11

“For Our Soviet Colleagues”: Scientific Internationalism, Human Rights, and the Cold War

PAUL RUBINSON

In late November 1980, during yet another day of “backbreaking forced labor behind a lathe,” Yuri Orlov closed his eyes and rested his head on his arms. Although it was a designated break period, Officer Salakhov told Orlov that rest was forbidden. For his transgression, Orlov was placed in the labor camp’s prison for a month. By June 1981, Orlov had been in the labor camp for three years, much of that time spent in the camp’s prison and “punishment cell.” Inside the prison, boots and warm clothes were prohibited. Not surprisingly Orlov fell ill, suffering at various times from low blood pressure, rheumatic pains, cystitis, insomnia, and vitamin deficiency. Desperate for nourishment, he took to eating the grasses that grew on the grounds of the labor camp.¹

Hunger and abuse wrecked Orlov’s body; another form of torture battered his mind. Before his arrest for establishing a human rights group in Moscow, Orlov had been a physicist. And while the Soviet state tried to impose an identity of prisoner upon him, Orlov defied this fate by remaining, as best he could, a scientist. According to his wife, “He secretly, by snatches, continued his scientific work in the unbearable conditions of the camp.” Despite the frequent seizure of his books and notes, Orlov somehow managed to draft an article on wave logic. But his attempt to send the article to a journal was rewarded with another six months in the camp prison. In a letter to his wife, Orlov wrote, “I cannot carry out my ideas on logic; this is almost obvious, due to lack of time and including a lack of health.” At one point in his draconian prison, a member of the KGB scoffed, “Orlov, forget that you’re a scientist. You’ll never get out of this camp.”²

The plight of Orlov and his attempts to resist his fate show how the objective realities of science can be brought to bear on human rights activism. The connection between human rights, social movements, and the Cold War is well established. During the second half of the twentieth century, as Cold War bipolarity attempted to divide the globe along political and economic lines, a simultaneous movement attempted to reunite the globe on the basis of respect for human rights.³ Less well-known, however, is how science and human rights became intertwined. Science itself is often envisioned, promoted, and celebrated as valid truth, regardless of nation, era, or political system, much like the concept of human rights. But in reality, science and human rights have not always gone hand in hand. In fact, the alignment of these two belief systems during the late 1970s only occurred because of the direct action of scientists and activists who sought to redefine science as a human rights endeavor.

Human Rights and Scientific Internationalism

Modern conceptions of science and human rights emerged from the intellectual ferment of the Enlightenment. The enthusiasm for the Age of Reason and the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen during the early days of the French Revolution suggested a mutually beneficial relationship between rational scientific thought and human rights. Inspired to an extent by the U.S. Revolution against Britain, French revolutionaries occasionally (and overzealously) credited Benjamin Franklin, the scientist and former U.S. ambassador to France, with sparking the revolutionary ideals of reason and democracy in Paris. At one point, vendors even sold statuettes of Franklin carved out of stones allegedly pulled from the rubble of the Bastille. But science and the new human rights regime in Paris got off to a rough start, demonstrated most clearly when the great chemist Lavoisier was put on trial, where a judge told him, “The Republic has no need of scientists.” He was subsequently marched to the scaffold and beheaded by guillotine.⁴

In the early twentieth century, science fell more in line with the political and military demands of the nation-state, contradicting the values of scientific internationalism. During the Great War, chemists of all nations rushed to serve their homelands by eagerly concocting poison gases. The head of the wartime German chemical weapons program, Fritz Haber, ominously declared scientific internationalism secondary to nationalism when he said “science belongs to humanity in peacetime and to the fatherland in war.” The efforts of U.S. chemists matched their German peers; at the war’s height, roughly 1,700 U.S. chemists worked for the military, and the rate of mustard-gas production alone reached thirty tons per day by November 1918.⁵

The Second World War both reinforced and challenged the alliance of science and scientists with the nation. When Hitler rose to power and renowned physicists began to leave Germany, Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard worked frantically to locate jobs overseas for these exiled scientists. By finding homes for many of the scientific diaspora, Szilard demonstrated the scientist’s status as a true citizen of the world. But many of these same scientists, including Szilard himself, willingly took part in the distinctly anti-internationalist move of censoring and keeping secret the results of experiments with uranium in a futile attempt to keep German scientists from learning about the feasibility of an atomic bomb. Szilard and his peers would eventually participate in the U.S. effort to construct an atomic bomb, a weapon used unilaterally against two Japanese cities and symbolically (according to some interpretations) against the Soviet Union in the first salvo of the Cold War.⁶

After the Second World War, scientists in many Western nations attempted to reestablish a scientific internationalism that, as they understood it, had been only suspended during two world wars. Bringing the scientific ethos to bear on geopolitics, they mobilized for world government and international control of nuclear weapons. Eventually, however, Cold War tensions demanded that Western scientists view science from within a Cold War paradigm. In one scholar’s words, the Cold War produced a “bipolar scientific internationalism” that united the scientific community under an anticommunist and pro-Western ideology. With Western governments dispensing larger and larger amounts of funding and influence, scientists had professional reasons to oppose the Soviets.⁷

Scientific Exchanges and Scientific Boycotts

During the mid 1970s, before Orlov’s exile to labor camp, the issue of human rights transformed U.S.-Soviet relations, as well as the scientific discipline. Although scientists had played a large role in debates over nuclear weapons and arms control in the 1950s and 1960s, antinuclear scientists had not met much success in trying to push U.S. nuclear policy toward disarmament. But during the 1970s, the growing détente between the United States and Soviet Union led scientists to question the bipolar internationalism that had divided U.S. scientists from their Soviet peers. Rather than fight the Cold War on a scientific level, scientists began to try and transcend the Cold War by embracing a transnational rather than bipolar vision of scientific internationalism—one based on the ideals of the scientific discipline itself, rather than geopolitics.

