The Scientific and Practical Center for Problems of Strengthening Law and Order (SPC) of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Belarus has signed a cooperation agreement with the Russian Foundation for the Promotion of Contemporary Historical Research «Historical Memory». The foundation is better known as a pseudo-historical structure used by the Russian special services to conduct hybrid «active measures.»
Belarusian prosecutors are going to study the facts of genocide of the civilian population of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war period together with the «Historical Memory», the press service of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Belarus reports.
The cooperation agreement is designed to establish comprehensive joint work on:
- exchange of materials and other information of a scientific and practical nature;
- conducting research aimed at identifying and documenting the true extent and consequences of the genocide;
- organization and holding of joint conferences, seminars, round tables and other events, including those providing advanced training and professional level of specialists;
- preparation and publication of scientific, scientific-practical, educational and educational-methodical publications, including through the creation of joint teams of authors.
Aleksandr Dyukov, the Director of the Russian Foundation, personally arrived in Minsk to sign the agreement.
Aleksandr Dyukov / Photo: prokuratura.gov.by
This man has been dealing with Belarus for a long time. His specialization is the vilification of Belarusian historical national symbols and national heroes, primarily Kastus Kalinouski. To this end, in 2016, its structure created the so-called Russian-Belarusian Association of Historians «Union Initiative of Memory and Harmony» in Belarus. The organization was not officially registered, but this did not prevent it from holding dozens of public events in Belarus, publishing hundreds of articles, publishing the Belarusian historical review magazine, launching a website belhistory.by and leading an active life in social networks. The «association» financed its activity at the expense of a Russian grant of 2.5 million rubles from the National Charitable Foundation. The main partner in Belarus was the former head of the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences Vyacheslav Danilovich.
The Russian Historical Memory Foundation is notorious in the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine and Western Europe, but it has been most active in Latvia and Belarus. The true goals of the hybrid organization became known after the publication at the end of November 2020 by the Russian publication the Dossier of an investigation into the Kremlin’s interference in the internal politics of neighboring countries. Among the published documents there was a report on the activities of the Russian non-profit organization Historical Memory Foundation for 2008-2018. According to the report, one of the tasks of the foundation in Belarus was «a certain impact on the Belarusian-Ukrainian and Belarusian-Latvian relations» by forcing the painful topic of crimes committed on the territory of Belarus by Baltic and Ukrainian collaborators. Already in those years, the Foundation believed that Belarus was the most comfortable country for the work of the «Historical Memory», and noted the high level of mutual trust and cooperation with Belarusian official bodies.
Source: Reform.by
