On Aug. 18, Moscow City Court ordered the closure of the Sakharov Center.
Andrei Sakharov’s name carries the same significance in Russia as the name Martin Luther King Jr. carries in the United States. In the 1950s and 1960s, Sakharov led the development of Russian nuclear weapons, then became concerned about the hawkish attitude of his military superiors. He began speaking about the dangers of nuclear war. He openly confronted Soviet authorities about the suppression of freedoms.
In 1975, Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for his struggle for human rights in the Soviet Union, for disarmament and cooperation between all nations." In the 1980s, he stood vigil outside courthouses during trials of political dissidents. For his political activism, he was sent into internal exile for six years. In 1988, the European Parliament established the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. A similar prize was inaugurated by the American Physical Society in 2006.
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After Mikhail Gorbachev became president of the Soviet Union, Sakharov was allowed to return to Moscow. In 1989, he was elected to the Russian parliament. Speaking at the sessions chaired by Gorbachev, he delivered fiery televised addresses in support of freedoms and civil society. After his death in December 1989, enormous crowds attended the daylong farewell to Sakharov. The Sakharov Center was founded by Sakharov’s friends and colleagues in 1990 to protect his legacy and materials documenting his life.
Its two-story building in Moscow, inaugurated in 1996, served as a museum dedicated to Sakharov and the history of the dissident movement in the USSR. It was vandalized several times for its opposition to government policies and for advocating tolerance toward the LGBT community. In 2014 Moscow court declared Sakharov Center a "foreign agent." The center rejected that label and was repeatedly fined for failing to use it in published materials.
In March 2022, the center spoke against the Russian invasion of Ukraine: "Today our country is experiencing perhaps the most shameful days of its history. Russian society allowed itself to be dragged into the funnel of a monstrous crisis. The result was death, destruction, and untold suffering in the neighboring country." In February of 2023, after the Justice Ministry filed the request to close the center, it received an eviction notice from the authorities.
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The crackdown on dissidents began soon after Vladimir Putin was elected president, but it has accelerated dramatically in recent years. In December 2021, just before the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Supreme Court ordered the liquidation of the Memorial Society. It was established in the late 1980s to create a database of citizens who perished in the gulags. Sakharov served as its first chairman. In January 2023 Moscow City Court shut down the Moscow Helsinki Group – the oldest human rights organization in Russia, established in the apartment of Andrei Sakharov in 1976.
The dissolution of the Sakharov Center finalizes the decimation of what remained from "above-ground" human rights organizations in Russia.
Eugene M. Chudnovsky is a distinguished professor at the City University of New York and co-chair of the Committee of Concerned Scientists.