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International Herald Tribune A vital record of human rights history is in danger          Benjamin Nathans IHT       Friday, August 29, 2003 The Sakharov Archives PHILADELPHIA When did the 21st century begin? If you're thinking Jan. 1, 2000, or Sept. 11, 2001, think again. The real 21st century began in 1989 with the swell of "people power" in places as diverse as Moscow, Pretoria and Prague. This was to be the dawn of global democracy and human rights - the good 21st century. In the midst of the euphoria of that year, the world lost one of its most courageous advocates of democracy and human rights, the Soviet physicist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov. Now it is in danger of losing him - and his legacy - again. The Andrei Sakharov Archives and Human Rights Center, established at Brandeis University in 1993, will soon cease to exist unless Congress and university officials act to save it. With start-up funds from the MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, as well as generous support from Ronald Lauder and other private individuals, the archives have made priceless historical materials available to scholars and documentary filmmakers in the United States and abroad. To shut down this unique and growing collection for the sake of temporary belt-tightening would be both tragic and short-sighted. It would send a terrible signal to today's Russia, where Sakharov's legacy is mixed at best. The Sakharov Archives house Sakharov's correspondence, diaries and manuscripts pertaining to his scientific and political activities, as well as the papers of Elena Bonner, his widow and fellow dissident. A treasure trove of KGB and other documents regarding official Soviet treatment of Sakharov and Bonner are there as well. Beyond these, the archives have become a leading repository of materials regarding the history of dissent in the Soviet Union. They include documents on figures such as Andrei Amalrik, whose 1969 article "Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?" uncannily anticipated the disintegration of the Soviet union, and Sergei Kovalev, now one of Russia's most outspoken critics of human rights abuses in Chechnya and elsewhere. Recent physical attacks by right-wing forces on the Sakharov Museum in Moscow and the Memorial Society in St. Petersburg - leading custodians of Russian civil society's historical patrimony - demonstrate both the significance and the vulnerability of historical memory in Russia today. The historical drama of Andrei Sakharov's life alone would justify the preservation of his archives. This was the man who helped the Soviet Union end America's monopoly on nuclear weapons, thereby establishing the nuclear balance of power as the basic geopolitical fact of the second half of the 20th century. And this was the man who then helped undermine the monopoly of Marxist ideology in his own country, paving the way for the Communist Party's sudden implosion under its last ruling leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. The global history of the 20th century simply cannot be written without taking into account Sakharov's life and work. The materials preserved in the Sakharov Archives illuminate not just the past but the present. Because they record in rich detail the story of human rights advocates in a nondemocratic society, they speak directly to the prospects of Sakharov's living counterparts today in China, Iran and many other countries. The fate of Soviet dissidents allows us to study the real effects of international pressure on behalf of human rights in individual countries. More broadly, Sakharov's ideas about linking domestic accountability and international behavior, the role of science and technology in the process of democratization, and the challenge of living with nuclear weapons, are as alive and relevant now as they were during his lifetime. Congress recognized this fact by authorizing support for the Sakharov Archives and Human Rights Center in Section 7 of the Russian Democracy Act of 2002, whose stated purpose was "to sustain the development of an independent civil society in the Russian Federation based on religious and ethnic tolerance, internationally recognized human rights and an internationally recognized rule of law." It is now time for Congress to translate these fine words into dollars, and for Brandeis University to keep the archives solvent until U.S. funding kicks in. Sakharov and other Soviet dissidents contributed mightily to the globalization of human rights. It is not too late to hope that the 21st century, whose birth they facilitated, will come to embrace their agenda and thereby distinguish itself from its bloody predecessor. Preserving their legacy in the form of the Sakharov Archives and Human Rights Center is a vital step in this direction. The writer is an associate professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania.