The Russian Democratic Movement: Past, Present, and Future

n fall 1997, the democratic movement in Russia will celebrate its tenth anniversary. In November 1987, a group of young intelligentsia from Moscow (creators of the then unknown historical-educational organization Memorial) marched to Arbat to collect signatures. Those signatures were not calling for the dissolution of the Soviet system, but for the creation of a memorial to the victims of Stalinist repression. At that time, however, even this activity was treated as sacrilege by Soviet authorities, and the participants ended up in the custody of the militia. Memorial, the organization, supported by Bulat Okudzhava and Andrei Sakharov, soon became a symbol of democratic change in Russia and the “alma mater” of many democratic parties and politicians of the democratic wave of the 1990s. I was at the birth of Memorial and of numerous other democratic organizations, and I would like to review the development of the democratic movement and to proffer perspectives of its future course. During those years, the democratic movement, together with the whole country, went through three principal stages.