On 4 December 2008, Memorial's St Petersburg office, which houses archives on the Gulag, was raided by the authorities. Officers confiscated 11 computer hard disks containing the entire digital archive of atrocities committed under Stalin, representing 20 years of research. The information was being used to develop "a universally accessible database with hundreds of thousands of names." Office director Irina Flinge believes that Memorial was targeted because their organization is on the wrong side of Putinism, specifically the idea "that Stalin and the Soviet regime were successful in creating a great country".