Irina Shcherbakova, born in Moscow 1949, is an expert on Germany and an historian. She has translated German literature into Russian and also edited literary magazines. Since the 1970s, she dedicated herself to processing the impact of the Stalin era and cofounded the NGO, Memorial. The latter was banned in Russia in 2021. She has received multiple awards and honours, including the Carl von Ossietsky Prize for Contemporary History and Politics in 2014 and the Goethe Medal in 2017.