Brandeis' Andrei Sakharov Archives are facing a potential closing if federal funds authorized last year do not arrive.The Archives, housed in the Brandeis library, contain voluminous amounts of deceased Russian physicist and Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov's personal diaries and correspondence, along with documents from other dissidents of the Soviet Union. A section of the Russian Democracy Act of 2002, passed last October, authorizes up to $1.5 million in federal grants to sustain the Archives. But some now contend that if this grant does not occur, the Archives may cease to exist.

Benjamin Nathans, a professor of Russian history at the University of Pennsylvania, defended the importance of the Archives in an op-ed printed in the August 29 edition of the International Herald-Tribune. In his op-ed, Professor Nathans pressed Congress to appropriate the funds for the Sakharov Archives. "To shut down this unique and growing collection for the sake of temporary belt-tightening would be both tragic and short-sighted. It would send a terrible signal to today's Russia, where Sakharov's legacy is mixed at best," he wrote.

Professor Nathans further explained the gravity of the situation in an interview last week. "If funding were to disappear, my understanding is that Brandeis would physically maintain the Archives, but there would be no archival staff," he said. Professor Nathans also went on to emphasize the difficulty in navigating the Sakharov archives without assistance or personal expertise.

Dr. Alexander Gribanov, archivist for the Sakharov collection, concurred with Professor Nathans. "They will close us, no question about it," Gribanov said.

He detailed the fundraising history of the Archives, saying that total contributions, including a startup grant from the MacArthur Foundation, total approximately $1.5 million. However, Dr. Gribanov also pointed out that funding has slowed in recent years.

"Last year, we had no money at all. There was a small grant from the Carnegie (Corporation) and the International Center for Ethics, but it stops on Sept. 30," he said.

So far, it appears that no money is being appropriated for the Sakharov Archives in fiscal year 2004. Professor Nathans and Dr. Gribanov pointed out that the House Foreign Operations Appropriations bill contained no provisions for the Archives, and an employee of the Senate Appropriations Committee stated that no requests had been made in the Senate's version of the Foreign Operations bill. Calls to the offices of Massachusetts Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, who would typically make requests on behalf of Massachusetts institutions, were not returned.

Both Professor Nathans and Dr. Gribanov assert that the federal funds are badly needed to not only preserve the Sakharov Archives, but also to finance its expansion. "Dissidents are dying. It's important that their papers are preserved," Professor Nathans said.

On the fate of the archives, Dr. Gribanov said one option is "to stop paying Sakharov Archive employees and move (documents) into Special Collections."

Gribanov also mentioned a potential transfer of documents from Concerned Scientists, a human rights advocacy group. "They want to transfer their archives and future records here, which is extremely prestigious and important for the University, (but) they won't deal with Special Collections," Dr. Gribanov said, offering the possibility that Concerned Scientists would strike a deal with another school.

Tatiana Yankelevich, assistant director of the Sakharov Archives, spent part of last week in Washington lobbying Congress to approve funding, but could not be contacted in time for this article. Until a finalized version of the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill is passed into law, the future of the Sakharov Archives remains uncertain.

Andrei Sakharov was born in 1921 into a well-to-do Moscow family. After being exempted from military service during World War II, he was recruited into the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons research project. His research during this time is recognized as the foundation of the USSR's production of the hydrogen bomb.

Sakharov became publicly critical of the USSR during the 1960s. Along with two dozen other scientists and artists, he panned Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev's rehabilitation of the public image of Josef Stalin. In 1968, he wrote an essay slamming the Soviet record on human rights and on totalitarian system. This piece, published in The New York Times, is now known as the "Sakharov Doctrine."

Despite his negative assessments of Soviet life during the 1960s, Sakharov was not punished for his dissidence at first. He found a great deal of success in the 1960s and 70s, culminating in the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize for his actions on behalf of Soviet prisoners. In 1980 though, he was expelled from Moscow until Mikhail Gorbachev allowed him to return in 1986.

Sakharov died in 1989. His wife, Elena Bonner, still lives in Moscow and sits on the board of the Archives.