The Speech of Ludmilla Alexeeva

I deeply appreciate this award, which I accept on behalf of all my colleagues

in Russia and all those people without whom the Moscow Helsinki Group

and the International Helsinki Federation would be powerless.

What has been said already tonight is true: There is an unbroken chain that binds together all of us who fight the misuse of political power

to repress human rights and freedom and to stifle the human spirit.

It is unbroken because that precious spirit is unbroken.

But it is also unbroken because the threat has continued to exist,
though the Soviet regime has fallen and the ideology has shifted in the wind of time. But to stand for human rights and freedom in Russia today is becoming very difficult.

Dissidents in the Soviet Union developed an ironic set of rules for themselves:

Don’t think.
If you think, don’t speak.
If you speak, don’t write.
If you write, don’t sign.
If you think, speak, write and sign don’t be surprised!

You could say for us this wasn’t a list of what was forbidden – it was a set of instructions.

We thought, we spoke, we wrote, we posted signs.

And you know many of us were arrested, tortured, exiled, even murdered.

But we carried on because we had no choice.  And the choice is no different today.

It is hard for some people to believe that the “new” Russia – with its free market economy, its new constitution, and its openness to visitors from abroad, is still a country where the same set of rules apply.

But the rules I just read are true today too, if you are protesting the war in Chechnya, or exposing unfair elections, or speaking out against xenophobia.

In fact, if you visited Russia today and spoke with the people I speak to every day, you’d have to ask yourself:
Am I in Russia? 

Or am I, as the Beatles once said, “back in the USSR?”

There may no longer be shortages of groceries and long lines at every street corner, but Russia today is still a place where human rights and freedom are in short supply.

True, I can travel here to be with you tonight, and I can speak these truths. I could not have done this in the Soviet Union.

But my right – my human right – to do this is increasingly at risk.
People who question the policies of our government are increasingly targeted.
 
People who work for human rights are increasingly under attack.
 
And even people who support this work are potentially in danger of being singled out by the government.  

So, are we in Russia?  Are we back in the USSR?  
The distinction isn’t meaningless, but the threat is still there, and our work remains.

Perhaps the more important question is this:  
What more can we do – whether in Russia or here in the West  
– to pressure our governments to preserve political freedom, to protect human rights, to promote justice?  

That is the work of the Moscow Helsinki Group – and I am deeply honored that you have chosen to recognize it tonight.  

There is an old Russian dissident toast: We drink to the success of our hopeless cause. This, to me, is nonsense.  Our cause is never hopeless.  Our work is never finished. And our spirit will never be broken.  So let us drink to that and resolve to make it true.

Thank you again, for this award.