Last train before the end of a world. In the small Moscow apartment, which has served as the “Sakharov Museum” since 1996, the displays are empty and boxes are piling up. The place dedicated to the dissident and 1975 Nobel Peace Prize winner is closing its doors. It is owned by the city of Moscow and has ordered the Sakharov Centre, the structure that oversees the museum, to vacate the premises before February 24.
Entirely in her task of saving what can be saved, Natalia Tiourina sees no malice in the choice of this date, the first anniversary of the “special military operation” in Ukraine. According to the center’s deputy director, the city is only “zealously” applying the new “foreign agents” law, which was passed in its new form in December 2022. This prohibits state structures from providing even the slightest help to “foreign agents”. , a label that the Sakharov Center has held since 2014.
Preparations for the move of the archive of academician Andrei Sakharov and the “Sakharov Museum” to Moscow on January 30, 2023. MARIA TURCHENKOVA FOR “DIE WORLD”
In addition to artifacts that trace the life of the physicist (1921-1989), father of the Soviet H-bomb before he became one of the most important dissidents of his time, the museum houses valuable archives. “While clearing away all these boxes, I was struck by the number of letters Sakharov received with support or calls for help,” notes Andrei Bakhmin, head of the archives. There are also exceptional pieces, like this KGB document found by his widow Elena Bonner in the 1990s. It’s about ordering agents to bug his apartment when Sakharov began criticizing Soviet power in 1970. »
Read the analysis: Article reserved for our subscribers The legacy of Andrei Sakharov: from dissidents of the USSR to opponents of Vladimir Putin
In a hurry, the small team scrambled to complete the digitization of the archives, which had begun a few years ago, and took the boxes to a dusty apartment next door where the Sakharovs lived after their return from forced exile in Gorki (Nijni-Novgorod). , in 1986. This does not belong to the city of Moscow, it has preserved traces of the couple’s life, from the furniture in brown tones typical of the Soviet Union to the vinyls, which the physicist liked.
In the apartment of academician Andrei Sakharov, which will house the museum archive. In Moscow, January 30, 2023. MARIA TURCHENKOVA FOR “DIE WORLD”
Fine of 5 million rubles
This is the very last possible fallback. There is neither the time nor the means for this tedious work: since the start of the “special operation”, around two-thirds of the employees have chosen exile; others have been laid off, the center can no longer pay for them and are cut off from its foreign financing by the banking sanctions imposed on Russia.
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