Bakhmina as a “Seed for Civil Society”
Below is an excerpt from an editorial published in the Boston Globe. The New York Times also ran a piece, the petition can be signed here, and other blog material read here, here, and here (Pasko wrote his piece back on Jan.24, 2007).
Recently, the Bakhmina case took a new turn. In September, a former classmate of Bakhmina’s posted an open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev asking him to pardon Bakhmina. Several days later, an Internet petition was launched. By late October, the petition had more than 60,000 signatures. On Oct. 30, in a rare media breakthrough, the case was discussed in the television debate show “K barieru!” (“Challenge to a Duel”), with writer Maria Arbatova facing off against veteran dissident Valeria Novodvorskaya.