalinism. How did you find people who were willing to talk back then? What was the most important thing for you personally that you learned in the course of your research? How easy was it to do this work in Soviet times before glasnost and when the memory of the Stalinist era was still very fresh?
• How did it happen that you became one of the founders of “Memorial”? What were the goals that you and your co-founders hoped to achieve in setting up the organisation?
• At what point, in addition to researching Stalinist repressions, did “Memorial” become actively engaged in contemporary events? Was this during the Yeltsin era?
• What is your attitude to lustration? Should it have been carried out in the early 1990s in your opinion?
• On the theme of what more could have been done after the collapse of the Soviet Union, people often talk about the need to give a ‘legal assessment’ of historical events or to hold a tribunal to judge Stalin’s crimes. What do you think about this, and is such a process possible in the future?