Elena Bonner and Sergei Kovalev

Elena Bonner and Sergei Kovalev bridge two eras in the struggle for Russian democracy: the heroic era of dissent against Soviet totalitarianism and the more ambiguous era of transition to a different system, the nature of which remains uncertain. They alone among the heroes of the first era have become leaders in the second. Together they refute the notion that the politics of truth are anachronistic in the era of politics. The moral authority and unswerving commitment to human rights, which they exemplified as dissidents, are attributes Russia sorely needs if the current transition is to lead to democracy and not to some new form of autocracy.

Kovalev and Bonner each played a distinctive role in the human rights movement, which emerged as a significant force in the Soviet Union in the late 1960s. Kovalev was a founder in 1969 of the first human rights association, the Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR, and later became the principal link to the dissident movement in Lithuania- He was arrested in 1975 and tried in Vilnius on the charge of participation in the publication of both the Moscow-based Chronicle of Current Events and the Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania. He served seven years in a labor camp and three years in internal exile.

Elena Bonner was of course chiefly known in this period as the wife, chief of staff, and ambassador to the world at large of Dr. Andrei Sakharov, the Nobel Laureate recognized as the father of the Soviet dissident movement. She represented him at the Nobel ceremony in Oslo in 1975 and, following his internal exile in 1980, was his sole link to Moscow and the West until May 1984 when she, too, was barred from leaving Gorky. Their exile in Gorky (described in her book Alone Together) - and the era of Soviet dissent - came to an end in December 1986 with Gorbachev's famous call to Dr. Sakharov inviting him to return to Moscow to participate in changing Soviet society.

After Andrei Sakharov's death in December 1989, Elena Bonner continued the campaign for democracy and human rights in Russia. She joined the defenders of the Russian parliament during the attempted coup of August 1991 and tent her support to Yeltsin during the constitutional crisis in early 1993. During this period she also established the Sakharov Archives to preserve the legacy of the man who remains the most powerful symbol of democracy in post Soviet Russia.

The turning point for Elena Bonner came in December 1994 with the Russian war in Chechnya and the massive civilian casualties caused by indiscriminate bombing of Grozny, the capital city. She resigned from President Yeltsin's Human Rights Commission and warned of a reversion back to autocracy.

The war in Chechnya also brought Sergei Kovalev to the forefront of the debate over the future of Russia. In his capacity as both Chairman of the President's Human Rights Commission and human rights commissioner for the Russian parliament, he traveled to Grozny and, at great personal risk, gave personal witness to the destruction taking place there. His daily reports via telephone and Russian television galvanized Russian public opinion against the war. While his outspokenness and independence aroused his opponents - in March he was removed by the Russian Duma from his position as human rights commissioner - Izvestia hailed him in the following terms as its Man of the Year: "Just when the bomb blasts from Chechnya seemed to be drowning out even the strongest protests, all the world suddenly heard the quiet, Sakharov-like voice of this man from the very epicenter of events."

The qualities exemplified by Elena Bonner and Sergei Kovalev -courage, independence, honesty and commitment to principle- fit uneasily into the current turmoil of Russian politics. But if Russia, with its long history of tragedy and heroism, is to move from totalitarianism to democracy, these are the virtues that must be nurtured and reinforced. No one in Russia today can do more to bring this about than these two brave individuals, who bring a special moral authority to the struggle for Russian democracy.