Subject: [CivilSoc] Sakharov Foundation Gets Funds from Berezovsky
From: Center for Civil Society International (ccsi@u.washington.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 07 2000 - 18:46:24 EST
from Johnson's Russia List #4663, 1 December 2000
Berezovsky Millions Save Russia's Sakharov Centre
November 30, 2000
By Jon Boyle
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Self-exiled Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky
threw a $3 million lifeline Thursday to the Andrei Sakharov center
established in memory of the late Soviet rights activist.
Yelena Bonner, outspoken widow of the Nobel Prize winning dissident,
said she had decided to accept the funds despite her deep mistrust of
Berezovsky's motives.
The Andrei Sakharov Foundation, a museum, library and human rights
organization, faced closure Friday unless funds were found, but the
center said the Berezovsky cash and other donations had lifted the
threat.
The gesture was the latest round in a strident campaign by
Berezovsky, who is abroad, against President Vladimir Putin. The
media-to-oil businessman, summoned for questioning in a fraud case,
says he fears Putin will order his arrest if he returns to Russia.
Berezovsky was one of a group of businessmen who used their wealth
through the 1990s to cull political favors under Russia's first
president, Boris Yeltsin.
But he fell from favor and launched a bitter campaign against the
Kremlin, accusing Putin of authoritarian rule and threatening freedom
of speech.
Bonner told a news conference that while she was grateful for the
money, channeled through a U.S. branch of the foundation, she was
skeptical about the millionaire's motives.
"I told him, 'Boris Abramovich (Berezovsky), you approached me in the
summer and you approached me now. It's clear that you need my name,
but I'm not giving my name for anything in the world,"' Bonner said.
NO CHANGE IN FOUNDATION'S STANCE
She said the money would not force the foundation to alter its stance
on a number of issues -- including its opposition to the Kremlin's
crackdown in separatist Chechnya.
However, she said: "I, personally, am very grateful to you. Like it
or not, even the dissident movement cannot exist without money."
A brilliant scientist, Sakharov helped create the Soviet Union's
hydrogen bomb, but turned against hardline Soviet rule in the 1970s.
He was hounded by police and eventually sent into internal exile in
1980 in the Volga city then known as Gorky.
He was allowed to return six years later by Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev and remained a forthright defender of human rights until
his death in 1989.
Bonner's son, Alexei Semyonov, said the bulk of the cash -- to be
placed in an endowment to guarantee the foundation's future -- had
already been deposited, and the rest was due soon.
About half of the center's annual basic running costs of $300,000
will be covered by the donation. The center "is not yet completely
safe, because the funds for that endowment will not be available
until a year from now," he said.
But personal gifts and funds from the United States would tide the
foundation over.
In a statement read out at the press conference, Berezovsky said
fundamental freedoms were again under threat.
"The main weapon of an authoritarian government against society is
fear," it read. "Andrei Sakharov showed that fear can be defeated,
that even under an government out of control, freedom of thought is
stronger than the state truncheon."
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