Irina Sherbakova Is Awarded with the 2017 Goethe Medal
For her special merits for the international cultural exchange, the German Goethe-Institut awards Irina Sherbakova with this year’s Goethe Medal. As a long-standing partner of the EUSTORY Network, she has been running the Russian history competition for many years.
Since 1999, the Russian human rights organisation MEMORIAL has been hosting the competition “Man in History”. Irina Sherbakova coordinates the project. Furthermore, she is a publisher of several books on Stalinism and the Russian commemoration culture and has also edited books assembling works from the Russian and the German history competition. Recent tensions between Russia and Europe have never dispirited her to work for a communal dialogue on history and civil society.
The Goethe medal was first awarded in 1954 and is acknowledged as an official badge of honour of the Federal Republic of Germany.The official ceremony will take place on 28 August in Weimar where Marianne Birthler, former Head of the Agency for the Documents of the GDR’s State Security Service, will award Irina Sherbakova with the medal. Together with her, the Indian publisher Urvashi Butalia and the Lebanese author Emily Nasrallah will be honoured.