Soviet dissidents put Covid ‘freedom’ fighters to shame
Monday, March 22, 2021 at 9:52 Further to yesterday’s post, I have been exchanging emails with one of the couriers featured in the Telegraph article ‘The senior Tories with the secret Soviet past’.
He asked if I could remember the name of the Russian dissident I met in Moscow in 1981.
I couldn’t. I did however remember that he was a mathematician.
“Was it Valery Senderov?”
“Yes!” I replied, and it all came back to me. (Well, some of it.)
The Soviet authorities must have been aware of Senderov’s activities because I remember him telling me he couldn’t get a job commensurate with his qualifications.
Instead he was forced to work as a night watchman. He was philosophical about it, though, saying it gave him plenty of time to read.
Several years later I heard that he had been sentenced to three years in jail but it was worse than that.
Yesterday I found out that in 1982, the year after I met him, he was arrested and sentenced to seven years in jail plus five years’ internal exile.
I discovered this through Wikipedia where his entry begins:
Senderov was born on 17 March 1945 in Moscow. In 1962, he was accepted at the prestigious Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, where he studied mathematics. In 1968, just before completing his doctoral dissertation, Senderov was expelled for the dissemination of "philosophical literature", which was a euphemism for anything that was viewed by the censors as being anti-Soviet. He was given the opportunity to complete his degree in 1970.
In 1982, Senderov was arrested by the KGB for publishing anticommunist articles in Russian-language newspapers printed abroad, in particular the magazine Posev (Sowing) and the newspaper Russkaya Mysl. After his arrest, Senderov openly admitted to the KGB that he was a member of the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists, becoming one of just two openly avowed members of this anticommunist group in the Soviet Union.
At his trial, Senderov stated that he was a member of anticommunist groups and expressed that he would continue to fight against the Soviet regime even after he was freed from incarceration. He was sentenced to 7 years of hard labor and a subsequent probationary exile of an additional 5 years.
Following his ‘early’ release in 1987 Senderov ‘became the leader of the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists in the Soviet Union:
During the period of perestroika, the National Alliance took an active part in supporting opposition parties. Over the course of his life, Senderov authored dozens of political articles in magazines, newspapers, and anthologies, as well as a number of mathematical works dealing with functional analysis. He also wrote three books.
Apart from that Wikipedia doesn’t offer much information about the latter part of his life. It merely reports that he died, aged 69, in 2014.
I can’t imagine he was a fan of Putin but how far his opposition went isn’t revealed.
Personally I hope he was at peace with himself and enjoyed a happy family life because he and his wife were a charming couple who made a difference when it mattered most.
The bravery of dissidents like Senderov was extraordinary and must never be forgotten.
What he and millions of other people experienced in the Soviet Union puts into perspective the freedoms we enjoy in the West.
We should never take them for granted and people are right to protest when our own government oversteps the mark.
However, complaints that individual freedoms have been seriously eroded as a result of Covid lack all perspective to the extent that I actually find them offensive.
I’m sure we would all like pubs and restaurants to reopen as soon as possible but the battle cry “Open the pubs!” does not suggest to me a nation under the jackboot of an evil dictatorship.
We can no longer ask Valery Senderov for his thoughts but there are many other former Soviet dissidents (and opponents of Putin) who would be happy, I’m sure, to explain the difference.
Reader Comments (3)
The fear of course is that the freedoms we take for granted could so easily be taken from us and it is precisely because of what those poor souls experienced in the Soviet Union that we fear the loss of freedom so much.
It is being taken little by little but at what point do we say enough? Personally, I feel the blanket smoking ban forced onto private property owners for the political aim of a world without smoking is already one step too far and has led to a certain template being made to encompass and stamp on any other simple freedoms that Government feels it can take from the public so easily.
I agree we do not live with the fear and control of the old Soviet and we can tell Boris to fcuk off without getting locked up in prison - try that with Putin - but it is the fear of getting there that makes people protest at what might seem trivia.
Freedom is always worth fighting for however small because if the small things go the bigger things will most surely follow.
Btw, are you watching Deuschland 89 or did you see the drama Under the Same Sky? Both are about East Germany before the wall came down and D89 is set in the year it came down. (All4)
One of the series includes one scene where a mother is in danger of being reported and imprisoned by the Stasi for turning her TV ariel to allow her children to watch a cartoon. It is often trivia that makes freedom worthwhile.
No, but I must watch them. One of my favourite films is The Lives of Others which is about the monitoring of citizens by the Stasi in East Berlin.
I think all series of Deuschland - 83, 86 and 89 - are on All 4. Under the Same Sky might be on there too. Definitely worth watching.
Enjoy - and be glad that we never had to live under that awful regime.