Pavel Mikhailovich Litvinov | |
|---|---|
| Павел Михайлович Литвинов | |
 Pavel Litvinov and Irena Grudzińska-Gross, reading forNatalya Gorbanevskaya, 2014 | |
| Born | (1940-07-06)6 July 1940 (age 85) Moscow, Soviet Union |
| Alma mater | Moscow State University |
| Occupation | physicist |
| Known for | Human rights activism and participation in the1968 Red Square demonstration anddissident movement in the Soviet Union |
| Children | Sergey, Joseph, Dimitri, and Lara Julia M. Santiago, spouse of Pavel Litvinov |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | physics |
| Institutions | Moscow State University of Fine Chemical Technologies,Hackley School |
Pavel Mikhailovich Litvinov (Russian:Па́вел Миха́йлович Литви́нов; born 6 July 1940) is aRussian-born U.S. physicist, writer, teacher,human rights activist and formerSoviet-era dissident.
The grandson ofIvy Low andMaxim Litvinov,Joseph Stalin'sforeign minister during the 1930s, Pavel Litvinov was raised amongst theSoviet elite. As a schoolboy, he was devoted to thecult of Stalin, and was tapped, unsuccessfully, by theKGB to report on his parents Flora and Misha Litvinov (a story that is related by the journalistDavid Remnick in his bookLenin's Tomb).
After thedeath ofJoseph Stalin in 1953 and the return of family friends from the labour camps, Pavel grew disillusioned with the Soviet system. He had a short-lived marriage when he was seventeen. In his twenties, he became a physics teacher at the Institute for Chemical Technology. It was while he was working at the Institute that he became acquainted with a group of intellectuals who were following the show-trials of the dissidentsAndrei Sinyavsky andYuli Daniel. His immersion insamizdat literature at this time brought him into contact with the works ofAleksandr Solzhenitsyn,Varlam Shalamov andRobert Conquest.
He participated in petition campaigns in the USSR and compiled the samizdat collections "Justice or Punishment" (1967) and "The Trial of the Four" (1968, about the trial ofAlexander Ginzburg,Yuri Galanskov,Alexey Dobrovolsky, and Vera Lashkova). When Ginzburg and Galanskov were tried for publishing samizdat in 1967, Pavel Litvinov andLarisa Bogoraz released their famous "Appeal to World Community"; the first open appeal of Soviet dissidents to the West, it appealed to the international public to protest against the closed trial. The replies that he received from Soviet citizens were smuggled abroad and published in book form in 1969.[1] Most were sympathetic, though the collection also included hate mail that attacked Litvinov for being a Jew and for his supposed lack of patriotism. Litvinov's exchange of correspondence withStephen Spender inspired the formation of theWriters and Scholars Educational Trust and its journalIndex on Censorship.[2]
Over the following years, Litvinov became active in the dissident civil rights movement and was an editor of its regular samizdat bulletinChronicle of Current Events. The periodical, founded in 1968, documented searches, arrests, and court proceedings in Russia and other Soviet states. During 1967, he compiled a book on the trial ofVladimir Bukovsky and three others. Summoned to the headquarters of theKGB in October 1967, he was threatened with arrest if the book was published, but he ignored the threat and arranged for it to be published abroad asThe Demonstration in Pushkin Square. He compiled a similar book about theTrial of the Four.
On 25 August 1968, Litvinov was one of the participants in the1968 Red Square demonstration against theWarsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia that had taken place four days earlier. Among the others wereLarisa Bogoraz, a philologist, the poetsNatalya Gorbanevskaya andVadim Delaunay,Viktor Fainberg, an art critic, and Vladimir Dremlyuga, a history student. They raised banners in Czech and Russian expressing support for Czechoslovak independence and solidarity withAlexander Dubček, the Czechoslovak leader who was the architect of thePrague Spring. The KGB arrested the protesters and beat them; they were tried in secret that October. Litvinov was sentenced to five years' exile inChita, Zabaykalsky Krai,Siberia.
In 1974, after his return from exile, Litvinov and his wife Maya left the Soviet Union and travelled toVienna bytrain. From there, they relocated toRome before moving to theUnited States. In New York, Litvinov joined fellowémigré dissidentValery Chalidze in publishingA Chronicle of Human Rights in the USSR, which documented political repression.[3]: 79
Litvinov currently lives in theUnited States, where he taughtphysics andmathematics at theHackley School inTarrytown,New York from 1976 until his retirement in 2006.[4]
Pavel Litvinov is a son-in-law of the dissident and literary scholarLev Kopelev.[5] His son Dima Litvinov is an environmental activist withGreenpeace. In 2013, he was arrested as part of theGreenpeace Arctic Sunrise ship case.[5]
Pavel Litvinov is a member of the board of the Andrey Sakharov Foundation.[5]
In 2005 Pavel Litvinov participated in "They Chose Freedom", a four-part television documentary on the history of the Soviet dissident movement.
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