Sakharov speaks out on repression, detente (12/28/80)

Sakharov speaks out on repression, detente

Below is the full text of exiled Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov's letter to Anatoly P. Aleksandrov, president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Written in Gorky, the letter outlines Mr. Sakharov's demands for an open-court hearing of his case and asks the academy to support his plea that Soviet authorities stop their harassment of his stepson's fiancee. The letter also provides Mr. Sakharov's opinions on such topical issues as disarmament, detente and human rights.

Dear Anatoly Petrovich,

The immediate cause of this letter was the contents of your conversation concerning my case with the president of the New York Academy of Sciences, Joel Leibowitz. That conversation occurred on April 15 but only now has a transcript of it become available to me. That aside, I consider it important to state my position on questions of principle, to assess the actions taken by the organs of government in my case, to respond to certain public accusations and, as well, to assess the positions taken by my colleagues in the USSR and, in particular, by the Academy of Sciences and its directors.

My life has been such that for two decades I found myself among those engaged in scientific-military and military construction projects in which I myself took an active part and then, for more than 12 years, I have been among those people who have set themselves the task of a non-violent struggle for the observation of human rights and the rule of law. My fate has thus forced me to perceive with especial acuity the questions of war and peace, international security, international trust and disarmament, and the questions of human rights and open society, and to give intense thought to these problems in all their interdependencies. That was how my position evolved.

In many respects it proved unorthodox, at odds with the official line and with my own assessments of many years previous. In the final analysis all this has completely changed my life, my goals and my ideals.

Quite early on, I came to the conclusion that despite the entire people's passionate will to peace and the government leaders' unquestionable desire to avoid a major war, they are, in the practice of their foreign policy frequently guided by, in my opinion, an extremely dangerous geopolitical strategy of force and expansion, and by their striving to stifle and corrupt their potential enemies. But in corrupting an enemy, we corrupt, as well, the world in which we live.

So, as early as 1955, I recognized that our Near East policy was taking a sharp turn, the aim of which was to create an oil-dependent situation for the countries of the West. In the years following this shift brought great calamities to the peoples of that region - the Arabs, Israel, Lebanon and helped intensify the energy crisis throughout the world. As the military capabilities of the USSR increased, that sort of policy became increasingly dominant and dangerous, destroying with one hand that which the other hand was attempting to construct. Afghanistan is the latest and most tragic example of the harm done by this expansionist geopolitical mentality.

I am convinced that the prevention of the thermonuclear war threatening mankind is our most important problem, having absolute priority over all other problems. The means to a solution are political, politico-economic, and involve the creation of international trust by open societies, the unconditional observance of man's civil and political rights and disarmament.

On disarmament and human rights

Disarmament, in particular nuclear disarmament, is mankind's most important task. A genuine, as opposed to a demagogic disarmament is possible, in my view, only on an initial basis of a strategic balance of power. I support Salt II as a satisfactory embodiment of this principle and as a prerequisite to Salt III and other subsequent agreements. I am in favor of an agreement repudiating the first use of nuclear weapons as a preliminary basis for achieving a strategic equilibrium in the field of conventional weapons. I am in favor of an all-embracing agreement on chemical and bacteriological weapons; the report of the recently exposed catastrophe in Sverdlovsk confirms the urgency of this. I would condemn an attempt by the West to achieve substantial strategic superiority over the USSR as extremely dangerous. But I am also concerned by the militarization of the USSR and the Soviet destruction of strategic equilibrium in Europe and other parts of Asia and Africa and by Soviet dictates and Soviet demagogery there.

I am against international terrorism which shatters peace no matter what the goals of its participants. States truly striving for stabilization in the world should not support terrorism under any circumstances.

A most important concept which in time became a fundamental part of my position is the indissoluble bond between international security and international trust, and the observation of human rights and the openness of society. That concept was a component part of the final communique of the Helsinki Conference, but words and deeds have gone their separate ways, particularly in the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe. I have learned of the scale and the cynicism with which fundamental civil and political rights are violated in the Soviet Union including the right to freedom of opinion and freedom of information, the right to a free choice of one's country of residence (i.e. to emigrate and to return), the right to choose one's place of residence within a country, the right to an impartial trial and to a defense, the right to freedom of religion. In not observing these rights a society is "closed," potentially dangerous to mankind and doomed to degradation.

I have learned of people who set themselves the goal of struggling for human rights by means of publicity, rejecting violence as a matter of principle, and of their cruel persecution by the authorities. I have been an eyewitness to unjust trials, I have seen the brazenness of the KGB, I have learned about terrible conditions in places of confinement. I have become one of those people you have called an "alien faction" and even accused of treason. But these are my friends and it is in them that I see the shining strength of our people.

