Statements from the St Petersburg Centre
Statements from the St Petersburg Centre
Folder containing four statements issued by the Saint Petersburg Centre between January 2017 and June 2018, ff. 5. This document details the Saint Petersburg Centre’s stance on four cases of writers or institutions under threat. Statement 1, issued in June 2018, concerns the case of the historian Yury Alexeyevich Dmitriev, who was charged on accusations of sexual assult. This statement calls upon public support for Dmitriev, declaring the activist was at the forefront of an “undeclared war” as a result of “unearting actions of the past”. Statement 2, issued on 23 March 2018, concerns the case of the Ukranian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, who was imprisoned in 2014 for protesting against the annexation of Crimea and freed on 7 September 2019 after more than five years of detention. This statement calls for action to free Sentsov during the midst of his hunger strike, and requests support from the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. Statement 3, issued on 14 January 2017, concerns the proposed transfer of St Isaac’s Cathedral (Isaakievskiy Sobor) to the Russian Orthodox Church. Protests over the re-aquisition of St Isaac’s took place amidst fears that the Church would not be able to maintain the building, which has been one of Russia’s most iconic attractions since it was converted into a museum in 1931. This statement warns against what the Centre see as a “hasty decision of the city administration”. The transfer was not accomplished due to citizen protests. Statement 4, issued on 10 February 2017, concerns the proposed merger of the Moscow-based Russian State Library (RSL) and St Petersburg’s Russian National Library (NLR) – the country’s two biggest libraries – in a move to digitalise all Russia’s physical library collections by 2020. In this statement the Centre express concern at the proposal, believing the merger would cause both libraries’ functional and cultural significance to be compromised.
Statements from the St Petersburg Centre
Declaraciones del Centro de San Petersburgo
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