The Sakharov Society Records: 1990 to Present
From The Long Union, an encyclopedia of a world that didn't happen
The Sakharov Society Records comprise an institutional archive and research programme dedicated to the preservation and study of Soviet dissident thought, human rights advocacy, and the intellectual history of resistance to Soviet state authority. The archive began collecting materials in 1990, as the Soviet system entered terminal crisis, and has operated continuously through the founding of the Union of Soviet Sovereign States and into the present day.
The Sakharov Society was founded in Moscow in 1990 by a group of scholars, former dissidents, and human rights activists centred around Andrei Sakharov, the nuclear physicist whose activism against Soviet nuclear weapons and for democratic reform had made him a symbol of internal opposition to the state. In the final months before the August Emergency, the Society began an urgent programme of collecting interviews, personal papers, samizdat publications, and institutional records from the dissident networks that had operated since the 1960s. Many of the principal subjects—activists, refuseniks, underground publishers—were still living and accessible during this narrow window. The Society's first director was a former biologist and longtime dissident whose name remains obscure in the archival record; leadership passed through several hands during the turbulent early 1990s.
The archive's holdings grew rapidly after 1991. Activists who had worked clandestinely under Soviet rule now deposited their collections—manuscripts, journals, photographs, tape recordings of samizdat radio broadcasts—with the understanding that they would be preserved for historical study. The Archives of the Russian Presidential Library began collaborating with the Sakharov Society to ensure that materials related to the transition period and the Novo-Ogaryovo Negotiations: Archival Record would not be lost. The Society also received deposits from regional dissident networks across the Union's remaining republics, including materials from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan that documented minority activism and environmental opposition during the late Soviet period.
The archive is organized by period, by region of origin, and by category of material. Holdings include personal correspondence; manuscripts of underground publications (samizdat); audio recordings of clandestine broadcasts and public gatherings; photographs and film stock; printed books and journals published illegally; and institutional records from state organs involved in surveillance and suppression of dissidents. A substantial portion documents the activities of the International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations in monitoring human rights violations after 1990, as Soviet repression continued into the transition period.
The Society also operates an active oral history programme. Interviewers, many of them trained historians, have conducted more than two hundred recorded interviews with former dissidents, underground publishers, political prisoners, and state security officials who have chosen to cooperate. The project resembles the methodology of the Oral History Project: Voices from 1992, though it operates on a longer chronological span and focuses on resistance to state authority rather than the mechanics of the Union's founding. Some interviews conducted in the 1990s and early 2000s have been transcribed and catalogued; others remain in original audio format, creating a substantial backlog of material awaiting processing.
References
- 1.The Novo-Ogaryovo Negotiations: Archival Record]], Archives of the Russian Presidential Library, Moscow, 1995, pp. 47–102
- 2.Energy and Fragmentation: The Confederal Logic of Russian Federalism]], Dmitri Sergeyev, Ural Federal University Press, 2008, ch. 3
- 3.Sakharov Society Records: Finding Guide, Russian Presidential Library Publishing Department, Moscow, 2012, p. 1
- 4.The Long Goodbye: Soviet successor states and the Union]], Institutional Archives Division, Vienna Monitoring Office, 1997, pp. 156–189
- 5.Oral history interview with former archive director, conducted 2003, held in Sakharov Society tape collection, reference PS-OH-284