Monday, July 7, 2003
Cathy Young writes about the Sakharov Archives in today's Boston Globe.
[...]The Sakharov Archives were founded in 1993, after Bonner donated her late husband's papers to the university. The unique collection, which has been used by writers and researchers from all over the world, houses the original manuscripts of Sakharov's writings, his diaries and his correspondence, but it is not limited to materials related to Sakharov. It contains a wealth of other documents from the history of the human rights movement in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe: copies of KGB files on dissidents, photographic records of prison camps, and underground publications, including a microfilm collection of the bulletins of the Solidarity labor movement in Poland.[...]
Do people really remember that era, though? Is it still relevant?
[...]In 2003, when international terrorism rather than communism poses the biggest threat to Western democracies and when our former Cold War opponents are now allies in the war on terrorism, all these materials may seem like relics of a hopelessly distant past, fascinating but quaint, of interest only to scholars.
Gribanov and Tatiana Yankelevich, Sakharov's stepdaughter and the assistant director of the archives, feel that this is how the archives are widely regarded - as an island that history has passed by.[...]
With the memory of those who've hijacked the label of "fighters for social justice" marching in the streets to defend fascists, do people still remember the privations these truly great fighters went through for the principle of democracy?
