In the organizer's words:

From the mid-1980s, more and more people in the Soviet Union called for the crimes of the communist regime to be dealt with and for its victims to be recognized. The clarification and remembrance of the decades-long history of state repression and terror, mass shootings and the gulag system was seen as a prerequisite for the desired democratic constitution of state and society.

After the founding of the International Society for Historical Clarification, Human Rights and Social Welfare MEMORIAL in 1989, the Memorial organizations spread across the Soviet Union began collecting testimonies and memories of survivors and documenting the history of state violence. The result was the world's largest collection documenting state crimes in the Soviet Union.

MEMORIAL has also advocated for the protection and rights of groups discriminated against and threatened by the state and has collected information on Russian war crimes since the first Chechen war (1994-1996). Memorial has been documenting political prisoners in Russia since 2009. After the violent annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Putin regime intensified its attacks on democratic civil society and classified the umbrella organization of MEMORIAL - Memorial International - as a "foreign agent" in 2016. The official dissolution followed in December 2021.

Despite repression and arrests, MEMORIAL continues its work for a democratic Russia and opposes state disinformation and propaganda. In December 2022, MEMORIAL was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, together with the Ukrainian CENTER FOR CIVIL FREEDOMS and the Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bjaljazki.

The exhibition "The Other Russia" presents the history of MEMORIAL in ten chapters and provides an insight into the organization's threatened and hidden collections.