Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:30who were not
00:00:33guilty of anything, that is, 99.9%
00:00:36were completely ordinary people
00:00:39who lived completely ordinary lives, they all
00:00:42turned out to be innocent, they turned out to be
00:00:46shot.
00:00:51Well, and those people who are on these plaques, none of them
00:00:54have graves, essentially there is nowhere to bring
00:00:57flowers.
00:01:03And those who tear off plaques
00:01:05absolutely kill these people again, so that no memory at all is left of them. According to my
00:01:08estimates, about 150
00:01:12plaques are now missing from their places. Our
00:01:16fellow citizens tear them off, some of them really like
00:01:19Stalin. And of course, they have the thought in their heads
00:01:23that there were no such crimes. Second
00:01:27option.
00:01:48In most cases, the company makes
00:01:51a very simple decision: a special tool
00:01:54is issued to a responsible employee, and this responsible employee
00:01:57goes and dismantles the plaque.
00:02:01This is how in St. Petersburg,
00:02:05probably most of the plaques
00:02:06perished.
00:02:11A tour guide from Moscow, a person who,
00:02:14similar to me, restored the last address plaques, and I think he
00:02:17made about
00:02:21six or eight cardboard copies, he didn't
00:02:24hesitate to post all this on his Facebook,
00:02:26I think. So he had...
00:02:30Veller's daughter was interviewed and
00:02:33Korobova wrote him
00:02:36a letter saying, Mr. Orlov, you are
00:02:39bad, you give interviews to foreign agents, I
00:02:43will make it so that you also become a foreign agent.
00:02:46Korobova, a person who has already achieved not one criminal case
00:02:50against those people about whom she wrote, it is rumored
00:02:54that well, apparently,
00:02:57всему,
00:03:00this person does not exist, perhaps this is some creative
00:03:03pseudonym,
00:03:06well, in general, they cannot find her,
00:03:09but she nevertheless churns out
00:03:12endless denunciations, she was interviewed,
00:03:14she said that her grandfather wrote
00:03:18denunciations in the 1930s, as of August 23, 2023, I
00:03:21sent 1,320
00:03:24denunciations,
00:03:27the number of denunciations varies significantly by month, for example, in May
00:03:302023, 68 were sent, in June
00:03:33105, in July 70 denunciations, the informant said, the number
00:03:37of denunciations depends not on me, but on how many objects for denunciation I
00:03:40identify in the shift on
00:03:41agents.
00:03:45In fact, most of these people died
00:03:48in the same way under denunciation, that is, similar
00:03:51to Korobova, people in '37, '38
00:03:54mostly wrote denunciations.
00:03:58These people who
00:04:00lost their lives
00:04:03on these plaques.
00:04:06that all the events of 1937 are no different
00:04:10from the events of 1924, well,
00:04:13and 1923 and 1922 as well.
00:04:25You haven't watched Ostrikin's last speech, have you?
00:04:28Ostrikin. Well, he's not
00:04:32just talking about repealing the article on the prohibition of state
00:04:36ideology, no. He doesn't like
00:04:40the whole second article of the Constitution,
00:04:43no, specifically Article 2, which talks
00:04:45about the second part, of course,
00:04:49but which talks about
00:04:52human rights and freedoms being the main
00:04:56value. So they
00:05:00have adapted,
00:05:04they are now trying to cancel everything that was after the Soviet Union, do you think
00:05:08they will tear down Solovetsky stone? I'm just
00:05:11talking about that. I think they quite, quite
00:05:15can
00:05:16tear it down.
00:05:19Delivered from the territory of the Solovetsky special purpose camp
00:05:23by the
00:05:26Memorial society, the Memorial society, which
00:05:29is now liquidated
00:05:32and generally considered
00:05:36anti-state. So far,
00:05:39the word Memorial has not
00:05:43This was a whole saga to deliver
00:05:46this stone here, in 1990 it was
00:05:49installed here, the stone specifically from
00:05:52the first political concentration camp of Soviet
00:05:55times, and then on October 30,
00:05:591991, the law on the
00:06:02rehabilitation of victims of political repression
00:06:05was adopted, then we also had a
00:06:08rally here, a lot of
00:06:11people. This was done by society,
00:06:14it was truly a public initiative to install
00:06:18this stone here, yes,
00:06:21opposite this building,
00:06:24a building that is directly connected with political
00:06:27repression, then what was the idea?
00:06:31Never again, never again must
00:06:35this happen again,
00:06:37meaning political repression, it seemed this wouldn't happen,
00:06:41this is the law.