Meanwhile, the concurrent surge of interest in human rights around the world created another opportunity for science to play a role in geopolitics and transnational relations. The connection between science and human rights got a boost from the Helsinki Final Act, signed on August 1, 1975. This landmark agreement between East and West, relatively dismissed by Western leaders at the time, focused mainly on social, political, and economic rights, but the agreement also included a section that described science and technology as activities that “contribute to the reinforcement of peace and security in Europe and in the world as a whole.” Scientific cooperation between nations in particular “assists the effective solution of problems of common interest and the improvement of the conditions of human life.” The Helsinki Final Act specifically recommended joint projects, research, contact, communication, and exchange programs in many fields, including agriculture, energy, physics, chemistry, meteorology, hydrology, and oceanography.⁸ In the spirit of Helsinki, U.S. scientists undertook cooperative, scientific exchange programs with their Soviet counterparts aimed at increasing scientific knowledge, as well as diffusing Cold War tensions. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) coordinated exchanges with the Soviet Academy of Sciences at the rate of roughly thirty scientists from each of the two countries for a total of one hundred working months per year. The two academies also discussed working groups on arms control and joint planetary explorations.⁹

Just as Helsinki enabled the formation of human rights networks to monitor adherence to the political and social aspects of the agreement, Western scientists were energized by the Helsinki Final Act and their role as transnational actors. The increased contact with Soviet scientists, however, quickly revealed the deplorable Soviet record on human rights. Most upsetting to the scientific community was the fate of Andrei Sakharov, the esteemed Soviet physicist and dissident who came under increasing oppression as he became more outspoken. Orlov’s sham trial and hard labor sentence also disgraced the Soviet Union in Western eyes. The scientists empowered by Helsinki quickly took to using science as a means of enforcing human rights—the NAS, for example, established a Human Rights Committee as did the New York Academy of Sciences. In 1976, the American Association for the Advancement of Science established a Clearinghouse on Science and Human Rights, described as “a conduit for information about and advocacy on behalf of members of the scientific community in foreign countries whose human rights and/or scientific freedoms have been violated.”¹⁰ The American Mathematical Society created a Committee on Human Rights of Mathematicians, while the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Council established its own Committee on Human Rights in the late 1970s.¹¹ In some cases, ordinary academic rituals took on added significance, such as the International Congress of Mathematicians in August 1978 in Helsinki, where the nonappearance of Soviet scientists took on the stigma of a violation of an international agreement.¹²

As oppression of Soviet scientists—most notably Sakharov, Orlov, and Anatoly Shcharansky¹³—worsened, U.S. scientists were further drawn into debates over human rights.¹⁴ Orlov, scientist and chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group that monitored Eastern bloc adherence to the Helsinki Final Act, had been arrested in 1977. Jeri Laber, head of the U.S. Helsinki Watch Group, wrote to President Jimmy Carter that “No prisoner of conscience is of more concern to the American scientific community.” The imprisonment of Orlov, she asserted, “casts a cloud over the development of relations between the scientific communities of the United States and the Soviet Union.” According to Laber, the president of the NAS had expressed to Brezhnev “the deep sorrow of US scientists” over Orlov’s arrest, and Laber then informed Carter that many scientists refused to participate in scientific exchange with the Soviets.¹⁵ Thus began the boycott of U.S.-Soviet scientific exchanges, the preferred method of protest of many U.S. scientists. It was hoped the boycott would shame the Soviet government into improving its treatment of its scientists and citizens.

In early 1978, announcing a six-month suspension of Soviet-American scientific exchanges, NAS president Philip Handler termed the sentencing of Sakharov to exile in Gorky “shocking.” A statement from the NAS further elaborated on the boycott decision and the Soviet actions that inspired it: “These actions represent, from our perspective, an intrusion upon the human rights and scientific activities of an eminent scientist.” The NAS expressed “a deep conviction that both [the U.S. and Soviet science] academies work toward peace, détente and disarmament … But we are keenly aware of the reaction of American scientists and the American public to the actions of the Soviet Government.”¹⁶

In the process of standing up for their fellow scientists, U.S. scientists formulated a defense of human rights based on the advocacy of science. When four U.S. scientists withdrew from a macromolecular chemistry symposium slated for Tashkent in October 1978, they wrote directly to their Soviet colleagues to personally explain the boycott. They had made, they wrote, a “painful decision” informed by the recent show trials of scientists in the Soviet Union that had “gravely hampered” the objectives of international scientific cooperation and communication. The trials were indicative of “repression in the Soviet Union and its stifling effect on scientific communication and cooperation.” In the symbiotic relationship between science and human rights, repression of scientists made the conduct of science all but impossible, even for scientists on opposite sides of the globe.¹⁷

John T. Edsall of Harvard similarly expressed a “sense of outrage” over the fate of Orlov and Shcharansky when he wrote to W. A. Engelhardt of the Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow: “These profoundly disturbing events seem to belong to an alien world that repels us.” Spelling out a commitment to human rights, he continued: “We are concerned with the maintenance of human rights throughout the world, and as a scientific community we are particularly concerned with the defence of the rights of our fellow scientists.”¹⁸ The Soviets had offended the values and mores of the scientific community, and in the late 1970s and early 1980s, human rights trumped internationalism.

