Academic Citations

Denis Karagodin’s investigation into Soviet political repression is discussed by historian Ivan Kurilla in The Battle for the Past: How Politics Rewrites History (Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore, 2025), where the KARAGODIN^® Investigation project is examined as an example of “the past as action.” In a dedicated section, Kurilla presents the project as a distinctive form of civic engagement with the difficult Soviet past.

Kurilla argues that Karagodin’s work raises the question of state and individual responsibility for terror not only in political or moral terms, but in a strictly legal and documentary sense. He describes the investigation as a case in which archival reconstruction, digital publication, and public legal argument are combined into a method of confronting historical violence and institutional silence.

The book situates the KARAGODIN^® Investigation within broader debates on transitional justice, historical memory, and post-Soviet approaches to the legacy of repression. Kurilla contrasts the project with mythologized or purely literary engagements with the Soviet past, presenting it instead as a documentary and legal model of historical action with broader implications for Russian society.

Denis Karagodin’s investigation into the execution of his great-grandfather by the NKVD is discussed in Mikhail Nemcev’s philosophical collection I Ya Tozhe: Works on Moral and Political Philosophy (St. Petersburg: Ivan Limbach Publishing House, 2025).

Nemcev refers to the KARAGODIN^® Investigation project in the context of debates on moral responsibility within bureaucratic systems and the problem of individual accountability in structures of political violence. The investigation is presented as an example of an attempt to reconstruct the chain of responsibility behind Soviet state crimes and to challenge institutional narratives surrounding repression.

The discussion situates Karagodin’s work within broader philosophical reflections on collective responsibility, historical justice, and the ethical implications of confronting state violence.

Denis Karagodin’s investigation into the execution of his great-grandfather by the NKVD — later developed into the KARAGODIN^® Investigation project — is discussed in Ekaterina V. Haskins’s study of memory politics in contemporary Russia. The book examines public debates surrounding Karagodin’s identification of the NKVD executioners responsible for his great-grandfather’s execution and analyzes the polarized reactions that followed in Russian media and public discourse.

Haskins interprets the case as an example of the tensions between family memory, civic initiatives of historical investigation, and the broader politics of remembering and forgetting Soviet political repression.

Denis Karagodin’s investigation into Soviet political repression is situated within broader discussions of judicial terror and the role of legal institutions in the execution of state violence. In his comparative analysis of Fouquier-Tinville, Vyshinsky, and Freisler, Emmanuel Didier examines how legal systems can be transformed into instruments of repression while maintaining a formal appearance of legality.

Within this analytical framework, the KARAGODIN^® Investigation project can be understood as a contemporary case that documents the mechanisms of Soviet judicial terror at the level of individual responsibility, archival reconstruction, and legal accountability. The project contributes to a broader understanding of how legal procedures, institutional actors, and documentary practices participate in the production and legitimization of political violence.

Didier’s work places such investigations in a comparative historical context, linking Soviet practices with other instances of juridically mediated repression. This situates Karagodin’s work not only within memory studies, but also within the field of legal theory and the study of law as an instrument of power.

Denis Karagodin’s work is discussed in Oksana Sarkisova and Olga Shevchenko’s In Visible Presence: Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023), a major study of family photography, post-Soviet memory, and visual culture.

The authors present the KARAGODIN^® Investigation project as a case in which family photographs and archival materials are transformed into a public historical project. Their discussion traces how Karagodin’s digitization of his family archive, his reconstruction of genealogical and documentary history, and his search for the executioners of his great-grandfather generate a new form of memorial and documentary practice. The discussion situates the KARAGODIN^® Investigation within broader debates on family archives, visual memory, and the afterlives of Soviet history.

The book further examines the project’s visual strategy, including the adaptation of family photographs for the website and social media, and interprets this transformation as part of a broader shift from private family memory to public historical intervention.

Stephen M. Norris and other contributors discuss the KARAGODIN^® Investigation project in the collective volume The Future of the Soviet Past: The Politics of History in Putin’s Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021). The book analyzes contemporary debates on historical memory and the politics of the Soviet past in Russia.

Denis Karagodin’s investigation into the execution of his great-grandfather by the NKVD — later developed into the KARAGODIN^® Investigation project — is presented as an example of grassroots historical inquiry.

The authors describe how Karagodin reconstructed the chain of command behind the execution and published the findings online, contributing to broader public discussion about historical responsibility and memory.

Denis Karagodin’s investigation into the execution of his great-grandfather by the NKVD is discussed in Svetlana Eremeeva’s study Memory: Battlefield or Field of Harvest? (Moscow: Delo Publishing House, 2021), which examines contemporary debates on historical memory and the practices through which societies engage with difficult pasts.

Eremeeva refers to the KARAGODIN^® Investigation project as an example of an individual initiative aimed at reconstructing historical events through archival research, documentary evidence, and the recovery of biographical details connected to victims of Soviet repression.

Within the book’s broader analysis of cultural memory and public engagement with the past, the investigation is presented as a case illustrating how personal archival work can evolve into a wider public and memorial practice, contributing to discussions about historical responsibility and the reconstruction of suppressed historical narratives.

Denis Karagodin’s investigation into Soviet political repression is discussed in several sections of Nikolay Epplee’s An Inconvenient Past (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2020), a major study of transitional justice and historical memory in contemporary Russia.

Epplee refers to the KARAGODIN^® Investigation project as an example of an independent civic initiative confronting bureaucratic resistance and seeking accountability for Soviet state crimes. The investigation is examined as a case illustrating how individual archival research and public documentation strategies can challenge institutional silence surrounding political repression.

The book discusses the investigation in the broader context of debates about historical responsibility, mechanisms of public memory, and the societal infrastructure required for confronting the legacy of state violence.

