The end of an era, not of a story. The Sakharov Center, considered one of the lungs of Muscovite intellectual life, was evicted from its premises, a victim of repression. But his team refuses to be defeated.

The Russian authorities demanded that the Center, which had been housed for 27 years in a former mansion, leave the premises at the end of April, taking everything it owns, including its exhibition on Soviet crimes.

“We don’t often witness the death of a museum”, observes bitterly Valentin, one of the last visitors, who prefers to keep his name silent. “If it’s ever recreated, it’s bound to be a different time.”

The Center, located near a square where there is a section of the Berlin Wall, opened in 1996 to perpetuate the thought of the great physicist, dissident and human rights defender, Andreï Sakharov (1921-1989).

But the offensive against Ukraine is coupled, in Russia, with an acceleration of the crushing of the last critics. The Sakharov Center did not resist.

Designated since 2014 “foreign agent”, an infamous status, he must leave his building because of a recent tightening of the law, which prohibits “foreign agents” from obtaining public aid.

However, since its creation, the Center had been provided with these premises free of charge by the Municipality of Moscow.

For almost three decades, it has hosted hundreds of debates and cultural events. It is also there that thousands of people gathered, in 2015, in front of the coffin of the assassinated opponent Boris Nemtsov.

AFP witnessed the final stages of his move. Its employees had to pack the dozens of items that made up the permanent exhibition on Soviet repressions, which was held in the Centre’s main building.

Another room, adjacent to the main building, hosted a temporary exhibition until last Sunday retracing the life of the second wife of Andrei Sakharov, the activist Elena Bonner.

Svetlana Gabdoullina, an English teacher who came to visit this exhibition, cannot hold back her tears: “It’s very important to know that there are people who want to live in a normal world where we have rights, where we are defend.”

She pauses, apologizes, then resumes. “Russians can be smart, civilized and bring something important to this world,” she proclaims, her blue eyes misty.

Alexei Frolov, 19, discovered the figure of Andrei Sakharov thanks to his family and the faculty of physics where he studies. For him, he is “a hero and a genius”, a man who “went to the end while remaining faithful to his principles”.

Considered one of the fathers of the Soviet H-bomb, Sakharov still has streets and monuments in his honor in Russia. For now.

The possessions of the Center will be placed in a warehouse and will remain accessible to researchers, pending the opening, one day, of a new place.

The director, Sergei Lukachevsky, in exile in Germany, points out that his teams made images of the museum before its dismantling, to make it, perhaps, a virtual museum.

According to Mr Lukachevski, it is currently “impossible” in Russia to physically rebuild a museum on Soviet crimes. “It would expose us very quickly to beatings,” he told AFP.

Any new project remains conditional, for lack of assured financial means, the Center must pay a heavy fine for “violations” of its status as a “foreign agent”, but also because of an “audit” launched in April by the Department of Justice.

This “verification” could lead to the “dissolution” of the association of the Sakharov Center, indicates Mr. Loukachevski. But even in this case, he assures us that the NGO would be reconstituted in the form of a “collective”.

Sunday evening, a few hundred people gathered for the closing of the temporary exhibition, the last public event of the Center before its expulsion. A few figures from a tried civil society took the floor.

“The place disappears, the people stay”, insists Ian Ratchinski, one of the leaders of Memorial, pillar of the fight for human rights, dissolved at the end of 2021 and co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

“You can’t kill human communication,” says opponent Yulia Galiamina.

A poet, Elena Sannikova, moved, declaims a few verses: “Tyrants fight the truth, but their power is nothing against it. David wins against Goliath, the night always ends with daybreak.”

04/19/2023 22:39:43 –         Moscow (AFP) –         © 2023 AFP