In mid-July 1978, Stanford scientist Paul J. Flory wrote to Anatoly Aleksandrov, president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, to express the “widespread revulsion” over the accusations of treason brought against Soviet scientists including Orlov and Shcharansky. Referring to the Helsinki Final Act, Flory affirmed the importance of scientific cooperation to friendly relations between East and West, mentioning “international scientific cooperation as one of the avenues for achieving peace and for advancing human welfare.” Flory described science as the free exchange of ideas, an ideal hampered by the repression of scientists. “Science itself cannot flourish in such an atmosphere,” he wrote. Flory personally promised that at an October scientific conference in the Soviet Union he fully intended to publicly excoriate the Soviet government for its violations of human rights. In closing, he wrote, “I fully agree that scientific meetings should not be politicized, but the issues involved transcend politics.”¹⁹

Despite Flory’s claim, politics and science had often mingled in the past, and as the year went on, they became increasingly entangled. A September 1978 article in the prestigious scientific journal Nature claimed that the Soviets saw “that the threat of a severance of scientific relations was a real one.” But the same article highlighted the diverse views scientists held on the issue, mentioning that “not all scientists” thought a boycott was the best method of aiding imprisoned and repressed Soviet colleagues. In place of a boycott, some scientists thought “the stricter insistence on the norms of scientific life—including proper representation at conferences, a more fitting form of protest.” The NAS pointed to these opposing views—glossed over as the “individualistic” nature of U.S. scientists—in explaining its refusal to formally endorse an indefinite boycott. “Each American scientist … must determine his or her own course of action,” an NAS statement concluded. In contrast, French physicists facing the same quandary had recommended the cessation of every form of “official scientific relations.”²⁰

The boycott did not mean a break of informal contacts between U.S. human rights activists and Soviet scientists. Instead, official exchanges were halted, but U.S. scientists continued to reach out to their oppressed colleagues. President Carter’s science advisor Frank Press even served as a conduit between U.S. Helsinki Watch and Soviet scientists. After a meeting in February 1979, Helsinki Watch managed to get Press to take with him on a trip to Europe letters for Orlov and Sakharov; one letter detailed for Sakharov the formation of U.S. Helsinki Watch and asked him for advice.²¹

Further threats to Sakharov led to increasing efforts by U.S. scientists to help him. The Committee of Concerned Scientists (CCS) counted four thousand members in late February 1979 and dedicated itself to “constructive action to protect and advance the scientific and human rights of colleagues the world over.” In a telegram the CCS implored Aleksandrov not to expel Sakharov from the Soviet Academy of Sciences, an action foreshadowed by the failure of the academy to invite Sakharov to its general meeting in March. Such an ouster, the telegram stated, “would be an act of hostile disrespect.” Blaming the Soviet Union’s repression of Sakharov for straining scientific relations, the telegram made a veiled threat to end scientific exchange permanently if Sakharov suffered any more: “By resisting efforts to further isolate him from his Soviet colleagues, the academy, under your leadership, can begin to restore the confidence of American scientists in the value of our bilateral efforts and strengthen their desire to participate in exchanges with Soviet colleagues.” The telegram closed by placing responsibility for relations squarely on the Soviet Academy: “We look to your academy to set the tone for improved scientific relations between our nations.”²²

With no change in official Soviet attitudes, the group Scientists for Orlov and Shcharansky (SOS) announced in March 1979 that “they would severely restrict their cooperation with the Soviet Union in response to the jailing of Orlov, Shcharansky, and other dissidents.” SOS counted more than 2,400 members at this point, most of them scientists, engineers, and computer scientists. From the ranks of the NAS, 113 members joined the SOS protest, including thirteen Nobel Prize winners.²³

This social movement of scientists found a sympathetic audience in Congress. In late May 1979, Aleksandrov was once again the target of a letter of protest, this time from the congressional Subcommittee on Science, Research and Technology. The letter began by expressing “concern for the deterioration of Soviet-American scientific relations during this past year.” The subcommittee members refused “acquiescence in the violation of scientists’ human rights … as a price of scientific exchange.” The letter further noted that U.S. scientists had complained that Soviet authorities often only let scientists of “low calibre” travel abroad for conferences—last-minute substitutes for more prestigious and controversial scientists. Making it clear that the protests were of a grassroots nature, the subcommittee emphasized that “none of these actions have been stimulated or suggested by the American Government.” Still, “the Congress is slowly becoming aware of the need to include human rights as an essential component of national and international science and technology policy.”²⁴ Scientists continued to push the government on this issue. A lawyer for the State Department writing to Helsinki Watch about the official stance on exchange policy admitted that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the exile of Sakharov had brought this policy into question. But the lawyer also credited scientists and scientific organizations with driving postponements. In addition to the NAS refusal to participate in seminars for six months, the lawyer credited Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory physicists’ refusal to receive Soviet scientists in an atomic energy exchange and unnamed U.S. scientists’ postponement of an electrometallurgy seminar.²⁵ The paradigm, to use a scientific term, had shifted.

With momentum building, the CCS continued to agitate on behalf of Soviet scientists. In June 1980, the organization sent a letter to scientists attending the Eleventh International Quantum Electronics Conference in Boston, once again infusing an ordinary academic event with geopolitical significance. The CCS letter to participants characterized the meeting as “a unique opportunity to help several of our fellow scientists who are currently persecuted in the Soviet Union” and suggested discussing the plight of the dissidents with Soviet scientists at the conference. Scientists were transformed into amateur diplomats by conducting, as the CCS recommended, “informal discussion with a view toward persuading them to intervene in these cases.” The letter concluded, “In this way, you will underscore for our Soviet colleagues the widespread concern among American scientists about the status of scientific freedom in the USSR.” A simultaneous CCS letter to Aleksandrov, Brezhnev, and the Soviet Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin (also publicized in a press release) protested the treatment of Sakharov, Orlov, and others: “The status of scientific freedom in the USSR is linked to scientific progress worldwide. Only when cases such as those above have been justly and humanely resolved will productive scientific exchange be made possible.” In essence, the CCS told the Soviets that by failing to free Sakharov and the others, they not only violated the Helsinki human rights guidelines but also the act’s science and technology guidelines.²⁶

