Russia today sorely needs heroes. Argumenty I fakty polled
6,000 persons on their candidate for "Russian of the century". The
majority failed to name anyone. Of those offering positive responses, 18%
named Lenin, 13% named Sakharov and 10% named Stalin. No one else received
5% of the vote.
Russia today sorely needs to know its past. There is no museum in
Russia, other than the Sakharov Museum, that presents the history
of the Soviet era from a non-Communist perspective. The Sakharov Museum
has made a brave beginning, but its exhibits must be expanded if it is
to fulfill its function of educating the next generation of Russians about
the USSR's totalitarian past.
Russia today sorely needs to develop a civil society. The Sakharov
Center, rooted in the human rights movement of the 1970s and 1980s and
Sakharov's ideals of tolerance, democracy, and civil liberties, can become
a rallying point and support facility for Russia's proliferating
non-governmental organizations.
In the past year Sakharov Center program achieved a number of its stated programmatic
aims:
Museum, Library and Computer Center
Center's garden and the Berlin Wall monument
(gift from Check Point Charlie Museum in Berlin)
Over the past year, more than 6000 persons have visited the Sakharov
Center's museum and its library or have participated in its meetings
and seminars. In particular, in the ten months from October 1996 to August
1997 there were 46 excursion
groups involving 1,214 teachers as well as secondary school and college
students who received guided tours of the exhibits and special lectures.
The museum is open five days a week, and admission is free.
The museum's permanent exposition is divided into three sections:
- The USSR's Totalitarian Past, with special emphasis on the history of
repression, the prison camp system, and the human rights movement;
- Human Rights in Russia Today, including audiovisual displays on ethnic
conflict in Chechnya, Tajikistan and other regions; and
- The Life and Work of Andrei Sakharov.
In addition to permanent exhibits, the Museum hosted a number
of temporary exhibitions. These included:
- Yuri Rost's photographs of Sakharov and other Russian personalities;
- the work of Doctors without Borders;
- Women against Violence; and
- Ernest Neizvestny's Magadan monument, Victims of Totalitarianism.
Typically, exhibits were accompanied by lectures and panel discussions.
The library, which is open to the public, contains 2,500 books and
selected periodicals on human rights topics.
More than 1,400 people visited and conducted research in the library.
in the last ten months.
A computer facility in the
Center, which can be used by human rights groups, contains several
computers linked to the Internet.
Meetings and Activities
The Round Table meeting room at
the Centre
(click here for the large image)
The Sakharov Center has become a meeting place and rallying point for a
rapidly increasing number of human rights NGOs from Moscow and beyond:
Common Action, an umbrella group for Moscow human rights activists; the
Moscow Helsinki Group; the Memorial Society; Moscow Research Center for
Human Rights; Sisters, a women's rights group; the Moscow Center for
Prison Reform; the Mordovian organization "Mastoba";
the Chechen cultural organization "Lam"; the Moscow Human Rights
Commission; et al.
In the ten months between October 1996 and August
1997 1950 participants attended public events at the Center such
as seminars, lectures, press briefings, etc.
On April 15, 1997, Amnesty International conducted
a press conference at the Center on conditions of detention in Russia.
In October 1997, the Sakharov Center hosted a conference with the
International League for Human Rights and
the Global Survival Network on
the trafficking of Russian Women.
In collaboration with
Freedom House,
The Sakharov
Center has conducted a conference on Russian Ukrainian relations with
participation of Russian, Ukrainian and American experts.
In December 1996 and March 1997, the Sakharov Center conducted round-table discussions
with Georgian and Abkhazian journalists, politicians, and intellectuals in hopes of
initiating a constructive dialogue. Members of LAM, a Chechen cultural organization in Grozny,
conducted together with Russian intellectuals, a discussion and press briefing on the postwar
revival of Chechen cultural institutions. Sakharov Center staff assisted the Chechens in preparing
and presenting a grant proposal to TACIS, the European Union's assistance program for Russia.
In January 1997, in the course of an official visit to Moscow, Natan Sharansky, formerly
political prisoner in the USSR and now Israel's Minister of Industry and Trade, visited the
Sakharov Foundation and Center to meet with Russian friends from the human rights movement
and to conduct a press conference. David Remnick (The New Yorker, August 11, 1997)
has described Sharansky's regard for Sakharov: "In his ministry office, Sharansky hung a
portrait of his "higher authority" - Andrei Sakharov, his mentor in the Soviet human rights
movement. The portrait is there as a reminder of Sakharov's example: his honesty, the purity of
his intentions and of his language. "His expression was like a saint's - straight, pure, clear, moral
thought," Sharansky said. "This connection of simplicity and directness with his greatness, it was
from the heavens."
In February 1998, the Sakharov Center in collaboration with the American consulting firm
A.T. Kearney is scheduled to hold a meeting on potential sources of funding for Russian cultural
institutions.
Other programs include:
- civil dialogue on current issues such as displaced persons, alternate service for draftees,
prison and sentencing reform, and the functioning of the judicial system;
- lectures and discussions on the history of the gulag; and
- concerts, lectures, and other events designed to popularize the ideas of Andrei Sakharov.
Financing the Sakharov Center
The annual cost of operating the Sakharov Center (exclusive of project costs) is
approximately $200,000 in the following categories
- salaries $100,00
- maintenance, repairs and utilities $85,000
- other core costs $15,000
Contributors to the Sakharov Commission directly or through The Andrei Sakharov
Foundation (USA) have included
Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler has provided pro bono legal services for
the Sakharov Foundation(USA) and the The Sakharov Foundation(Russia)/Public Commission since their inception. Scott
Horton, a partner in that firm, is a director of The Andrei Sakharov Foundation (USA).
If you wish to contribute to The Andrei Sakharov Foundation (see
How to contribute) such contributions are
deductible in conformity with the US Tax Code.
Contributions may also be made directly
to
- Andrei Sakharov Foundation (Russia)
- %Most Bank, acct. # 0701-11-659
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