This historic exhibit is dedicated to those who perished in the struggle for human rights, and to those who survived to continue the work. It will be opened at an informal reception on Thursday, January 28th, at 4 PM, at the Slosberg Recital Hall on the Brandeis Campus.

Dr. Elena Bonner, widow of Andrei Sakharov, will deliver brief remarks. The reception and the exhibit are free and will be open to the public. The exhibit will be on view from its opening on January 28th to March 1st.

The ultimate lesson of the twentieth century is that totalitarian regimes have sought and have often succeeded in destroying humanity as a collective of traditional qualities and values, and as individual human beings. This onslaught against humanity has repeatedly engendered a resistance, a resistance that is not some abstract political force, but one that bares a human face.

FACES OF RESISTANCE IN THE SOVIET UNION will present to its audience the human face of the resistance movement in the Soviet Union. While these images cannot cover the movement in its entirety, an effort was made to reflect the full diversity of the resistance movement in this exhibit. The people portrayed on the photographs - poets and industrial workers, farmers and retired soldiers, scientists and scholars - came from different parts of the empire, from different social and professional backgrounds. The common thread that binds them is that they rose up for religious and intellectual freedom, for national independence and for cultural autonomy. They combined their professional skills and personal experience, to find a path away from the bloodshed and catastrophe that was in store for a society that had lost its human face.

In the XX century's history, Andrei Sakharov played a unique role in worldwide struggle for human rights and against the communist totalitarianism. His courageous and selfless stand for human dignity, freedom of his spirit and intellectual integrity even in the face of adversity and threat to his life earned him the Nobel Peace Prize of 1975, not to speak of admiration and respect of thousands of people all over the world. His untimely death in 1989 took away a man whose intellectual scope, moral compass and tolerance is sorely missed today.

The Archives were created on the foundation of Nobel Peace Prize laureate's personal papers. These documents were smuggled from the USSR in the 1970-80s, saved from the KGB by the efforts of many courageous people, and donated to Brandeis University by his widow Elena Bonner, for the purpose of preserving Sakharov's legacy.

It is with this very purpose in mind a concert is being organized to benefit the Andrei Sakharov Archives and to help create the Sakharov Human Rights Center. The concert will take place on Saturday, May 22, 1999, in the historic Jordan Hall of the New England Conservatory, one of the most beloved and prestigious music auditoriums in Boston. By a symbolic coincidence, Sakharov's birthday is May 21st. In 1999, he would have been 78.

Performers include Maestro Mstislav Rostropovich, Maestro Vladimir Spivakov, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt, the Lydian String Quartet, pianists Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Yehudi Wyner, Sergei Bezrodny, and a brilliant child prodigy, Bronika Kushkuley. All of the musicians are donating their time and energy to the concert dedicated to the memory of Andrei Sakharov. It was Sakharov's conviction that genuine peace and human rights are indivisible. This unique musical event will help preserve Andrei Sakharov's legacy of peace and human rights through the preservation of his papers and the spread of his ideas.

Unfortunately, the general admission tickets have been sold out. A small number of tickets are still available at the donor's price of $250. For further information, please call Brandeis University at (781)736-3013.