Roginsky Arseniy Borisovich

Arseny Borisovich Roginsky was born on March 30, 1946, in Velsk, Arkhangelsk Oblast. His father, Boris Roginsky, was a Leningrad engineer who worked at the Elektrosila plant. He was repressed in 1938 and, after his release from the camp, sent into "eternal exile" in the north, where Arseny was born.

In 1951, Boris Roginsky was arrested again and died in prison. In 1956, the Roginsky family returned to Leningrad.

From 1962 to 1968, Arseny Roginsky was a student in the Faculty of History and Philology at the University of Tartu, a student of Professor Yuri Lotman. Since 1965, he has published articles and documents on the history of the Russian liberation movement of the 19th century.

From 1968 to 1981, Arseny Roginsky lived in Leningrad. He worked as a bibliographer at the M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Public Library, then as a teacher of Russian language and literature in evening schools. At the same time, he continued his historical research, discovering and publishing several important documents concerning the Narodnaya Volya period of the Russian revolutionary movement. Roginsky's scholarly interests gradually expanded, and his focus shifted to the history of Russia in the 20th century.

Arseny Roginsky entered the dissident and quasi-dissident milieu, many of whose members he had become close to during his time as a student at the University of Tartu, with his own themes, which he later defined as "the need to restore historical memory" and "the re-establishment of independent historical scholarship." The first theme had been present in the work of many dissidents as early as the 1960s (Roy Medvedev, Pyotr Grigorenko, Mark Popovsky, and several others); Roginsky, however, proposed addressing it not only in a journalistic but also an academic vein, bringing scholarly professionalism to the exploration of the "blank spots" of Soviet history.

He and his friends attempted to realize this idea by founding the first samizdat historical collection, "Memory," the compilation and editing of which he oversaw from 1975 to 1981. "The editors consider it their duty to save from oblivion all historical facts and names now doomed to destruction, to disappearance, and above all the names of the dead, the persecuted, the slandered, the fates of families broken up or destroyed en masse; as well as the names of those who executed, defamated, denounced... The most important thing here for us is to extract a historical fact from oblivion, save it from oblivion, and introduce it into circulation—scientific and public" (from the preface to the first issue of the collection "Memory").

On February 4, 1977, a search was conducted at Arseny Roginsky's apartment. On June 16, 1977, Roginsky was issued a warning in accordance with the Decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated December 25, 1972 (he refused to sign the warning).

After a second search (March 6, 1979), he was dismissed from the school where he worked at the request of the KGB. From 1979 to 1981, to avoid charges of "parasitism," Arseny Roginsky took a job as a literary secretary (an opportunity offered to him by his humanities friends, the writer N.G. Dolinina and Professor Ya.S. Lurye).

In April 1981, Roginsky was urged to emigrate from the USSR, but he did not submit an application. In June 1981, he was denied access to the Saltykov-Shchedrin Public Library "for publishing documents in a foreign anti-Soviet publication" (that is, in "Memory," which was reprinted in the West).

On August 12, 1981, Arseny Roginsky was arrested by the KGB and charged with "document forgery" (referring to so-called "relationships"—letters from official scientific institutions, without which a researcher could not gain access to archival materials; Roginsky was accused of presenting these relationships in the archives with forged signatures). He refused to provide any explanation to the investigators, stating that he considered the very practice of restricting access to historical documents unlawful; he defended this position in his final statement at the trial.

A number of literary figures (including V. Kaverin, E. Yevtushenko, and M. Roshchin) spoke in Arseny Roginsky's defense; prominent historians and literary scholars, including B.F. Egorov, Ya.S. Lurye, and V.V. Pugachev, testified in his favor during the trial. Nevertheless, on December 4, 1981, the Oktyabrsky District People's Court of Leningrad sentenced Arseny Roginsky to four years' imprisonment—the maximum penalty under this article.

He served time in camps in the Komi ASSR, Murmansk and Kirov regions.

After his release (August 1985) he resumed his academic work; a number of his studies, written before his arrest, were published under pseudonyms in the historical collections "The Past" (Paris, 1986 - Moscow, 1998). He was the compiler and author of notes (together with Dmitry Zubarev) for the collection "Memoirs of Tolstoyan Peasants. 1910s - 1930s" (Moscow, 1989). He was the editor and compiler of the historical collections "Links" (Issue 1. Moscow, 1990, jointly with Nikita Okhotin; Issue 2. Moscow; St. Petersburg, 1992, jointly with Alexander Dobkin).

In 1988-1989, he became one of the founders of the historical, educational, human rights, and charitable society "Memorial," directing its research programs. In 1990, at the initiative of Arseny Roginsky, the Scientific, Information, and Educational Center "Memorial" was founded (he was elected its chairman in 1996).

Member of the board of the Russian Memorial Society and chairman of the board of the International Memorial Society. From 1990 to 1993, he was an expert on the Human Rights Committee of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation. From 1991 to 1993, he was an expert on the Supreme Soviet Commission for the Transfer of CPSU and KGB Archives to State Safekeeping and the Supreme Soviet Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression. In 1992, he served as an expert on the "CPSU Case" for the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation.

In the early 1990s, he was a member of the board of the Open Society Institute (Russia) and a member of the editorial boards of the magazines Zvezda and Open Politics. In 1992, he was fully rehabilitated. He lives in Moscow. He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (2005). He is an Officer of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2010).

Died on December 18, 2017 in Israel.

The biographical information was prepared by D.I. Zubarev, A.A. Reznikova, and the Internet portal "Human Rights in Russia" (HRO.org).