00:07:12memorializing the victims of political repression, creating
00:07:16lists of victims of political repression,
00:07:20writing books, and fighting for human
00:07:23rights - all this together, what Memorial was involved in,
00:07:26was dedicated to the future of Russia,
00:07:29yes, that's what we are
00:07:33looking back at the past, among other things,
00:07:37directed at the future, and we thought,
00:07:39that's it,
00:07:42ah... Russia broke out of this
00:07:45vicious circle, along which it goes,
00:07:49sometimes breaking through to freedom, then falling
00:07:53back, back into
00:07:57some kind of unfreedom, terrible unfreedom
00:08:00and deification of the state at the expense
00:08:03of suppressing individuality, at the expense
00:08:07of suppressing human freedoms
00:08:10and rights, all of Russia.
00:09:12In 1993, in Moscow, there was such a
00:09:16mini-civil war, one could say, yes,
00:09:20when tanks fired at
00:09:23the White House, then still
00:09:26the parliament, and I was outside
00:09:29the White House, actually, I and
00:09:33many of my friends,
00:09:35Memorial members,
00:09:38said then, a plague on both your houses, you...
00:09:42are not ready to support either side, which does not want
00:09:46to
00:09:49seek compromise. Both sides did not want to seek
00:09:52compromise, and I
00:09:56just saw a
00:09:59tank shell
00:10:00fly
00:10:03into the window of my office, and I
00:10:06was then a future Memorial member,
00:10:10working on a voluntary basis at... but I
00:10:12worked as a leading specialist in the human rights committee of the Russian
00:10:16parliament. I was outside
00:10:20because I did not support those
00:10:23who were in
00:10:25that White House, I absolutely did not support them, but I also did not
00:10:29support Yeltsin's
00:10:31side. From that
00:10:35moment, I decided
00:10:38then and said that
00:10:41that's it, I'm not working for the state anymore.
00:10:45From that moment, I practically
00:10:49already continuously worked at
00:10:53Memorial. After... a little while later,
00:10:56the First Chechen War began with all its
00:10:59horrors,
00:11:03with terrible crimes that
00:11:07were committed by the army of the new
00:11:11democratic, free Russia, for which we
00:11:14fought. So, it was already
00:11:18obvious
00:11:21that the country was going in the wrong direction and...
00:11:26it was precisely with the beginning of the First Chechen
00:11:29War that the suppression
00:11:32of freedom of speech in Russia began.
00:11:36Everyone seems to remember, yes, Yeltsin,
00:11:39Yeltsin was always an apologist for freedom
00:11:42of speech, yes, nothing of the sort, of course,
00:11:45close to what is happening now, when
00:11:48there is no freedom of speech at all
00:11:50during Yeltsin.
00:11:55There was still
00:11:57some freedom, but its suppression began under him, and
00:12:01then
00:12:04political repressions began already under
00:12:07Putin.
00:12:10that Putin came to power as a man
00:12:13of war, it was war that was his
00:12:17political technology, the method
00:12:20that allowed him to come to power.
00:12:24Often it seems that
00:12:28everything is hopeless, meaningless, one gives
00:12:30up, but everything that we did,
00:12:34are doing, ended with
00:12:37grief, yes, such feelings are not only with
00:12:40me, many people certainly
00:12:43have them, and they cannot but have them, well,
00:12:47how to deal with
00:12:49this?
00:12:53With work, probably.
00:12:57Well, how else? We still need to help people.
00:13:00So there's no plaque anymore, so there's
00:13:04nothing.
00:13:08It's no
00:13:08longer Memorial.
00:13:13Memorial
00:13:14was there,
00:13:17now it's gone, everything is closed, everything is
00:13:19dark.
00:13:22Memorial united.
00:13:33who remained in power of
00:13:37myths about the empire
00:13:40for whom the empire was still
00:13:44an empire in different senses of the word
00:13:46yes pre-revolutionary empire in
00:13:50the sense of the tsarist empire of the Soviet
00:13:53Union. the revived empire
00:13:57now in New Russia an empire as a kind of
00:14:00ideal, this is a very difficult
00:14:03legacy, a legacy not only
00:14:07of the Soviet past, a legacy of all
00:14:10the long, difficult, very
00:14:13rich history
00:14:15of Russia, the question is,
00:14:19can Russia not be an empire,
00:14:23can it not exist as?
00:14:55He is a small cog in this huge machine
00:14:58of empire. Look opposite,
00:15:02whose bust do we have? Felix Edmundovich
00:15:05Dzerzhinsky, the one who created the terrible
00:15:08repressive machine, and for
00:15:11many he is a hero, despite the fact that
00:15:14the Cheka committed terrible crimes. Well, I'm not
00:15:18even talking about the letter Z that he hung on the right,
00:15:21I think it's very symbolic.
