Human Rights in Russia week-ending 2 October 2020 - with Sergei Lukashevsky

This week, our guest is Sergei Markovich Lukashevsky. Human rights activist Sergei Markovich is director of the Sakharov Centre in Moscow, a post he took up in 2008. By education a historian, Sergei Markovich has worked for both of Russia’s most famous human rights organizations, Memorial and the Moscow Helsinki Group, and, before moving to work at the Sakharov Centre, together with Tatiana Lokshina he founded and worked at Demos, a Moscow-based human rights organization that specialised in monitoring and reporting on human rights in Russia.

The issues discussed in the podcast include: the development of the human rights movement in post-Soviet Russia and its current state, the law on foreign agents, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and, of course, the work of the Sakarov Centre, its plans for the future, the importance of Andrei Sakharov in Russia today and the upcoming centenary of his birth.

This podcast is in the Russian language. You can also listen on our website or at SoundCloud, Spotify or iTunes. The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: “If you walk along the Zemlyannoi Val towards the Yauza river from Kursk metro station, on the even-numbered side you will see House No. 48B, where Sakharov lived, and on the odd-numbered side you will see a path that will take you past the Transfixed Pegasus and a piece of the Berlin Wall to the Rusty Angel and the Sakharov Centre. Last week, Simon Cosgrove and I talked to Sergei Lukashevsky, the director of this unique centre. Sergei Lukashevsky is someone with extensive experience working for human rights organisations (Memorial Human Rights Centre, Moscow Helsinki Group, Demos, the Sakharov Centre) and he considers the promotion of human rights values his main task. In my opinion, he is doing a great job: the Sakharov Centre has become a public and educational platform where numerous important and useful events, exhibitions, debates and seminars are held. Sometimes events at the Centre irritate characters who are rather excitable and unusual. The Centre’s employees are ready for anything and do an excellent job. Next year the world will be celebrating the centenary of Sakharov’s birth, and of course the Centre, which was established in 1996 on the initiative of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, will be hosting many interesting events. We talked to Sergei about all this but I have the feeling he only had time to touch on the tip of the iceberg that goes by the name of the Sakharov Centre.”

Simon Cosgrove adds: If you want to listen to this podcast on the podcasts.com website and it doesn’t seem to play, please download by clicking on the three dots to the right. A summary of some of the week’s events in Russia relevant to human rights can be found on our website here