Quick Facts
Biography
Arseny Borisovich Roginsky (Russian: Арсе́ний Бори́сович Роги́нский; 30 March 1946 – 18 December 2017) was a Soviet dissident and Russian historian. He was one of the founders of the International Historical and Civil Rights Society Memorial, its head since 1998.
Biography
He was born in Velsk to a family of a repressed engineer from Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), in his place of exile.
In 1968, he graduated from the History and Philology Faculty at the University of Tartu, where he studied under the cultural historian Yuri Lotman.
From 1968 to 1981, Roginsky lived in Leningrad and worked as a bibliographer at the Saltykov-Shchedrin Public Library, then as a teacher of Russian language and literature in evening schools. As a scientist, he studied the twentieth-century history of Russia, particularly the 1920s and the history of the destruction of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and subsequent political repression in the Soviet Union.
From 1975 to 1981, he was an editor of samizdat collections of historical works, Memory, being published abroad from 1978.
On 4 February 1977, a search was conducted in Roginsky’s apartment. On 16 June 1977, he was given a warning according to the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 25 December 1972. After another search conducted on 6 March 1979, at the request of the KGB he was fired from the school where he worked. To avoid charges of "parasitism", from 1979 to 1981 Arseny Roginsky was registered as a literary secretary of writer Natalia Dolinina and professor Jacob Lurie.
In April 1981, Roginsky was urged to emigrate from the Soviet Union, but he did not.
On 12 August 1981, Roginsky was arrested on Article 196—"the forgery and the production and sale of forged documents", and accused of transferring materials abroad to anti-Soviet publications such as, Pamyat, a historical journal. As his final statement in the court, he gave a speech, "The situation of a historian in the Soviet Union" (published by the Russkaya Mysl newspaper). He served the time of his punishment in full, was released in 1985, and was fully rehabilitated in 1992.
In 1988–1989, he became one of the founders of the Historical and Educational, Human Rights and Humanitarian Society Memorial and chairman of its board from 1998.
He was compiler of the 1989 book, Memories of Peasant Tolstoyans, the 1910–1930s translated into English in 1993.
Awards
- 2002: Class II Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, Estonia, for investigating crimes against humanity
- 2005: Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for his efforts in uncovering truth about repressions against Polish people
- 2010: Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for his exceptional efforts in research in and the uncovering of the truth about the Katyn massacre
- 2010: Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for longtime struggle for the truth, unprejudiced information and memory, courageous commitment to freedom and human rights as well as his strong commitment to concerns of civil society