Statement by the Yabloko Federal Bureau of 14.10.2025, published on 19.10.2025

Photo: Andrei Sakharov speaks at the 1st Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR, 1989 / Photo by Sergei Guneyev, RIA Novosti

Fifty years ago, on 9 October 1975, Academician Andrei Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his many years of defending human rights as the only solid foundation for genuine and lasting international cooperation.

On 11 December 1975, his Nobel speech in Oslo “Peace, Progress, Human Rights” was read out by his wife Elena Bonner, as Sakharov was forbidden to leave the country.

“Peace, progress, human rights – these three goals are insolubly linked to one another: it is impossible to achieve one of these goals if the other two are ignored,” this is how Andrei Sakharov’s speech begins.

It is precisely these enduring goals and values that the Yabloko party has defended in Russian politics throughout all the years of its existence. It is precisely these that form the basis of our activities. And today Yabloko is the only party in Russia that continues the work begun by Andrei Sakharov.

We consistently call for peace, including — in the last three and a half years — insisting on a ceasefire in Ukraine.

We defend human rights enshrined in the Russian Constitution and demand their observance for all Russian citizens.

We uphold the right of Russian citizens to freedom of expression of their opinions and convictions, defend political prisoners persecuted by the authorities for exercising this and other constitutional rights, and insist on the repeal of repressive laws that violate these rights.

Like Andrei Sakharov, we are convinced that international trust, mutual understanding, disarmament and international security are inconceivable without openness of society, freedom of information, freedom of conviction, glasnost, freedom of travel and freedom of choice of country of residence.

That freedom of conviction, along with other civil liberties, is the foundation of scientific and technological progress and a guarantee against the use of its achievements to the detriment of humanity, thereby the foundation of economic and social progress, and also a political guarantee of the possibility of effective protection of social rights.

That an effective system of education and creative continuity of generations is possible only in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom. Conversely, intellectual unfreedom, the power of dreary bureaucracy and conformism, destroying first the humanities, literature and art, inevitably lead then to general intellectual decline, bureaucratisation and formalisation of the entire education system, the decline of scientific research, disappearance of an atmosphere of creative search, leadingh to stagnation and disintegration.

Yabloko believes that the intellectual legacy of Andrei Sakharov as a public and political figure, humanist and human rights defender remains highly relevant today, half a century later.

Nikolai Rybakov,

Yabloko Chairman