Revenge for Stalin? Gulag historian faces long prison sentence over disputed child sex charges

For decades, historian Yuri Dmitriyev dug up and documented the bodies of Stalin’s victims in mass graves, embarrassing veterans of Russia’s secret police in the process. Then the state accused him of paedophilia, explains Oliver Carroll

Russian historian Yuri Dmitriyev leaves court in the city of Petrozavodsk, northwest Russia (AP)

Historian Irina Flige first met Yuri Dmitriyev during a cigarette break between searching KGB archives. It was then that she gave him information that would change his life: the evidence of executions of at least 1,111 Gulag prisoners in Dmitriyev’s native Kareliya during Stalin’s Great Terror.

The researchers agreed to a joint expedition, and on 1 July 1997 set off to the lakes and pine woods in northern Kareliya where they understood the bodies were buried.

They expected the searching would take several months, but after four or five hours of wandering in the forest, Dmitriyev came running to Flige, with obvious excitement.