The mobilization of the U.S. scientific community came as the direct result of Soviet scientists reaching out to their peers and appealing to the international scientific community’s respect for human rights. Sakharov had not initially looked for help overseas, but when his fellow Soviet scientists abandoned him, he turned to the West. In 1979, Sakharov praised the group Scientists in Defense of Orlov and Scharansky: “Active participation by scientists and specialists in the fight for human rights the world over is a burning need of our time.”²⁷ But after two years, Sakharov remained in exile, and he continued to need contact with his U.S. peers. In a 1981 letter to Stanford physicist Sidney Drell, Sakharov detailed his exile in Gorky. A policeman guarded his front door. This was not quite house arrest, Sakharov observed, “for I am not in my own house.” The totalitarian state imposed its will on him. Authorities confiscated his mail, and only his wife was allowed to visit him. KGB agents, Sakharov was certain, frequently broke into his apartment, which he saw as “a direct threat to my life.” He found comfort in alerting scientists to his fate, writing simply: “I want my Western colleagues to know about it.” This constant abuse not surprisingly hampered his professional endeavors. His son’s fiancée was being “held hostage” in an insane asylum, he told Drell. “There is no way that I can do any scientific work so long as we have to spend every hour of every day worrying about her fate.” Nor was he allowed to attend scientific conferences, which violated his “purely academic rights.” In closing he implored Western scientists to “go directly to high officials of their own governments and beseech them to appeal to the Soviet leaders.”²⁸

Elsewhere, Sakharov repeated how his exile kept him from working. In announcing a hunger strike, he declared: “There can be no question … of any scientific work while this tragedy of my loved ones continues.” The failure of Soviet scientists to make any attempt to intervene on his behalf he described as a “bitter disappointment to me, not only on the personal level but as a manifestation of a pernicious abandoning of responsibility and of the possibility of influencing events.”²⁹ Sakharov thus averred that scientists have a greater role to play in society, a responsibility to risk their elite status for the sake of human rights.

Sakharov so clearly embodied this commitment to human rights and this willingness to sacrifice that U.S. scientists could hardly refuse to boycott the exchanges. At one point Sakharov’s wife, Elena Bonner, wrote to a friend that her husband was frequently drugged, his papers then stolen. His exile deprived him of “the right to free scientific and human intercourse.” Sakharov, Bonner wrote, was “miserable” without the ability to discuss science with his friends and without the right to pick up the phone and discuss a scientific problem or insight. Over three years, he was visited by only six colleagues; occasions that were more “humiliation” than “normal scientific discourse” because of his imposed deprivation. In fact, Bonner admitted, Sakharov was so desperate for scientific discussion that he even discussed physics with her, though “it would be hard to find a more unprepared listener.”³⁰

Debating the Boycott

Strong support for the boycott came from those who had direct experience with the plight of scientists in the Soviet Union. Irene Gildengorn Lainer, a PhD in metallurgical science, credited contacts in the West with securing her release from the Soviet Union in 1979. At an American Physical Society meeting she delivered a paper calling on scientists to take action. “Any support that the Western scientific community can give to its Soviet colleagues is of utmost importance,” she stated.³¹

Valentin F. Turchin, born in Russia and a friend of Sakharov’s, had been forced to leave Russia in the late 1970s, ending up in New York by 1979. In a letter to the CCS he gave the boycott a heavy endorsement: “I am sure it made impression on the Soviets and saved from arrest some unknown number of potential prisoners.” But, he added, if more scientists boycotted, “the effect would be more spectacular. I do not understand how people can collaborate with the Soviet regime, thereby supporting it, notwithstanding its crimes and the threat it presents to humanity.”³²

Despite enthusiasm for the cause, the boycott continued with little discernable effect. Most significantly, Sakharov, Orlov, and Shcharansky remained in prison and in exile, causing some scientists to question this tactic and wonder if cooperation held more promise than exclusion. In a letter to Helsinki Watch, the physicist Victor Weisskopf, for decades a respected U.S. government arms control advisor, stated that he opposed the six-month NAS boycott of exchanges. He feared that such actions might only cause the Soviet government to take even harsher measures against Sakharov.³³

The congressional Subcommittee on Science, Research and Technology celebrated the diverse views of scientists. Noting a “budding professional ethic,” the subcommittee praised SOS’s boycott of exchanges, as well as the opposite tactic of transforming conferences and exchanges into vehicles “for maintaining contact with and public awareness of oppressed colleagues. Both approaches share the recognition by scientists that individual and collective action is required in the face of human rights violations.”³⁴

But many scientists realized that the desires for different tactics threatened to break the movement apart. At its heart, the debate came down to the very meaning of scientific internationalism. What, after all, was scientific internationalism? Was it the simple, neutral-value act of crossing borders and working with scientists regardless of the political context? Or was it defending the rights of humans and principles of scientific freedom? Was scientific internationalism a worthwhile endeavor if it tacitly endorsed the actions of a repressive nation? On the other hand, was it worth sacrificing scientific internationalism for what was ultimately a political dispute over ideals?

