Ladies and Gentlemen,
On behalf of the Memorial organisation, I would like to thank
the European Parliament for its high accolade – the Sakharov
Prize.
We at Memorial see this award as relating not only to our
organisation. We take the view that, through us, the prize
is being bestowed on the whole human rights community in Russia,
and indeed more widely – on the entire section of Russian
civil society sympathetic towards defenders of human rights.
For forty years now – first in the Soviet Union and then in
Russia – human rights defenders have been standing up for
‘European’, that is to say, universal values. This struggle
has never been easy; in recent years it has become tragic,
as it increasingly claims the lives of the best, the most
active and the most fearless.
I am sure that, in awarding the Sakharov Prize to the Memorial
organisation, the European Parliament had them in mind, first
and foremost – our dead friends, comrades-in-arms, kindred
spirits. This prize belongs by right to them. And the first
name I should cite is that of Natalya Estemirova, human rights
defender and fellow member of Memorial, murdered this summer
in Chechnya.
I cannot go on without mentioning other names too: the lawyer
Stanislav Markelov and journalists Anna Politkovskaya and
Anastasia Baburova, murdered in Moscow, ethnologist Nikolai
Girenko shot in St Petersburg, Farid Babayev, murdered in
Dagestan, and many others – sadly, it is a list that could
go on for a long time. I ask you to honour the memory of these
people by standing.
/a minute’s silence/
Thank you.
These people died so that Russia should become a genuinely
European country, where public and political life is based
on the priority of the life and freedom of each single individual.
That means they also died for Europe, since a Europe without
Russia is incomplete.
I hope that all those present understand that, in speaking
of ‘European values’ and ‘European political culture’, I certainly
do not ascribe to such terms any geographical or even civilisational
content or any ‘Eurocentrism’. I am convinced that political
culture based on freedom and the rights of the individual
embodies a universal system of values that is equally fitting
for Europe and for Africa, for Russia and for China.
Everything at today’s event is symbolic and interconnected:
the award itself, the day on which it is presented, those
making the award and those receiving it.
Andrei Sakharov, who died exactly twenty years ago, was not
just a distinguished champion of human rights in the Soviet
Union. He was also a distinguished thinker, advancing and
defending two fundamentally important propositions. The first
proposition was that only by overcoming political disunity
and enmity does humanity get the chance to survive and develop
and the opportunity to cope with the global challenges of
the age and secure world peace and progress on our planet.
The second proposition was that the only reliable support
for our efforts to overcome the political disunity of the
modern world is human rights, and, first and foremost, intellectual
freedom.
The European Community, whose Parliament instituted this
prize while Sakharov was still alive, is, perhaps, today the
model closest to that future united humanity dreamt of by
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov.
In recent times Russia and Europe have been increasingly
set in opposition to one other. At home in Russia it has become
fashionable to talk about ‘Russia’s special path’, about ‘Russia’s
special spirituality’ and about ‘special national traditions
and national values’. And in the Euro-Atlantic world one often
hears opinions of Russia as an ‘odd man out’ among countries,
one whose deformed political development is determined by
its history, national psychology and the specific characteristics
of its civilisation, and similar speculative constructs. What
is there to say in this regard? Of course, Russia, indeed
like any other country, has its own path towards ordering
life on the basis of universal human foundations.
No nation in the world organises its life according to recipes
and designs entirely borrowed from outside. But Russia’s connection
with Europe is far from being determined only by who borrows
from whom. The question can be put another way: has Russia
brought something to the pan-European and universal civilisation
taking shape before our eyes? And here I would like to recall
Russia’s unique contribution to the spiritual, social and
political progress of Europe and humanity: the key role played
by the Russian, or to be more accurate, the Soviet human rights
movement in forming modern political culture. Andrei Sakharov
rethought the role of human rights and intellectual freedom
in the modern world as far back as 1968. His ideas were transferred
to the practical level by the human rights organisations created
by Soviet dissidents – first and foremost, the Moscow Helsinki
Group, represented here today by Lyudmila Alexeyeva.
In the mid-1970s these organisations were the first to declare
publicly that fine-sounding declarations about international
defence of human rights could not just remain declarations.
Soviet dissidents succeeded in mobilising world public opinion
and, as a result, the Western political elite was forced to
move away from its traditional pragmatism and instead to formulate
a new vision of the goals and tasks of international politics.
