Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 9 – The death at
91 of Lyudmila Alekseyeva, the irreplaceable grandmother of the human rights
movement in Russia, leaves a gaping hole and ache in the lives of all who knew
her. She was a towering figure who more than anyone else in the last 50 years
in Russia defined the age and the hopes of that age.
The author of these lines had the privilege
of knowing her well when she was in forced exile in the United States and wrote
her fundamental work on Soviet dissent as well as compiled her index of the Samizdat
Archive at Radio Liberty. Others knew her far longer and better than I, but her
passing prompts a reflection that I feel compelled to share.
For all the leader cults in Russia,
when one looks back at the history of that country, one is struck by the
following: many tsars, general secretaries and even presidents quickly pale
into insignificance compared to those who opposed them. Today we remember Herzen not Nicholas I and
those who protested the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia more than those who
ordered it.
Moreover, we recall Academician
Sakharov more than the Soviet leader who shouted him down at the end of his life;
and we remember those who defended “persons of Caucasian nationality” rather
than the first Russian president who saw nothing wrong with promoting that racist
concept.
Consequently, I am confident that
when historians look back at our time, at one in which a brutal dictator has
trampled on the rights of Russians that Lyudmila Alekseyeva did so much to
defend not just by protesting but by example and by a willingness to speak with
all, they may ask the simple but brutal question:
“Wasn’t Vladimir Putin a minor
official in the age of Lyudmila Alekseyeva?”
A century from now, she will be remembered for all the good she has
done; Putin has little or no chance of that, however powerful he may be today.
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