The Dmitriev Affair traces the historian’s key role in discovering mass graves in Karelia, north-west Russia, containing the remains of thousands of people secretly executed during Stalin’s Great Purge of 1936-38.
And it follows how the authorities in Putin’s Russia – the security services heir to the NKVD and KBG – gradually close in on Dmitriev, determined to silence this witness to mass murder.
Affront to God
For decades, the wiry, chain-smoking, deeply religious man – an orphan brought up by a Soviet officer and his wife – had spent winters in the archives and summers in the forests. His mission was to find, exhume, identify and honour the nameless dead, shot, buried and forgotten by the NKVD. Left lost, forgotten and unknown, the Russian state could forever deny that these people – carpenters, peasants, doctors, students and statesmen – had ever existed. For Dmitriev, this is an affront to God and an insult to the now elderly children of the victims, still mourning a loss that never heals so long after.
Gorter begins visiting Dmitriev in 2016; in opening shots, he frames his life – always seeking marriage and family – and his current status: living with an adoptive daughter Natasha, whom he preferred to stay with rather than his ex-partner who tried to send her back to the orphanage. Dmitriev – a genial Gandalf with his long grey beard and flowing white hair – and little Natasha, a slight, blonde girl of around 10, are clearly very close. To her, he is ‘Papa’, and with their German shepherd dog, the trio happily wander through dense forests searching for the dark places of Russia’s Stalinist past.
Dmitriev is, by this time, famous throughout Russia. A member of the local chapter of Memorial – an organisation set up in 1989 to remember the millions of innocent people imprisoned and killed under Soviet repression – he has transformed Sandamorkh and Krasny Bor, two burial sites of Stalin’s victims, into informal memorials, attracting thousands of visitors. His research, conducted under very restrictive circumstances, has led to the publication of several books recording the names and commemorating the lives of thousands of those murdered in Karelia.
Dmitriev is, by this time, famous throughout Russia.
Becoming a problem
Yuri Dmitriev is, in a word, becoming a problem for Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The Kremlin leader, who has paid lip service to acknowledging the horrors of Stalin’s repressions while creating a myth of the Soviet leader as the hero of Russia’s defeat of Nazi Germany during the ‘Great Patriotic War of 1941-45, does not like people who dig around too much. Gorter does not state it as such, but clearly, word is sent down that “something must be done” about a man who so clearly argues that the Russian state and its organs of power are literally descended from Stalin’s machinery of state oppression, and only a veneer of civility distinguishes today’s Russian from that of the mid-20th century.
Recognition from abroad – a Polish Gold Cross of Merit for his work locating the mass burial sites – and an honorary diploma of the Karelian Republic, the region’s highest civilian award, make Dmitriev a marked man for a regime that wishes to distance itself from its ugly past. A case is concocted, and, as is usual, the most vulnerable point is found: a police search of Dmitriev’s computer finds three images (later falsely claimed as nine) of his adoptive young daughter standing naked, facing the camera. Dmitriev claims the photos were taken to monitor the health of a sickly child and was done on the recommendation of the local children’s services authority.
A ‘child pornography’ case is brought against him. It is a classic Soviet tactic of discrediting an opponent via a means that virtually anyone would find repulsive. Natasha is taken away from his care and sent to live with a grandmother – who had given her up at the orphanage in the first place. Heartbreaking letters from the little girl show how much she still loves her ‘Papa’.
He calmly fights the case – and two years later is surprised when he is acquitted. He is only found guilty on another specious charge – of possessing part of a shotgun barrel.
It is not enough for prosecutors, and soon more serious charges are brought: sexual assault against Natasha. Based on extensive questioning of the little girl, far away from Karelia and isolated, it later transpires that the charges have been drawn up on the flimsiest of excuses: that Dmitriev touched the little girl’s underwear to see if she had wet herself. An expert witness, a linguist, even threw doubt on precisely in what circumstances this had taken place.
Depressing certainty
Gorter’s film follows Dmitriev’s steadfast refusal to be ground under during all these trials. There is even an attempt by the authorities to claim the bodies found in the burial pits are Soviet soldiers executed by the Finns during the Winter War of 1939-40. Soldiers are sent in to dig in the woods, and shifty characters are sent out to bat away questions from reporters.
There is a depressing certainty about where it is all leading for Dmitriev. At one point, he casually remarks that the Russian state offers no security to its citizens and that the state is at war with the people. And perhaps others will follow one day.
It is a prophetic remark. The film concludes as Dmitriev is in late December 2021 finally sentenced to 13 years in prison on the sexual assault charges. The sentence – to be served in a prison colony thousands of kilometres from Karelia – is later extended by two years. By this time, Russia is waging war on Ukraine. And for 67 years-old Dmitriev, it is effectively a life sentence. And it coincides with the final banning and closure of Memorial by the Kremlin. Stalinism has come full circle.
