[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 148 (Friday, August 20, 2021)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E908]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     THE PASSING OF SERGEI KOVALEV

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. STEVE COHEN

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, August 20, 2021

  Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, I rise today as the Co-Chairman of the 
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki 
Commission) to remember the great Russian human rights activist Sergei 
Kovalev and to include in the Record an opinion column by Vladimir 
Kara-Murza from Wednesday's Washington Post.
       MOSCOW--``Our opposition was not political; it was moral 
     incompatibility with the regime,'' Sergei Kovalev, a leading 
     figure in the Soviet dissident movement, explained in an 
     interview for a documentary I made in the early 2000s. ``At 
     some point you realize that it is shameful to remain 
     silent.''
       Last week, Kovalev died in his sleep at the age of 91. His 
     funeral on Friday was attended by thousands of Muscovites who 
     filed past his casket at the Sakharov Center, an institution 
     named for his friend and mentor, Andrei Sakharov, and 
     designated by Vladimir Putin's government as a ``foreign 
     agent.'' Several Western countries sent their diplomats to 
     pay respects. No Russian government official attended.
       Perhaps it was better this way. I doubt Kovalev would have 
     appreciated hypocritical gestures of condolence from a regime 
     led by a KGB officer who has brought back many of the 
     authoritarian practices Kovalev spent his life fighting.
       Like many in the Soviet dissident movement, Kovalev joined 
     the human rights struggle from the academic world. A 
     successful biophysicist and head of a laboratory section at 
     Moscow State University, he had a PhD and more than 60 
     research papers to his name. But he could not remain silent 
     in the face of a resurgent totalitarianism of the Brezhnev 
     era that saw both domestic repression and aggressive 
     posturing abroad. For Kovalev, the defining moments were the 
     show trial of writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel and 
     the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, both in the second 
     half of the 1960s.
       His activism brought his scientific career to an end, of 
     course. From then on, Kovalev dedicated his life to 
     documenting, publicizing and confronting abuses committed by 
     his government against his fellow citizens. A founding member 
     of the Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in 
     the USSR--the first human rights group in the country--and 
     the Moscow chapter of Amnesty International, Kovalev served 
     as the editor of the Chronicle of Current Events, the 
     samizdat news bulletin that reported on human rights 
     violations throughout the Soviet Union. During Kovalev's 
     subsequent trial on charges of ``anti-Soviet agitation,'' the 
     KGB tried to prove the slanderous nature of the Chronicle's 
     reporting--but ended up confirming its accuracy. Not that it 
     changed the outcome: Kovalev was sentenced to seven years of 
     imprisonment followed by three years in internal exile. His 
     trial was held behind closed doors with a preselected 
     ``audience.'' Sakharov tried, unsuccessfully, to enter the 
     courtroom and ended up standing outside the door throughout 
     the trial. At the very same time, in Oslo, Sakharov's wife, 
     Elena Bonner, was accepting his Nobel Peace Prize, which he 
     dedicated to ``all prisoners of conscience in the Soviet 
     Union and in other Eastern European countries''--including 
     Kovalev, whom he mentioned by name.
       The collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe saw 
     many former dissidents go into politics to help steer their 
     countries toward democracy. Poland's Lech Walesa and 
     Czechoslovakia's Vaclav Havel were only the best-known 
     examples. In Russia, to its chagrin, this was more the 
     exception than the norm--but Sergei Kovalev was among those 
     exceptions. Four times he was elected to the Russian 
     parliament. He was also Russia's first human rights 
     ombudsman, co-wrote the human rights clauses in the 
     constitution and served as Russia's representative on the 
     U.N. Human Rights Commission and the Parliamentary Assembly 
     of the Council of Europe.
       Throughout it all, he stayed true to the principles that 
     had defined his dissident period. He sought to make politics 
     moral and never compromised his conscience. With the start of 
     Russia's military campaign in Chechnya, he tried to use his 
     position to prevent bloodshed--including by personally 
     leading negotiations that saved the lives of more than 1,500 
     hostages during a terrorist siege in the summer of 1995. But 
     while President Boris Yeltsin had genuine respect for 
     Kovalev, he chose advice from elsewhere. When it became clear 
     that the war would not stop, Kovalev resigned his official 
     positions and sent Yeltsin a sharply worded open letter. The 
     president responded personally, thanking Kovalev for his 
     service and expressing sympathy for his motivation. This was 
     a different Russia.
       Kovalev spent the last part of his life as he did the 
     first: in opposition to a regime increasingly intolerant of 
     domestic dissent and increasingly aggressive toward others. 
     While Russia still had a real parliament, Kovalev remained a 
     member--voting against Putin's confirmation as prime minister 
     in 1999 and warning of a coming ``authoritarian police state 
     led by . . . the well-preserved Soviet security services'' in 
     early 2000. That was a time when many in Russia and in the 
     West were still harboring illusions about Putin. When legal 
     opposition politics became all but impossible, Kovalev 
     returned to being what he knew best, a dissident. His last 
     public appearance, earlier this year, was at a virtual event 
     commemorating Sakharov's centennial.
       Kovalev described himself as an idealist--an indispensable 
     quality in a seemingly hopeless struggle against a ruthless 
     authoritarian system. The main lesson from Kovalev and his 
     fellow dissidents was that one can choose not to remain 
     silent even in the most difficult circumstances. And that, in 
     the end, the struggle might not be as hopeless as it seems.'

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