At the center of the boycott debate stood Philip Handler and the NAS. For decades the NAS had coordinated U.S. science policy, including the exchanges, and advised the government on scientific research priorities. Naturally the NAS was expected to formulate a position on the Soviet scientist controversy. Handler addressed the dilemma in a long statement to the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (a liaison to Helsinki activists overseas) and the congressional subcommittees on International Security and Scientific Affairs and on Science, Research and Technology. First, Handler discussed Sakharov’s plight, largely brought on by the physicist’s heavy criticism of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He then turned to what to do about scientific cooperation in a “post-Afghanistan, post-Sakharov period.” “I find it difficult to imagine scientific exchange continuing in the spirit we had created heretofore,” Handler admitted. For every new Soviet scientist deprived of his or her rights, the NAS received, he said, “a shower of letters … urging that we terminate our exchange program.” Yet the NAS “considered that unwise because … there also remain strong voices within the community insisting that we sustain the lines of communication.” Handler actually endorsed both approaches, claiming that the NAS, in fact, had little power over the exchanges since the programs were voluntary. “Neither the Congress nor the Academy can make exchange programs happen,” he stated.³⁵

Handler ultimately decided that the exchanges should continue, befitting the international spirit of science. But he confessed that he was also “sorely pressed to find any justification for merely proceeding as usual.” Handler thus announced that the NAS would defer “all bilateral seminars and the like, while permitting the activities of individual scientists to proceed on our usual basis, leaving the decision to the individual consciences of American scientists.” The NAS president made a distinction, however, between his official role and his personal principles, adding that if he had the opportunity to participate in an exchange as an ordinary scientist, “I would not go.” Handler essentially implemented a scaling back of the exchange program: “It should be slowed down markedly, there should be no new starts, no high-level, visible interactions,” with the framework left intact for the future if relations improved.³⁶

This compromise lacked the vigor of a comprehensive boycott, causing many boycott advocates to defend their chosen tactic. The boycott, they argued, sent a valuable message of solidarity to their oppressed Soviet peers. The chairman of SOS, Morris Pripstein, complained about boycott naysayers. Claiming that SOS had made a “somewhat dramatic impact,” he stated he was “amazed and appalled” by a Nature editorial that opposed the boycott. “Despite these reactions,” he told Jeri Laber, “our point of view is gaining ground in the scientific community.”³⁷ In defense of his tactics, he pointed directly to the words of Sakharov himself, who had endorsed the boycott in an open letter: “I believe that in order to protect innocent persons it is permissible and, in many cases, necessary to adopt extraordinary measures such as an interruption of scientific contacts or other types of boycott.”³⁸

The American University physicist Earl Callen disagreed and led a move to resume the exchanges. In a letter to SOS, CCS, and others, he wrote: “I think that the time has come to take the initiative in encouraging a deal with the Russians, and to end endorsement of the boycott.” He argued that with the Cold War intensifying, “scientists will now feel more and more that we need a scientific bridge to the Russians,” and that “the boycott will erode away … and with no price extracted.” If this happened, the boycott could not be used as a threat in the future nor would U.S. scientists be inclined to try one again. On the other hand, he did not want to end the boycott “without a quid pro quo” to “maintain credibility.” He suggested floating a deal to the Soviets: that for the release of Sakharov, Orlov, or Shcharansky, U.S. scientists might be “encouraged to maintain contacts with their Soviet counterparts.”³⁹ From a social movement perspective, he hoped to preserve the threat of the boycott as a tactic for future bargaining.

Callen’s move to resume the exchanges touched off a heated debate as scientists endeavored to assess the political impact of their activism. Paul Flory took exception to Callen in strong terms in a memo of July 15, 1981. He saw himself as up against “a growing body of opinion that scientists in the West should relax their policies of restriction on scientific exchange and cooperation with their counterparts in the U.S.S.R.” Flory first rejected the idea that boycotting had no effect. Though Orlov and Shcharansky remained imprisoned and Sakharov in exile, Flory boasted that “many scientists who could have been imprisoned have not been, and others have received lighter sentences than would have been their fate if American scientists had been indifferent. My informants are positive of this.” As evidence he mentioned a computer scientist named Irina Grivina who received a five-year exile sentence, far less harsh than what had been expected.⁴⁰

Flory then suggested that, out of solidarity with their Soviet colleagues, U.S. scientists should “follow their examples in upholding principles.” Instead of cutting a deal for the release of scientists, he advocated renewed commitment to the principles of human rights. “Sakharov, Orlov and Shcharansky do not ask for ransom at a price. They suffer for the principles to which they are irrevocably committed,” he wrote. “None of these three (among others) would agree to barter principles for release from prison or exile … It is the least that we can do.” Flory described the situation as a “war of nerves” in which “our resolve is under test. Clearly, we must stand firm. To do otherwise would jeopardize many courageous people, deprive them of hope, and discourage others from trying.” He closed by stating, “We should redouble our efforts, not relax them.” To support his arguments, Flory explained that he drew upon the views of Yuri Yarim-Agaev, a recently emigrated scientist expelled from the Soviet Union in 1980. Flory claimed, “I am sure other Russian exiles would support him strongly.”⁴¹

The views of Anthony Ralston, a professor in SUNY Buffalo’s Department of Computer Science, steered a middle course between Callen and Flory. Ralston did not oppose a “deal” with the Soviets over the fate of Sakharov, Orlov, and Shcharansky, but he felt strongly that “we must be as steadfast as the Soviets.” The boycott “should be continued until Sakharov is released from exile and the other two (at least) from jail.”⁴²

In further correspondence, Callen responded with a respectful but crystal clear rejection of continuing the boycott. Confronting the idea that the boycott had been effective, Callen wrote, the “religious” view was that without a boycott, Sakharov, Orlov, and Shcharansky would have been treated even more harshly than they had been. “Maybe,” Callen continued, though such a view was “certainly a non-falsifiable assertion, more a statement of faith than a proof,” the fact remained that none of the three had been released. Instead, Callen thought it would “be better to gain some major concessions now, resume lots of exchange, re-establish good ties, visit dissidents, demonstrate to the Soviets and to ourselves the success of our tactics, and use all that as a brake against the next atrocity.” Scientists could always “ratchet back to withdrawal at the next major affront.” Callen’s sense of urgency that something had to be done soon came from his belief that the apolitical nature of scientists would eventually cause their enthusiasm for political action to “fade away.” The focus should be on “finite, limited goals—like the release of particular persons—and respond favorably when we achieve these goals.”⁴³

