Scientists for Sakharov, Orlov and Shcharansky
Professional Networks, Human Rights and Dissent in the Late Cold War
In: East Central EuropeSearch for other papers by Charlotte Alston in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
This article explores the challenge presented to governments and the scientific establishment by physicists who campaigned internationally on behalf of their Soviet scientific colleagues in the early 1980s. Cold War science operated in a highly charged environment: while the work of scientists on both sides of the Cold War divide was sponsored and closely guarded by government and military agencies, scientists were also at the forefront of activist challenges to human rights infringements suffered by their colleagues. The article explores the motivations for and limitations of a moratorium on participation in scientific exchange with the Soviet Union launched by the California-based group “Scientists for Sakharov, Orlov and Shcharansky” (sos). It considers the ways that both professional identity and Cold War dynamics shaped this solidarity campaign. sos sought to build their activism on a transnational basis and worked closely with scientific colleagues in Europe to do so. They pitched a campaign that appealed beyond the university and national scientific laboratories to a broad range of people who identified as scientists. Unlike many contemporary scientific organizations, the sos leadership embraced the political nature of such activism. As a whole, this article shows how scientists navigated different political and scientific contexts when organizing support for their Soviet colleagues.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Scientists for Sakharov, Orlov and Shcharansky records, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.
-
The Committee of Concerned Scientists records 1970–2006, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
-
Human Rights Watch records: Record Group 1: Helsinki Watch 1952–2003, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
-
Siegelman, Philip. 2017. To the author, July 23, 2017.
-
Caroli, Christiane. 2022. To the author, July 9, 2022.
-
“7,900 Scientists, Engineers Pledge Boycott of Russia Over Repression.” 1980. International Herald Tribune, October 18, 1980.
-
Davis, Harold L. 1984. “Restoring US-Soviet Communications in Science.” Physics Today (March 1984): 168.
-
Handler, Philip. 1973. “U.S. Scientists’ Message to Russians.” New York Times, September 11, 1973, 7.
-
Ovchinnikov, Yu., Yu. Velkhov, G. Skriabin, L. Brekhovskikh, and N. Emanuel. 1979. “Sviazi uchenykh sluzhat progressu.” Pravda 113, April 23, 1979, 4.
-
Pripstein, Morris, and Anthony Ralston. 1982. “Should Scientists Shut Out Soviets?” Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1982, 7.
-
Sakharov, Andrei. 1982. “A Letter to Soviet Scientists.” Nature 297, no. 3: 355.
-
“Scientists’ Group Breaks Its Soviet Ties in Protest.” 1980. New York Times, October 17, 1980, 3.
-
“Scientists Protest Plan to Honor Soviet Physicist.” 1986. San Francisco Chronicle, June 12, 1986.
-
“Scientists Suspend Ties with Soviets.” 1980. Washington Post, October 17, 1980.
-
Turchin, Valentin. 1978. “Why You Should Boycott the Russians.” Nature 273, no. 5660 (May 25, 1978): 256–257.
-
“A Voice That Is Heard.” 1980. Washington Post, October 19, 1980.
-
“We’d Rather Not Talk to You.” 1980. The Economist, October 25, 1980, 46.
-
“What Western Mathematicians Can Do.” 1978. Comité des Mathématiciens Bulletin 11.
-
Chalidze, Valery. 1984. The Soviet Human Rights Movement: A Memoir. New York: Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights.
-
Orlov, Yuri. 1991. Dangerous Thoughts: Memoirs of a Russian Life. New York: William Morrow and Co.
-
Sakharov, Andrei. 1990. Memoirs. New York: Random House.
-
Schwartz, Laurent. 2001. A Mathematician Grappling with His Century. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag.
-
Barany, Michael. 2020. “‘All of These Political Questions’: Anticommunism, Racism, and the Origin of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.” Journal of Humanistic Mathematics 10, no. 2: 527–538.
