Specialist in the history of the USSR, Nicolas Werth writes in a personal book entitled “Farewell My Russia”. The president of the Mémorial France association compares his journey, that of a historian struck by the Russian invasion in Ukraine, and that of his father, also a historian, who committed suicide the day after the crushing of the Prague Spring.

Published on: 03/10/2026 - 09:47

In June 2023, historian Nicolas Werth is preparing to do the irreparable. While Putin's regime invaded Ukraine the previous year, the president of Mémorial France, an association that fights for the memory of human rights violations in the past and the defense of current rights in Russia, was gradually faltering.

He climbs onto the kitchen balcony, but a flash, the image of his loved ones, saves him and prevents him from jumping. “How could I, me, me – the son of a suicide whose entire course of life was channeled, determined by this abandonment of the father (…), how could I, even for a second, envisage inflicting such suffering on them until the end of their days?”, writes Nicolas Werth at the opening of his latest work “Adieu ma Russia” (Les Belles Lettres).

In March 1969, it was his father, the British journalist and war correspondent of Russian origin, Alexander Werth, who ended his life by jumping out of a window of the family apartment in Paris. As his only will, he leaves half an A4 sheet with two words: Proschaï Rossija! (Goodbye my Russia!). A few months after the entry of Soviet tanks into Prague, he was unable to overcome his fear and his lost illusions.

“The way in which we were both struck by great History”

More than fifty later, his son still has not understood his gesture. As “therapy” for his own distress, Nicolas Werth took up his pen and wrote his most personal work. A story of filiation where the lives of the father and the son intertwine in parallel. “It’s the story of the relationship that my father and I had with Russia. It’s the way in which we were both struck by the great History,” he explains. “It is not a simple autobiographical story as some of my colleagues do, because it is also a real historian’s book,” he adds.

From archives to archives and to recover from his own state of astonishment, Nicolas Werth followed in the footsteps of the man who left him an orphan far too early. Born in Saint Petersburg in 1901, Alexander went into exile in Great Britain during the Russian Revolution. Having become a journalist, he was notably the BBC correspondent during the Second World War. From what he saw at Stalingrad or during the siege of Leningrad, he draws “Russia at War” (Stock editions), a reference work. “He was a master in the art of testimony. For this book, he did not do in-depth university-type research, he used his meetings, his experience and his war notebooks,” describes his son.

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Nicolas Werth does not hide his admiration for the writings of this father who died prematurely on "the fighting, suffering and heroic Russia of 'the Great Patriotic War'". By becoming a historian of Russia himself after joining the École Normale de Saint-Cloud, he followed in his footsteps.

But this pride does not prevent criticism. Retracing his career, he notes that Alexander had an ambiguous view of Russia, often ignoring the crimes of the Soviet regime. "This is explained by the historical situation. How could an anti-fascist from the 1930s become anti-Stalinist when the survival of Europe depended on the alliance with this regime? It is the Stalingrad effect. The victory of the Red Army and the alliance with the democracies inevitably lead people to refuse to see the regime in this way", summarizes Nicolas Werth.

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“I was able to see the darkest side of the regime”

Decades later, the son hasn't looked away. He plunged headlong into studying the workings of this state violence. Joining the CNRS in 1989, he worked, during his missions in Russia, on the forced collectivization which resulted in the great famine of 1932-1933, on Stalinist repression, the Moscow trials and the sprawling concentration camp system of the Gulag. “Having lived in another era and having experienced the last years of the Soviet Union, I was at the heart of the opening of the archives and I was able to see the darkest side of the regime which had been hidden. I was able to have a completely different approach,” underlines the historian.

From the perestroika period (1985-1991), Nicolas Werth reports a breath of fresh air, that of his meetings and exchanges with Russian intellectuals, in a country in full turmoil: "It was an absolutely exhilarating time. We truly saw how an authoritarian totalitarian system was gradually crumbling and how we arrived at this tremendous liberation of speech which had until then only taken place between February and October 1917. But today, with hindsight, we realize that this little parenthesis only lasted between 1986 and 1993."

As Russia takes another turn, Nicolas Werth continues his back and forth, spending nearly twenty years of his life in this country. He is also increasingly involved in the Memorial association, founded in 1989, notably by the Soviet dissident Andreï Sakharov, to document and preserve the memory of millions of forgotten victims of Soviet repression, but also that of their executioners.

“We refused to see the prospect of full-scale war”

But in 2018, he was expelled from the country, officially for having violated the rules for using visas. Three years later, the Russian Supreme Court dissolved Memorial, accusing it of violating the law on foreign agents. At the forefront of this repression, Nicolas Werth "saw the Putin dictatorship develop more and more strongly", yet he admits that he did not see the Russian invasion in Ukraine coming.

“I think that like many Europeans and French people in particular, we are a generation spoiled for peace. We refused to see the prospect of a large-scale war as Russia undertook against Ukraine,” he admits, drawing a parallel with the “mistake” of his father who did not see the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

This visceral attachment of the two men for Russia affected them both in their flesh. “It’s something that is quite incredible in strength, undoubtedly deadly,” Nicolas Werth modestly summarizes. But where the father left the scene, the son chose to repair this wound by studying their two destinies.

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“No hope of any change”

This journey ends with farewells. Those of a man who knows that he will not return to Russia, “this country whose regime has committed, in recent years, so many crimes: crimes of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity”. Lucid, the historian thinks that “the dictatorship will continue beyond its life expectancy”. “There is no hope of any change given the power of force structures like the army, the military-industrial complex and the FSB, heir to the KGB,” he insists. “All the opposition forces are so decimated that I don’t think we can foresee a democratic stage in the medium term.”

Despite this observation, Nicolas Werth does not give up. Still president of Mémorial France, Nicolas Werth also multiplies actions to raise awareness of the fate of political prisoners in Russia. “We have identified 4,600. We are going to publish in 2027 by Gallimard a book entitled “The Last Words”, which brings together those spoken by political defendants during their trial.”

Even if he no longer goes to the country he loves, he goes to Ukraine several times a year. Here again, with his historian's hat on, he studies the impact of this conflict, which will soon reach the duration of the Second World War, on Ukrainian society. “I am particularly interested in how a country resists and displays its resilience in the long term,” he describes. “We absolutely must continue and develop aid to Ukraine. It is vital. It is the bulwark of Europe.”

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