A Fading Enthusiasm

Over time, the oppression of many Soviet scientists improved. In 1986, scientists worldwide celebrated the granting of Sakharov’s freedom; one year later Orlov was able to leave the Soviet Union to accept a position at Cornell University. It was not the boycott, however, that freed Sakharov or his peers. Despite the intense debate over deals and boycotts, there was never any indication the Soviets were interested in negotiating over the fate of Sakharov or Orlov. Though the efforts of U.S. scientists cannot be dismissed, it was Mikhail Gorbachev, general secretary of the Communist Party and leader of the Soviet Union, who released Sakharov as part of his perestroika campaign. While sympathy for Soviet dissidents remained high, the boycott itself essentially petered out in the early 1980s. Coordinated political action by scientists could only last so long—as early as 1982, Helsinki Watch chose Orlov as its “Forgotten Man of the Year,” a title granted to those “who would have been in the news if he or she had not been silenced by imprisonment” and “governmental terrorism.”⁴⁴

Three years after earning that dubious distinction, Orlov’s plight was no better. Stuck in Kobyai, Yakutia, in northeastern Siberia, Orlov was assaulted by two drunken thugs, his glasses smashed. According to a Helsinki Watch memo, Orlov was “shunned and hated by many of the townspeople.” Unable to procure housing, he lived in a workers’ dorm, where his scientific papers were stolen. Lack of food and medical supplies put his health at risk to the extent that life might have been better for him in the labor camp, where he could at least sleep safely at night. “Scientific work is the only way for Orlov to keep his sanity under these conditions,” one of his correspondents noted. “But even that possibility is being taken away from him.” Scientific journals provided a comfort for the physicist and allowed him to keep up with scientific developments. But Orlov had not received any journals “since November of last year,” leaving him all but scientifically lost. Though Orlov’s mail was clearly being confiscated by authorities, Helsinki Watch implored scientists “to keep sending journals and greetings to Orlov, in order to let Soviet leaders know that he is not forgotten.” Working as a scientist was simply “impossible” for Orlov, but science could still provide a way out. Helsinki Watch encouraged U.S. scientists to ask their universities to offer Orlov lecture invitations, which it hoped might lead to an exit visa.⁴⁵

While some considered Orlov’s plight a call for increased activism, others saw only evidence that the boycott had failed. In 1985, the NAS came to that conclusion and decided to resume exchanges. With Cold War tensions rising and nuclear fears increasing, the NAS believed that exchanges would help soothe tense U.S.-Soviet relations. The New York Times quoted the new president of the NAS, Frank Press: “These are times of change in the Soviet Union. We feel that we can best help Sakharov and the dissident scientists by having channels of communication open rather than not.” Edsall concurred, citing the renewed threat of nuclear war. The head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science echoed support for the academy’s move, as did the Federation of American Scientists and its leader Jeremy Stone.⁴⁶

As organizations moved to resume exchanges, some scientists tried to keep the boycott alive. In 1985, Joseph Birman of the City College of New York physics department vehemently objected to the NAS decision to resume cooperation and exchange with the Soviet Union. While in 1980 the NAS had demonstrated “moral leadership,” according the Birman, the NAS of 1985 was “abandon[ing] its interest in its member, Prof. Sakharov” (Sakharov had been made a Foreign Associate of the NAS). Birman accused the NAS of “a regretful and disappointing lack of sensitivity to Human Rights of scientists” and a lack of respect for the Helsinki Final Act.⁴⁷ Meanwhile, Joel L. Lebowitz of Rutgers defended the resumption of exchanges to Morris Pripstein of SOS. He described the difference between a boycott and a resumption of exchanges as one of “tactics rather than principle as far as human rights are concerned.” He argued that “having an agreement” might be a useful way to help Sakharov and other dissidents, though he recognized that not everyone would concur.⁴⁸

But the resumption of exchange and the boycotting of exchange were decidedly not two sides of the same coin. Without a boycott, it became all too easy to set human rights aside in pursuit of scientific internationalism. Scientific internationalism, after all, had been a core scientific value longer than human rights. By the late 1990s, with the Cold War over and the Soviet Union disintegrated, the journal Science detected a sense of apathy among scientists, declaring in a headline, “Human Rights Fades as a Cause for Scientists.”⁴⁹

Such had not always been the case. For a time, it appeared that science would be impossible without human rights. Arthur L. Shawlow, president of the American Physical Society, expressed as much in a 1981 letter to Sakharov. “The American Physical Society is actively working for the civil rights of individual scientists in many countries around the world.” He stated, “In this regard, we continue to look for inspiration and leadership from your words and actions.” Linking science to human rights, he declared: “The progress of science depends on the creative ideas of scientists, tested and refined by lively discussions with their peers. We all hope that we will soon again be able to greet you in person, and to discuss with you the frontier areas of our science.”⁵⁰

The scientists’ boycott and embrace of human rights in the late 1970s and early 1980s reflects the growing salience of human rights to an extensive array of human activities. Having transcended bipolar internationalism, human rights gave scientists a way to criticize the Soviet government while sympathizing with those who lived under its brutal regime. Human rights also gave U.S. scientists a way to avoid the partisan domestic bickering over nuclear weapons yet still claim relevance to geopolitics. The human rights of the West—including freedom of speech, intellectual freedom, and the right to dissent—would also be the values of the international scientific community, and both would flourish. Human rights served not just as a platitude but as a force that shaped the mores of a discipline that, on the surface, appeared to have little to do with human rights.