00:16:07My mom was the last one we took out of the house, some apartments already had their floors removed,
00:16:11windows were broken, as they say, if there was work, I would have
00:16:15stayed
00:19:37and, in my opinion, this is treason to the homeland, 10
00:19:41years, special
00:19:42meeting.
00:19:45There was a huge sewing factory,
00:19:49they sewed military underwear by hand. You had to
00:19:52pull the fabric through, they sewed their fingers,
00:19:56falling asleep right away. They were sixteen-year-olds,
00:20:00eighteen-year-olds, girls, I felt sorry for them. I
00:20:03was older, I was already twenty-three.
00:20:12but still twenty-three, you see, it was so morally difficult, especially at first, until I
00:20:15received a letter from
00:20:18home, I didn't know anything, where was
00:20:21the child, where was mom, where was husband?
00:20:24I had the right to answer one letter
00:20:27in six months. So they were all puzzled, where was I,
00:20:31why didn't
00:20:31I answer?
00:20:39I just arrived at Kazansky, took
00:20:42a taxi, when I got in the taxi, the driver
00:20:46was driving, I was sitting in the back, he looked back, then said:
00:20:50are you from the camp? I said, yes, how do you know?
00:20:53I already know what kind of person
00:20:55I'm driving, not the first one, there was probably
00:20:59a stamp like that, he had already
00:21:02seen I don't know how to
00:21:05choose the right
00:21:07word. I'm annoyed,
00:21:11I'm annoyed that people still don't
00:21:14know the truth to this day.
00:21:17You see, when you listen, yes...
00:21:50my tongue and thoughts just refuse, I don't
00:21:53know, there's a lot I don't
00:21:57like.
00:21:58The fact that,
00:22:03despite glasnost, it seems, for
00:22:06everything, for some nonsense,
00:22:09suddenly they prosecute, give
00:22:12an article, send away, I don't
00:22:15like it, I immediately return in my thoughts
00:22:18and think with horror: God forbid, God forbid that time does not
00:22:22return, God forbid. And I think,
00:22:26Lord, if only my grandchildren, great-grandchildren could live in
00:22:29a normal country, I just pray to God.
00:23:35with the drama theater and the park, well, for me,
00:23:38that's my favorite place, where we
00:23:41liked to go, just sit,
00:23:45fountains,
00:23:49it's...
00:24:13no matter what changes in my life,
00:24:15here in my head, for some reason, home is that
00:24:19street. It's so beautiful, we have the sea,
00:24:22the south, let's say, a softer character,
00:24:25a more freedom-loving
00:24:28character, perhaps, I think it will certainly
00:24:31be more beautiful, but it will be
00:24:34different, and the problem is that I need it,
00:24:38right here, but I understand that precisely that is impossible, something
00:24:41else is possible, but precisely that is not, and this creates
00:24:45such emptiness
00:24:49in the soul.
00:25:20The war began, shelling, just some chaos in
00:25:23the city. Everyone wanted to fight,
00:25:27they were ready to fight, with a shovel, with a knife, with
00:25:31a stick, with a hunting
00:25:32rifle.
00:25:36It's totally hardcore, get out on the Russian
00:25:38PTR.
00:25:43I am not immortal, but not fear, but anger moved
00:25:47me. At night... they walked,
00:25:50just shooting, because they were drunk, from that side they didn't
00:25:54let me go to
00:25:55Kras.
00:26:02convinced
00:26:33Nazism, no, they took it for themselves, they are
00:26:36Nazis.
00:26:41While the world sleeps, we are dying here.
00:26:57President Trump, of course, he is a difficult person. We
00:27:01abandoned Ukrainians.
00:29:24No protected person may be punished
00:29:27for an offense committed not personally by him. Collective
00:29:31punishment. As well as any measures of intimidation or
00:29:34terror are prohibited. Looting
00:29:37is prohibited. Reprisals against
00:29:40protected persons, their property, are prohibited.
00:30:30Good afternoon, says Radio Svoboda, broadcasting
00:30:32and the TV channel Current Time, the program Archeology is on the air, in the
00:30:36studio Sergey Medvedev. 86 years ago, in the summer
00:30:40of 1940, the USSR occupied and then
00:30:43annexed three Baltic countries. Since then, they
00:30:46have restored their independence, strengthened their sovereignty, and joined
00:30:50the EU and NATO. However, today Moscow is again threatening these
00:30:53countries. Is a new Russian attack possible?
00:30:57What is the position of Russian-speaking residents of the Baltics?