Tag #148332 - Interview #95114 (Lazar Sherishevskiy)

I didn’t quite support all this excitement about Yeltsin, but I tried to enjoy the few freedoms and publish what I couldn’t publish before. Thanks to perestroika people of my fate, i.e., those who were arrested and suffered during the Stalin’s period got some support. The ‘Memorial’ community of former political prisoners was established. I was one of the first members of the working group of this society.  I even have a certificate of this society issued in 1988 and signed by A. Sakharov [43]. I am still involved in its activities. The Memorial society’s goal was to restore the hidden events of  the Soviet period and disclose the truth about persecution, terror and discrimination. It’s a historical/literature society. The structure include few strands: uniting former prisoners and their successors having the status of those who suffered from political persecution. They have their own organization. There is also a historical unit in the Memorial, working with archives, documents, facts, memories.  And there is also a legal center fighting for human rights.

Perestroika disclosed the crimes of the past – I supported this and tried to take part in its activities. However, I knew that ‘one must spoil before one spins’. So, when the economic situation grew worse and people grew miserably poor, while the others grew rich, I started writing epigrams. I collected them in a book of my ironic comments regarding the totalitarian past and the forthcoming market economy and market ideology.

Publishing became easier: previously there were only state publishing houses and the ideological censorship, but when it was canceled, it became possible to publish books, but on market terms, though.