At the same time, the transformation of human rights from noble idea to political reality is not irreversible—human rights could regress to being simply a noble idea. Scientists, as the exchange boycott demonstrates, embraced and then lost interest in human rights. During the boycott debate, Earl Callen argued for a discrete movement with limited goals. He demanded of Paul Flory: “We better ask what our goals are, and at what point we are willing to resume exchange. The SOS pledge (and the very name of that organization) focuses on the maltreatment of particular individuals.” If the boycott and human rights campaign was to be a broad, indefinite campaign, where should it end? What about reform of the whole Soviet system? Callen wondered. South Africa? Argentina? What about a boycott of the United States for not having signed the SALT agreements? Should the human rights campaign ever end or become a dominant feature of scientific life? He needn’t have worried about this slippery slope. The same American Physical Society that Shawlow had declared “actively working” for human rights in 1981 changed noticeably: at the annual APS meeting in 1998, despite attempts to raise concerns over the human rights of scientists in China, only two participants out of several thousand registered for a workshop on human rights.⁵¹ Science would be international, but noncontroversial.

NOTES

1. Irina Valitova (Mrs. Yuriy Orlov) to Max M. Kampelman, June 23, 1981, Box 34, Folder: Files of Cathy Fitzpatrick: USSR: Orlov, Yuri: 1981, Series III: Files of Cathy Fitzpatrick, Country Files, Human Rights Watch Records, Columbia University (hereafter HRWR).

2. Ibid.

3. See Akira Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Elizabeth Borgwardt, A New Deal for the World: America’s Vision for Human Rights (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

4. On the French Revolution as the origin of modern human rights, see Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: Norton, 2008). Officially Franklin was appointed minister plenipotentiary rather than ambassador. On Franklin, Lavoisier, and the French Revolution, see Stacy Schiff, A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (New York: Henry Holt, 2005), xv, 254, 404, 409; John Marks, Science and the Making of the Modern World (London: Heinemann, 1983), 125; and John Gribbin, The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors (New York: Random House, 2002). Lavoisier had controlled the government gunpowder monopoly during Louis XVI’s war with Britain, and his participation in the unpopular tax farming system led to his beheading.

5. James G. Hershberg, James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (New York: Knopf, 1993), 42, 45–46.

6. On Szilard, see William Lanouette, Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1992); and Michael Bess, Realism, Utopia, and the Mushroom Cloud: Four Activist Intellectuals and Their Strategies for Peace, 1945–1989 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). On the use of the atomic bomb as a means to intimidate the Soviets, see Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam: The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power (New York: Penguin, 1985).

7. Joseph Manzione, “‘Amusing and Amazing and Practical and Military’: The Legacy of Scientific Internationalism in American Foreign Policy, 1945–63,” Diplomatic History 24, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 49–55.

8. Helsinki Final Act, 14–26, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe website, www.osce.org/. On the creation and consequences of the act, see Sarah B. Snyder, “The Helsinki Process, American Foreign Policy, and the End of the Cold War” (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 2006).

9. “Statement of Philip Handler,” January 31, 1980, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists: General, 1979–1980, HRWR.

10. Joel L. Lebowitz, form letter to unknown recipients, March 30, 1981, Box 62, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Sakharov, Andrei, General, 1981–1984; Andy Sommer to Bob Berstein, October 4, 1979, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists: AAAS, 1975–1979, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR.

11. John A. Nohel to Amadou Mahtar M’Bow, August 4, 1980; Richard C. DiPrima to Leonid Brezhnev, July 29, 1980, Box 62, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Sakharov: General, 1969–1980, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR.

12. Vera Rich, “Boycott of Soviet Contacts Is for Individuals, Says NAS,” Nature, September 7, 1978, 3.

13. Contemporary Americanized spellings of most of the Russian names mentioned in this chapter varied greatly: Sakharov versus Sacharov, Scharansky versus Shcharansky, Orlov versus Orlove, Aleksandrov versus Alexandrov, etc. I have attempted to employ the spellings most frequently used in my sources, except in direct quotations where I have retained the original spelling.

14. Rich, “Boycott of Soviet Contacts Is for Individuals, Says NAS.”

15. Jeri Laber to Carter, January 5, 1979, Box 59, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Orlov, Yuri: Defense, 1978–1980, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR.

16. United Press International, “Academy Halts Soviet Exchanges,” February 25, 1978, Box 58, Folder 14, National Academy of Sciences, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR.

17. H. F. Mark, W. H. Stockmayer, N.W. Tschegl, P.J. Flory to V. V. Korshak, September 18, 1978, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists: AAAS: 1975–1979, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR.

18. John T. Edsall to W. A. Engelhardt, August 18, 1978, Box 63: Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists: AAAS: 1975–1979, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR.

19. Paul J. Flory, Stanford University, to Anatoly Aleksandrov, Soviet Academy of Sciences, July 13, 1978, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists: AAAS, 1975–1979, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR.

20. “Boycott of Soviet Contacts Is for Individuals, Says NAS.”

21. Bob Bernstein to Sakharov, February 1, 1979, and David Fishlow, Executive Director Helsinki Watch, to Dr. Herbert Fusfeld, Director of Center for Science and Technology Policy, February 1, 1979, Box 67, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: U.S. Scientific Exchange, 1978–1979, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR. See also: Memo from Mark Mellman, February 9, 1979, Box 45, Folder 8: Committee of Concerned Scientists, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR. The fate of these letters is unclear. At the same time, Richard Sennett, director of the New York Institute for the Humanities, asked Press to deliver a speaking invitation to Orlov. In April, Sennett wrote to Press expressing his dissatisfaction that the State Department had told him the letter had been delivered to Malcolm Toon, the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, who had passed it on to “personal friends.” According to Sennett, no one could confirm that these unspecified people ever delivered the invitation to Orlov. Sennett to Press, April 16, 1979, Box 59, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Orlov, Yuri: Defense: Reception for J. MacDonald, 1978–79, HRWR.

