[CivilSoc] Russian Reformers Awarded Prestigious Fellowships

[Center for Civil Society International]

This item is from the Russian Environmental Digest list, 27 August -
2 September 2001, Vol. 3, No. 35. The so-called REDfiles bills itself
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______________________________________________________________ US
Honors Russian Nuclear Whistleblower, Civil Rights Activist Agence
France Presse, August 31, 2001
The United States on Friday awarded academic fellowships to two
prominent Russian reformers, a nuclear waste whistleblower who was
tried for treason and a civil and civil rights campaigner who has
been active in seeking an end to the conflict in Chechnya.
With the fellowships, Alexander Nikitin and William Smirnov will
conduct research on human rights and conflict resolution at the
Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars,
the State Department said. Nikitin was arrested in February 1996 for
exposing nuclear pollution in Russia's Northern Fleet, and charged
with treason for giving a Norway-based environmental group classified
information on the navy's failure to observe international standards
in handling nuclear waste.
He was acquitted but prosecutors sought to throw out the verdict and
his legal ordeal came to an end only in 1999 after the 11-member
presidium of Russia's Supreme Court, Russia's top legal body, threw
out a last-ditch appeal from the prosecution.
Smirnov, a political science professor at the Russian Academy of
Sciences, who has written several books on comparative politics, law
and democracy, has been the vice-chairman of Russian President
Vladimir Putin's commission on human rights commission since
September 2000.
The two men were awarded the Galina Starovoitova fellowship which is
named for one of the former Soviet Union's leading specialists on
ethnicity who was elected in 1995 to the Russian State Duma and
unsuccessfully ran for the presidency a year later.
Starovoitova was killed three years later by unknown assassins.