Naturally, this development also gave rise to a multitude
of new problems that are still not fully resolved – an example
being the doctrine of humanitarian intervention and the need
to safeguard this doctrine in legal and institutional terms.
Nevertheless, over the last thirty years a considerable amount
has been achieved, although much more still lies ahead to
be done. I simply wanted to recall that Russian human rights
defenders of the 1970s were at the origins of this process
and, if only for that reason, Russia cannot be struck from
the list of European countries. To do this is not in the power
of either the present-day Russian political elite or those
European politicians who consider Russia an ‘odd man out among
countries’.
Why, specifically in Russia in the last third of the 20th
century, as nowhere else, has the human rights movement become
synonymous with citizenship and has Russian human rights thinking
been able to develop as far as Sakharov’s global generalisations
and take on the quality of a new political philosophy? For
me, the answer to this question is evident: it is linked to
the unique nature of Russia’s tragic history in the 20th century,
to the need to comprehend and overcome the bloody and dirty
past. If the Second World War was the impetus for the post-war
political modernisation of Western Europe, having become the
logical conclusion of the relatively short period of domination
by the Nazi regime in Germany, then for the USSR and Russia
the need for reconstruction was dictated by the experience
of seventy years of domination by the Communist regime, the
culmination of which was Stalin’s terrorist dictatorship.
In the second half of the 1960s two key components of resurgent
Russian citizenship were legal consciousness and historical
memory.
The human rights movement that arose in the USSR during those
years positioned itself, from the outset, first and foremost
as a movement for overcoming Stalinism in the public, political
and cultural life of the country. In one of this movement’s
first public texts – a leaflet distributed by the organisers
of the historic meeting on 5 December 1965 in defence of the
law – it was said in this regard, with the utmost simplicity
and brevity: ‘In the past the unlawful acts of the authorities
cost the life and freedom of millions of Soviet citizens.
The bloody past calls us to vigilance in the present’.
In essence, this special connection between two components
of civil consciousness – legal thinking and historical memory
– is inherited in its entirety by Russia’s modern human rights
community, and perhaps also by Russian civil society as a
whole.
It seems to me that the paramount importance that Sakharov
attached to Memorial in the last years and months of his life
is linked to the fact that he understood clearly this specific
aspect. In the activity of Memorial, these two basic components
of Russian citizenship have merged into one whole.
It is my view that now also, on the twentieth anniversary
of Sakharov’s death, the Members of the European Parliament,
in choosing the recipient of the Prize, also felt and understood
this specific aspect. We all remember the Resolution ‘On European
conscience and totalitarianism’ adopted by the European Parliament
in April. This Resolution, like the OSCE Resolution that followed
in July ‘On divided Europe reunited’, demonstrates that a
united Europe understands the sense and thrust of our work.
And I take the opportunity, on behalf of Memorial, to thank
you for this understanding.
The absurdity of the present-day political situation in Russia
is illustrated clearly by the fact that our own Parliament
– the Parliament of the country that suffered most and longest
of all from Stalinism and Communist dictatorship –instead
of warmly supporting these Resolutions, immediately declared
them ‘anti-Russian’!
All of this shows that, even today, Stalinism is not, for
Russia, simply a historical episode of the 20th century. We
let slip a few years of confused and incomplete political
freedom. The main feature of Communist totalitarianism – the
attitude to people as an expendable resource – was not eliminated.
The aims of State policy are determined, as before, regardless
of the opinion and interests of the country’s citizens.
The establishment of a regime of ‘imitation democracy’ in
today’s Russia is connected precisely with this. All of the
institutions of modern democracy are resolutely imitated:
a constitutional order, a multi-party system, parliamentary
elections, separation of powers, an independent judicial system,
independent television broadcasting, and so on. But such imitation,
going by the name of socialist democracy, also existed under
Stalin.
It is just that today mass terror is not needed for imitation:
there are enough stereotypes of public consciousness and behaviour
preserved from the Stalinist era.
On the other hand, terror is also used when necessary. Over
the last ten years more than three thousand people in the
Chechen Republic have ‘disappeared’ – that is to say, been
abducted, tortured, summarily executed and buried no-one knows
where. At first these crimes were perpetrated by representatives
of the federal authorities, but they then handed this ‘work’
over to local security structures.
How many Russian security officials are punished for these
crimes? A mere handful. Who ensured they were called to account
and judged? First and foremost, the human rights defender
Natalya Estemirova, the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the
lawyer Stanislav Markelov. Where are they all? Murdered.
