It’s difficult to exaggerate the importance of the inclusion of the Memorial Society, the Russian human rights movement, among the recipients of this year’s Nobel peace prize, which also recognised human rights campaigners in Ukraine and Belarus.
The award to Memorial is a powerful rebuke to Putin’s dictatorship, comparable to the honouring of Carl von Ossietzky, the German peace and human rights campaigner, who was languishing in Dachau concentration camp when he learned of his prize in 1936.
Like Ossietzky, Memorial embodies resistance to the radical evil of modern totalitarianism.
