When he contemplates the Saint-Basile-le-Blessed Cathedral on Red Square, topped with its geometric bulbs, the journalist is challenged: the building “
bears no trace of time, (it) does not seem linked to any period of the story
".
Its construction was ordered under Ivan the Terrible but, through restorations, the trace of the centuries has faded;
the cathedral seems to have escaped the past.
This building could summarize the relationship that Russians have today with their history: "
Memory is
both omnipresent and avoided, it nourishes infinite and sterile considerations
"
, remarks Étienne Bouche in his book
Memorial face à l'oppression Russian
(Full daylight).
In this story halfway between reporting and investigation, the man who was a correspondent in Russia for seven years takes us in the footsteps of the Russians who fight daily to bring justice to a buried history, that of the crimes of Stalinist era.
Also readNicolas Werth: “In Russian school textbooks today, the Second World War begins in 1941”
Talking to Muscovites…
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