We see that the violence routinely taking place in Chechnya
is extending beyond its borders and threatening to spread
to the whole country.
Yet we see that, even in such circumstances, people are found
who are prepared to oppose a return to the past. And this
is a basis for hope. Ultimately, we all understand that nobody
can return Russia to the path of freedom and democracy but
Russia itself, its people, its constitutional institutions,
its civil society.
What is more, the situation in our country is not as straightforward
as it might appear to the superficial observer. We have many
allies in society – both in our struggle for human rights
and in our struggle with Stalinism. Moreover, Russian authority
is also not as homogeneous as it might seem at first sight.
What can we expect here from European politicians and from
European public opinion? Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov formulated
these expectations more than twenty years ago: ‘Today my country
needs support and pressure’.
A united Europe has opportunities for such a firm and, at
the same time, friendly policy based on support and pressure
but is far from making full use of them. I would like to mention
just two examples, familiar to Memorial in its day-to-day
activity.
The first is the work of the European Court of Human Rights
with respect to complaints by Russian citizens. This institution
could become an effective support for the Russian judicial
system. It is not just the fact that the very possibility
that victims may appeal to Strasbourg must compel Russian
courts to work in a more qualitative and independent way.
The main thing is that enforcement of the judgments of the
European Court should remove the very causes leading to violation
of human rights.
In recent years more than a hundred judgments have been delivered
in Strasbourg in ‘Chechen’ cases, concerning serious crimes
by representatives of the State against citizens. Yet what
happens? Nothing. Russia duly pays the victims the compensation
ordered by the European Court, as some sort of ‘impunity tax’,
refusing to investigate the crimes and punish those guilty.
Moreover, not only are all the generals mentioned by name
in the Strasbourg judgments not brought before the courts
but they are put forward for promotion.
So what if the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe
is called upon to monitor enforcement of the Court’s judgments?
In Strasbourg they gesture helplessly – ‘What can we do?’
– and remain silent.
The second, more general, example concerns relations between
Russia and the European Union in the area of human rights.
Today they virtually boil down to the fact that the European
Union holds consultations with Russia on this subject once
every six months. How is this opportunity used? Officials,
not of the highest rank, talk for a few hours behind closed
doors – Europe asks about Chechnya, Russia answers with a
question about Estonia or Latvia, and they go their separate
ways for another six months. Both Russian and international
non-governmental organisations organise fringe events and
hearings and present reports. In meetings with human rights
defenders, the representatives of Brussels sigh sadly ‘What
can we do?’ – and remain silent.
So what should Europe do in relation to Russia? From our
point of view, the answer is simple: it should act towards
Russia just as it does towards any other European country
that has taken on certain obligations and has a responsibility
to meet them. Alas, today, Europe increasingly rarely formulates
its recommendations to Russia in the area of democracy and
human rights, sometimes even preferring not to mention them
at all. It is not important why this is the case – whether
it is a sense of the futility of efforts or pragmatic considerations
linked to oil and gas.
It is Europe’s duty not to remain silent but, again and again,
to repeat and remind, and insist respectfully and firmly that
Russia meet its obligations. Of course, not only are there
no guarantees, but there are also no particular hopes that
these calls will achieve their objectives. However, failure
to remind will certainly be understood by the Russian authorities
as indulgence. Taking sensitive issues off the agenda unequivocally
harms Russia. But it also harms Europe just as much, since
it places in doubt the commitment of the European institutions
to European values.
The prize you are awarding today is called ‘For Freedom of
Thought’.
One would think, how can thought not be free, who can limit
its freedom and how? There is a means – it is the fear that
becomes part of a person’s personality and makes that person
think and even feel as required. People are not only afraid,
they find an outlet in ‘loving Big Brother’, as described
by George Orwell in the novel ‘1984’. So it was when Russia
had Stalin, and so it was when Germany had Hitler. This is
now being repeated in Chechnya, under Ramzan Kadyrov. Such
fear can spread throughout Russia.
Yet what can stand up to fear? However paradoxical it may
be, purely and solely freedom of thought. This quality, possessed
by Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov to an unusual degree, made
him impervious to fear. And watching him also freed others
from fear.
Freedom of thought is the basis of all other freedoms.
That is why it is so appropriate for the Sakharov Prize to
be called ‘For Freedom of Thought’. We are proud to receive
it today.
See also:
The original
Video recording of Sergey
Kovalev’s statement
Human
Rights
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