-
Eckel, Jan. 2019. The Ambivalence of Good: Human Rights in International Politics since the 1940s. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Eckel, Jan, and Samuel Moyn, eds. 2015. The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
-
Evangelista, Matthew. 1999. Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
-
Forman, Paul. 1987. “Behind Quantum Electronics: National Security as Basis for Physical Research in the United States 1940–1960.” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 18: 149–229.
-
Gilbert, Martin. 1986. Shcharansky: Hero of our Time. New York: Viking.
-
Josephson, Paul R. 1991. Physics and Politics in Revolutionary Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
-
Josephson, Paul R. 1999. Red Atom. Russia’s Nuclear Power Program from Stalin to Today. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
-
Kraft, Alison, and Carola Sachse. 2020. Science, (Anti-)Communism and Diplomacy: The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs in the Early Cold War. Leiden: Brill.
-
Kuznick, Peter J. 1987. Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists as Political Activists in 1930s America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
-
Lourie, Richard. 2002. Sakharov: A Biography. Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press.
-
Moyn, Samuel. 2010. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
-
Nathans, Benjamin. 2011. “Soviet Rights-Talk in the Post-Stalin Era.” In Human Rights in the Twentieth Century, edited by Stefan-Ludwig Hoffman, 166–190. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Nathans, Benjamin. 2015a. “Talking Fish: On Soviet Dissident Memoirs.” Journal of Modern History 87, no. 3: 580–581.
-
Nathans, Benjamin. 2015b. “The Disenchantment of Socialism: Soviet Dissidents, Human Rights, and the New Global Morality.” In The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s, edited by Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn, 33–48. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
-
Rhéaume, Charles. 2008. “Western Scientists’ Reactions to Andrei Sakharov’s Human Rights Struggle in the Soviet Union 1968–1989.” Human Rights Quarterly 30, no. 1: 1–20.
-
Snyder, Sarah. 2011. Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Vezzosi, Elisabetta. 2018. “The Committee of Concerned Scientists and the Helsinki Final Act: ‘Refusenik Scientists, Détente and Human Rights.’” In The csce and the End of the Cold War: Diplomacy, Societies and Human Rights, 1972–1990, edited by Nicholas Badalassi and Sarah B Snyder, 119–150. New York: Berghahn Books.
-
Walker, Barbara. 2008. “Moscow Human Rights Defenders Look West: Attitudes Toward U.S. Journalists in the 1960s and 1970s.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 9, no. 4: 913–914.
-
Wang, Jessica. 1999. American Science in an Age of Anxiety: Scientists, Anti-Communism and the Cold War. Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press.
-
Wolfe, Audra. 2018. Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 69 | 69 | 0 |
| Full Text Views | 42 | 43 | 11 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 53 | 53 | 10 |
Scientists for Sakharov, Orlov and Shcharansky
Professional Networks, Human Rights and Dissent in the Late Cold War
In: East Central EuropeSearch for other papers by Charlotte Alston in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This article explores the challenge presented to governments and the scientific establishment by physicists who campaigned internationally on behalf of their Soviet scientific colleagues in the early 1980s. Cold War science operated in a highly charged environment: while the work of scientists on both sides of the Cold War divide was sponsored and closely guarded by government and military agencies, scientists were also at the forefront of activist challenges to human rights infringements suffered by their colleagues. The article explores the motivations for and limitations of a moratorium on participation in scientific exchange with the Soviet Union launched by the California-based group “Scientists for Sakharov, Orlov and Shcharansky” (sos). It considers the ways that both professional identity and Cold War dynamics shaped this solidarity campaign. sos sought to build their activism on a transnational basis and worked closely with scientific colleagues in Europe to do so. They pitched a campaign that appealed beyond the university and national scientific laboratories to a broad range of people who identified as scientists. Unlike many contemporary scientific organizations, the sos leadership embraced the political nature of such activism. As a whole, this article shows how scientists navigated different political and scientific contexts when organizing support for their Soviet colleagues.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 69 | 69 | 0 |
| Full Text Views | 42 | 43 | 11 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 53 | 53 | 10 |