Ann Komaromi has spent more than two decades working with the Russian human rights organization Memorial, which was recently shut down by a Russian court
Ann Komaromi has spent more than two decades working with the Russian human rights organization Memorial, which was recently shut down by a Russian court While the world continues to witness the exchange of bombs and gunfire in Urkaine, the University of Toronto's Ann Komaromi is involved in the exchange of underground journalism and literature about the former Soviet Union. For more than 20 years, Komaromi, an associate professor in the Faculty of Arts & Science's department of Slavic languages and literatures and the director of the Centre for Comparative Literature, has been involved with Memorial, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights organization that was founded in Russia during the fall of the Soviet Union to collect facts about repressions and civil society activity during Joseph Stalin's reign (1924-1953) and its aftermath. The organization consisted of two entities: Memorial International, which documented Soviet-era history, including crimes against humanity; and the Memorial Human Rights Centre, which was focused on the protection of human rights - especially in conflict zones in and around modern Russia. The Russian government ordered Memorial shut down in December 2021 and forced its closure earlier this year. "The historians at Memorial, some of whom were activists in the dissident period, were not well paid. It was not glamorous and they were not particularly rewarded within their society for what they were doing," says Komaromi. "That's why it's important to support what they do and make sure it's well known." Komaromi first became connected to Memorial in the late 1990s while working on her PhD dissertation when she was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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