Denis Karagodin and the KARAGODIN^® Investigation project are referenced in the book’s discussion of public engagement with the legacy of Soviet state violence. The author cites Karagodin’s investigation into the execution of his great-grandfather during the Stalinist terror and his work with FSB archival materials, noting the publication of documents and findings on karagodin.org as an example of individual initiatives contributing to broader debates about historical memory and the unresolved trauma of Soviet repression in contemporary Russia.

Discussion of the KARAGODIN^® Investigation project in the chapter “Die zwei Orte des Schreibens – der privat-familiäre und der national-gemeinschaftliche,” [“The Two Sites of Writing – the Private-Familial and the National-Collective”] where the project is analyzed as an example of a contemporary initiative addressing Soviet-era political repression and transgenerational memory through documentary investigation.

This academic study situates the KARAGODIN^® Investigation within contemporary debates on memory politics in Russia, identifying it as a case of “counter-memory” — a form of civic historical practice operating outside institutional frameworks. The project is analyzed through the lens of communicative and cultural memory (Assmann), as well as broader theories of competing historical narratives.

Denis Karagodin’s work is interpreted as part of a wider shift toward decentralized and participatory forms of engaging with the past, contributing to alternative historical discourse in post-Soviet memory culture.

Denis Karagodin’s investigation into Soviet political repression is presented as a significant example of grassroots historical engagement in contemporary Russia. In his analysis of the politics of memory surrounding the centenary of the 1917 Revolution, Ivan Kurilla identifies Karagodin’s work as part of a broader set of non-state initiatives through which society attempts to reclaim and reinterpret the past.

Kurilla situates the KARAGODIN^® Investigation alongside movements such as the Immortal Regiment, emphasizing its role in challenging state-controlled historical narratives. The project is described as a form of public historical intervention that brings visibility to previously obscured actors of Soviet repression, including NKVD executioners, and demonstrates how archival research can function as a political and civic act.

Within this framework, Karagodin’s work exemplifies how history operates as a “language of politics” in contemporary Russia. By reconstructing individual responsibility and publishing documentary evidence, the investigation contributes to broader debates on historical memory, state narrative control, and the societal processing of past violence.

The KARAGODIN^® Investigation project is discussed in the chapter “Workshop Report: Remembering Communism – Apologetics and Positive Memory,” where Denis Karagodin’s investigation into the individuals responsible for the execution of his great-grandfather during the Stalinist repression is referenced within broader debates on memory politics and the public reassessment of the Soviet past in Russia.

The syllabus includes the Karagodin Case as an example for discussing historical justice, human rights, and the investigation of Soviet political repression. The course materials reference the investigation conducted through the project The KARAGODIN® Investigation (karagodin.org), concerning the execution of Stepan Ivanovich Karagodin during the Stalinist terror.

(The publication refers to an earlier version of the website address — blog.stepanivanovichkaragodin.org — used during the initial phase of the project.)

This publication is a university teaching syllabus and methodological course program designed for students in law and international relations programs. It forms part of the academic curriculum used in higher education institutions for teaching the philosophy and theory of human rights.

Methodologically, the syllabus combines theoretical literature with practical case studies and contemporary examples used for classroom discussion. Within this pedagogical framework, the KARAGODIN^® Investigation is presented as a case study illustrating issues of historical justice, the rights of victims of political repression, and the legal-ethical challenges involved in investigating state violence.

The inclusion of the Karagodin Case in a university course program indicates that the investigation has entered the sphere of academic teaching materials, where it serves as an example in discussions of human rights, transitional justice, and the legacy of Soviet political repression.

The KARAGODIN^® Investigation is referenced in the collective academic volume The 20th Century: Working Through the Past. Transitional Justice Practices and Memory Politics in Former Dictatorships (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2021), which examines the politics of historical memory and transitional justice mechanisms in post-authoritarian societies.

Within the discussion of contemporary Russian memory politics and access to archival materials, the investigation conducted by Denis Karagodin is mentioned as an example of independent research aimed at reconstructing the circumstances of Soviet-era repression through archival documentation and historical inquiry.

The book situates the case within a broader analysis of the challenges faced by researchers working on politically sensitive historical topics in contemporary Russia, including institutional resistance, legal pressure, and restrictions on access to historical archives.

In his discussion of digital resources and online archival initiatives, the historian Aleksei Teplyakov refers to the investigation conducted by Denis Karagodin concerning the execution of his great-grandfather during the Stalinist terror. The project’s archival documentation and research materials are noted as being published online, providing publicly accessible information on NKVD personnel and Soviet repressive practices.

(The author refers to the earlier address stepanivanovichkaragodin.org, the initial name of the website that later became karagodin.org, the platform of the KARAGODIN^® Investigation project.)

Denis Karagodin is mentioned in the acknowledgments to Gleb Pavlovsky’s edited volume The Weak: Conspiracy of Alternatives (Moscow: Vek XX i Mir, 2021). The book explores the intellectual legacy and historical methodology of the Russian historian Mikhail Gefter, whose approach to history emphasized alternative trajectories and the role of contingency in historical processes.

The volume also examines Gefter’s engagement with the prison writings and correspondence of Nikolai Bukharin, using these materials as a key analytical lens for exploring questions of political responsibility, historical temporality, and the moral dimensions of revolutionary power.

In the closing note to the book, Pavlovsky refers to a conversation with Karagodin on temporality in the Russian history of executions, describing it as one of the exchanges that supported the completion of the volume. This reference reflects Karagodin’s intellectual contribution to the discussion surrounding the book’s themes and its final development.

Denis Karagodin is acknowledged by the author in the book’s acknowledgments among the individuals whose discussions and support contributed to the development of the research.