November 01, 2025

Tamara Eidelman Arrested in Absentia


Tamara Eidelman Arrested in Absentia
Tamara Eidelman, a historian speaking truth to power.

According to Izvestia and the Moscow Prosecutor's Office, a court in Moscow arrested historian Tamara Eidelman in absentia for "rehabilitating Nazism" and "spreading fakes" about the actions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

Eidelman was History Editor for Russian Life magazine for 18 years (from 2003-2021, penning over 300 articles), as well as Founding Editor of Chtenia (2008-2017). She now has an extremely popular YouTube channel that covers all aspects of Russian and world history, as well as current affairs (her clear diction and pleasant speaking voice also makes it a superb Russian language learning resource). The channel has nearly two million subscribers. She has also started a new subscription history program, Secret Hunters (Охотники за тайнами), and is a popular lecturer on history leading courses and tours all over the world. On her website she styles herself as a "historian, honored teacher of the Russian Federation, writer, foreign agent" (историк, заслуженный учитель РФ, писатель, иностранный агент).

Eidelman was declared a foreign agent by the Russian government in September 2022. She had left the country soon after Russia began its War on Ukraine, and now lives and travels freely abroad, making videos and leading history tours.

The nut of the government's beef with Eidelman was apparently a video posted on May 5, 2024, "The Day of Stolen Victory," which the prosecutor's office avers "contains negatively colored statements about the actions of the USSR during World War II, the days of military glory, and memorable dates of Russia related to the defense of the Fatherland, as well as about veterans of the Great Patriotic War." The video is embedded here so you can watch it yourself (click the Youtube logo to watch it over there and turn on the auto-translate feature with the gear icon):

A criminal case against Eidelman – who has a long history of supporting democratic movements and speaking out against all forms of authoritarianism – alleging she was working for the rehabilitation of Nazism was opened on January 4, 2025. She was accused of committing a crime under the infamous paragraph "b" of Part 2 of Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Rehabilitation of Nazism using the Internet").

Reached for comment, Eidelman told Russian Life, "It was expected, but still it is really sad that my country does such things to me and much worse to those who dare stay in Russia. It seems that the authoritarian machine simply cannot stop, it has to go on and on. But we will also go on standing up to them."

A few of Eidelman's articles from our pages are linked below...

 

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