22. News Release, Committee of Concerned Scientists, February 28, 1979; Cable to Academician A. P. Aleksandrov, President of Soviet Academy of Sciences, Box 45, Folder 8: Committee of Concerned Scientists, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR.

23. Program for MacDonald Reception, April 16, 1979, p. 2, Box 59, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Orlov: Defense: Reception for J. MacDonald, 1978–1979, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR.

24. Brown, Scheuer, Hollenbeck, Ritter, Harkin, Pease, Hance, and Ertel to Alexandrov, May 24, 1979, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists: General, 1979–1980, HRWR.

25. Memo, by Rozanne L. Ridgway, April 8, 1980, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Sakharov: Questionnaire: 1977–1980, HRWR.

26. CCS News Release, June 27, 1980; CCS letter to Aleksandrov, Brezhnev, Marchuk, and Dobrynin; CCS letter to EIQE Conference, June 23, 1980, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists: General, 1979–1980, HRWR.

27. Sakharov and Naum Meiman to Scientists in Defense of Orlove and Scharansky, March 10, 1979, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists for Orlov and Scharansky: 1979–1981, HRWR.

28. Sakharov to Drell, January 30, 1981, Box 62, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Sakharov: General: 1981, HRWR.

29. Sakharov, “A Letter to My Foreign Colleagues,” October 9, 1981, Box 62, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Sakharov, Andrei: Hunger Strike: 1980–1982, HRWR.

30. Elena Bonner to Professor Michelle, November 16, 1982, Box 62, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Sakharov, Andrei: Hunger Strike: 1980–1982, HRWR.

31. Irene Gildengorn Lainer, “Human Rights of Scientists in the Soviet Union,” Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists: General: 1979–1980, HRWR.

32. Valentin F. Turchin letter, July 15, 1979, Box 34: Folder: Files of Cathy Fitzpatrick: USSR: Orlov, Yuri: 1979, Series III: Cathy Fitzpatrick Files, HRWR.

33. Victor Weisskopf to Edward Kline, Helsinki Watch, March 11, 1980, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Sakharov: Questionnaire, 1977–1980, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR.

34. Brown, Scheuer, Hollenbeck, Ritter, Harkin, Pease, Hance, and Ertel to Alexandrov, May 24, 1979, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists: General, 1979–1980, HRWR.

35. “Statement of Philip Handler,” January 31, 1980, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists: General, 1979–1980, HRWR. Emphasis in original.

36. “Statement of Philip Handler,” January 31, 1980, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists: General, 1979–1980, HRWR.

37. Morris Pripstein, Chairman of SOS, to Jeri Laber, December 9, 1980, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists for Orlov and Scharansky, 1979–1981, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR.

38. Andrei Sakharov, “The Responsibility of Scientists,” Nature, May 21, 1981, 84–85.

39. Memo to CCS, SOS, Others, by Earl Callen, June 16th, 1981, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists: Exchange, 1980–1981, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR.

40. Paul Flory, “U.S. Soviet Scientific Relations,” July 15, 1981, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists: Exchange, 1980–1981, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR.

41. Ibid.

42. Anthony Ralston, Prof. in SUNY Buffalo Dept. of Computer Science, to Earl Callen, July 22, 1981, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists: Exchange, 1980–1981, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR. Emphasis in original.

43. Earl Callen, Department of Physics, American University, “U.S.-Soviet Scientific Relations—A Response to Paul Flory,” July 23, 1981, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists: Exchange, 1980–1981, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR. Emphasis in original.

44. Press Release, “Forgotten Man of the Year,” December 1982, Box 59, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Orlov, Yuri: Poster [Campaign] 1982–1983, Series I: Files of Jeri Laber, HRWR.

45. Memorandum, Helsinki Watch, “Yuri Orlov: Current Status,” May 1985, Box 35, Folder: Files of Cathy Fitzpatrick: USSR: Orlov, Yuri: 1985, HRWR. Emphasis in original.

46. Philip M. Boffey, “Science, Sakharov, and Soviet,” May 9, 1985, New York Times, 16.

47. Joseph Birman to Frank Press, April 10, 1985, Box 7, Folder: Files of Cathy Fitzpatrick: USSR: Committee of Concerned Scientists: 1984–May 1985, Series III: Files of Cathy Fitzpatrick, HRWR. Press, the president of the NAS at that point, disputed Birman’s charges. Press to Birman, May 2, 1985, Box 7, Folder: Files of Cathy Fitzpatrick: USSR: Committee of Concerned Scientists: 1984–May 1985, HRWR.

48. Joel L. Lebowitz to Morris Pripstein, May 28, 1985, Box 51, Folder: Files of Cathy Fitzpatrick: USSR: Scientists [General], 1985–1988, HRWR.

49. James Glanz, “Human Rights Fades as a Cause for Scientists,” Science 282 (October 9, 1998): 216.

50. Arthur L. Schawlow, President of American Physical Society, to Andrei Sakharov, April 16, 1981, Box 62, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Sakharov: General, 1981, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR.

51. Earl Callen, Department of Physics, American University, “U.S.-Soviet Scientific Relations—A Response to Paul Flory,” July 23, 1981, Box 63, Folder: Files of Jeri Laber: USSR: Scientists: Exchange, 1980–1981, Series I: Jeri Laber Files, HRWR. Glanz, “Human Rights Fades as a Cause for Scientists.”