Stepan Cernousek

Štěpán Černoušek is a Russian studies scholar, explorer, publicist, and election observer. In 2009, he established the Gulag.cz Association, which aims to popularize the research of the Soviet repressive system, and became its Chairman. From 2009 to 2016, he organized four expeditions to abandoned Gulag camps in Siberia, which resulted in the creation of a virtual museum Gulag Online and projects in virtual and augmented reality.

Štěpán has also been cooperating with the Memorial Human Rights Center in Russia, which focuses on independent research of Soviet repressions. In 2016, he established its branch office in the Czech Republic. In 2018, he was elected to the Board of the central International Memorial organization. He initiated the extension of the Russian projects “Last Address” and “Returning the Names” to the Czech Republic, commemorating the remembrance of victims of the Soviet repressive regime.

He has been active in charity projects in Chechnya and has regularly visited Chechnya from 2007 to 2010. He created a section of recorded testimonies with Chechen witnesses on the Memory of the Nation portal, and in 2013 and 2014 he extended this activity to witnesses from Georgia, Armenia and North Ossetia.

As an OSCE election observer, he participated in the presidential elections in Ukraine (2004), the elections to the State Duma in Russia (December 2011) and referendum in Macedonia (September 2018). He has traveled regularly to Russia and the former Soviet Union since 1994.He has also traveled to Alaska, where he mapped the footprints of Russian colonization.