I learned of the struggle to liberate prisoners of conscience throughout the world and that important goal became one of my close concerns. I support Amnesty International in its struggle for a worldwide repeal of capital punishment and I have frequently made appeals that the death penalty be repealed in our country.

I have taken a fresh look at the economic difficulties in the USSR particularly in regard to food production, at the caste of the bureaucratic elite with its privileges, at the stagnation our production system, at the menacing signs of the bureaucracy perverting and deadening the life of the entire country, at the general indifference to work done for a faceless state (nobody could care less), at pull and corruption, the compulsory maneuverings and hypocrisy which cripple human beings, the alcoholism, censorship and the brazen lying of the press, the insane destruction of the environment, the soil, meadows, air, forests, rivers and lakes.

The necessity for profound economic and social reforms in the USSR is obvious to many people in the country, but attempts to carry them out collide with the resistance of the ruling bureaucracy and everything goes on as before, the same old slogans. Something is being done but most of it comes to naught. Meanwhile the military-industrial complex and the KGB are gaining in strength, threatening the stability of the entire world while super-militarization is eating up all our resources.

My ideal became an open pluralistic society with an unconditional observance of the fundamental civil and political rights of man, a society with a mixed economy which would make for scientifically regulated, comprehensive progress. I have voiced the assumption that such a society ought to come about as a result of a peaceful drawing together ("convergence") of the socialist and capitalist systems, and that this is the main condition for saving the world from thermonuclear catastrophe.

Our country has lived half its history under the monstrous crimes of the Stalin regime. Although Stalin's actions are officially condemned verbally, the scale of Stalin's crimes and their concrete manifestations are carefully hidden from the people, and those who expose them are prosecuted for alleged slander. The terror and famine accompanying collectivization, Kirov's murder and the destruction of the cultural, civil, military and party cadres, the genocide occurring during the resettlement of "punished" peoples, the penal labor camps and the deaths of many millions there, the flirtation with Hitler which turned into a national tragedy, the repression of prisoners of war, the laws against workers, the murder of Mikhoels and the resurgence of official anti-Semitism, all these evils should be exposed with absolute finality. A people without historical memory is doomed to degradation. As I know, you, to one degree or another, formerly shared this point of view and I hope that your position has not changed.

Between 1968 and 1980 I have formulated my ideas in a series of articles, speeches and interviews. Instead of serious discussion, the response of the official propaganda has been a premeditated distortion of my position. It has been caricatured, reviled, slandered. In my life I have come up against increasing persecutions, threats to me and especially to those close to me, and finally, deportation without trial. My earliest attempts to take an unprejudiced position met with opposition.

On November 22, 1955, the day of the triumphant and tragic testing of a thermonuclear weapon (the bodies of the fallen not yet consecrated to the earth), there occurred a clash between myself and Marshal M.I. Nedelny on those grounds. On July 10, 1961, there was a clash (in your presence) between myself and the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev.

And still I succeeded (the Minister of the Medium Engineering Industry E.P. Slavsky can confirm this) in being one of the initiators of the Moscow Treaty on the banning of nuclear tests in the air, water and above ground, which was the first (and at the time the most self-evident) step on the difficult path to averting the nuclear menace.

In 1975, I was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the only Soviet citizen ever so honored. In 1980 I am in Gorky and you, the president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, are talking with the president of New York Academy of Sciences who had flown especially from the United States to meet with you. And what was your reply to him? Unfortunately, you spoke in the spirit of the disgraceful statement of the 40 academicians of 1973 which, at the time, laid the groundwork for my persecution in the press. Only you spoke with even greater cynicism and disrespect for the common sense of your listener, your colleague in science and mine as well.

Yes, I do live in better conditions than those of my friends condemned to long sentences or who are awaiting trial, among whom are many colleagues of yours and mine. I will mention only a few - the biologist Kovalev, the theoretical physicist Orlov, the mathematicians Velikanova and Lavut, the young scientist and cyberneticist Shcharansky, the physicians Nekipelov and Ternovsky, the mathematician and cyberneticist Bolonkin (all but the latter I know personally). None of them broke any of the country's laws; they neither resorted to nor incited violence. They attempted to realize their goals by use of the written and spoken word as did I and we cannot be separated. I think it would have been only natural had the Academy of Sciences defended these repressed scientists and not permitted them to be slandered by its president. But my case is different in that here the authorities abandoned even that pitiable imitation of lawful process which they displayed while persecuting dissidents in recent years. This is inadmissible both as a precedent and as a relapse. Not a single one of the official institutions charged with executing the law took upon itself the responsibility for my deportation.

You know as well as I do that according to general accepted legal norms only a court can determine a person's guilt, fix the form of punishment and, of course, its duration. In all those aspects my case is an example of flagrant lawlessness and thus my demand. I am not asking for mercy; I am demanding justice.

To be continued.

| Home Page |