The Institute aims to give the general public a comprehensive, objective and international overview of human rights violations and crimes committed by totalitarian regimes both in Estonia (during the German and Soviet occupations) and abroad.
[2] Its predecessor was the Estonian International Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity (Inimsusvastaste kuritegude Uurimise Eesti Rahvusvaheline Komisjon), founded by President Lennart Meri in 1998.
The Institute was established by Leon Glikman, Rein Kilk, Jaan Manitski, Tiit Sepp, Hannes Tamjärv and Indrek Teder.
The Victims of Communism Memorial in Maarjamäe, built on the occasion of Estonia’s centennial in 2018,[10] displays the known names of more than 22,000 Estonian people who lost their lives under the communist regime.
The lists of victims were a result of years of research conducted by the Memento [et] Society[11] and the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory.
The database provides basic information on persons (name, year of birth and death), as well as data on his/her family members that were subject to repression.
[29] The Institute offers educational and training programmes for teachers, youth workers, pupils, and university students.
In 2019, the Institute hosted the conference Necropolis of Communist Terror in cooperation with the Memorial Research and Information Centre (St. Petersburg).
The conference was dedicated to the issues of locating, researching, memorialising and legally establishing mass burial sites of victims of state terror in Eastern European and former communist countries.
[32] On 23 August 2018, the European Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Totalitarian Regimes, an international conference Utopia unachieved despite millions victimised?
The conference addressed the topic of crimes committed by communist regimes and their consequences and the possibility of a common European culture of remembrance.
The Estonian Institute of Historical Memory cooperates internationally with independent historians and researchers whose subject area is communist regimes and who endeavour to define how and to what extent human rights were globally violated.