Arnold Lockshin (born February 3, 1939) is an American-born Russian scientist. After he was dismissed from a position as a cancer researcher in Houston, Texas, he and his family received political asylum and citizenship in the Soviet Union. The film director Michael Lockshin is his son.
Lockshin was born in San Francisco. [1] His ancestors on his father's side were Soviet Jews who fled to escape antisemitic persecution. [2] He attended high school in Richmond, California, and graduated in 1956. He attended the University of California, Berkeley and earned an undergraduate degree in biochemistry. [3] He completed a doctorate in biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin. [4]
Lockshin performed cancer research at the USC School of Medicine between 1977 and 1980. From 1980 to 1986, Lockshin worked at the Stehlin Foundation, a cancer research facility associated with St. Joseph Hospital in Houston. He was terminated from that position. [1]
Leadership at the Stehlin Foundation said that he was fired because of his deteriorating work performance. Lockshin said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was involved in his firing and that he and his family had been the targets of death threats and other forms of harassment. [3] Lockshin said that he and his wife had long supported socialism and that he had previously been a Communist Party USA organizer. Dorothy Healey described his Party role as a district organizer, calling him "a rigid dogmatist". [5] He said that the government harassment was brought on by his political beliefs. [6] [7]
The USSR leadership provided them with the requested asylum, gave Lockshin an apartment in Moscow and assisted him in securing employment.[ citation needed ] Subsequently, he and his wife Lauren gave numerous interviews and press-conferences in Moscow accusing American secret services of persecuting dissidents in the United States. [8] In 1989 they published a book, in Russian, as well as English, titled Silent Terror: One family's history of political persecution in the United States. [9] [10]
In 1992 Lockshin received Russian citizenship by order of Russian President Boris Yeltsin.[ citation needed ] Lockshin continued to work in the Blokhin Oncological Scientific Center in Moscow as a research biologist until the late 1990s.
Subsequently, Arnold and Lauren disappeared from public view. Their current whereabouts are unknown. However, at least two of their children appear currently to live in Russia, including his daughter, Jennifer, who works at the State University – Higher School of Economics. Their son, Michael, is a Russian film director known for his film The Silver Skates . [11] [12] In an interview in 2017, Arnold Lockshin said that he had separated from his wife at some point after moving. [12]
On July 21, 2013, Arnold Lockshin appeared on a TV talk-show hosted by Igor Vittel on the Russian RBC channel and spoke in support of political asylum for Edward Snowden.[ citation needed ]
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Russian author and Soviet dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag prison system. He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature". His non-fiction work The Gulag Archipelago "amounted to a head-on challenge to the Soviet state" and sold tens of millions of copies.
The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation is a three-volume non-fiction series written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident. It was first published in 1973 by the Parisian publisher YMCA-Press, and it was translated into English and French the following year. It explores a vision of life in what is often known as the Gulag, the Soviet labour camp system. Solzhenitsyn constructed his highly detailed narrative from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and his own experience as a Gulag prisoner.
The Great Purge, or the Great Terror, also known as the Year of '37 and the Yezhovshchina, was Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin's campaign to consolidate power over the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Soviet state. The purges also sought to remove the remaining influence of Leon Trotsky. The term great purge was popularized by the historian Robert Conquest in his 1968 book The Great Terror, whose title was an allusion to the French Revolution's Reign of Terror.
Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva, later known as Lana Peters, was the youngest child and only daughter of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his second wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva. In 1967, she became an international sensation when she defected to the United States and, in 1978, became a naturalized citizen. From 1984 to 1986, she briefly returned to the Soviet Union and had her Soviet citizenship reinstated. She was Stalin's last surviving child.
Memorial is an international human rights organisation, founded in Russia during the fall of the Soviet Union to study and examine the human rights violations and other crimes committed under Joseph Stalin's reign. Subsequently, it expanded the scope of its research to cover the entire Soviet period. Memorial is the recipient of numerous awards, among others the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.
Oleg Vladimirovich Blokhin, or Oleh Volodymyrovych Blokhin, is a Ukrainian and Soviet former football player and manager. Regarded as one of the greatest footballers of his generation, Blokhin was a standout striker for Dynamo Kyiv and the Soviet Union.
Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn CBE was a Soviet KGB defector and author of two books about the long-term deception strategy of the KGB leadership. He was born in Pyriatyn, USSR. He provided "a wide range of intelligence to the CIA on the operations of most of the 'Lines' (departments) at the Helsinki and other residencies, as well as KGB methods of recruiting and running agents." He became an American citizen by 1984.
Throughout the history of the Soviet Union, tens of millions of people suffered political repression, which was an instrument of the state since the October Revolution. It culminated during the Stalin era, then declined, but it continued to exist during the "Khrushchev Thaw", followed by increased persecution of Soviet dissidents during the Brezhnev era, and it did not cease to exist until late in Mikhail Gorbachev's rule when it was ended in keeping with his policies of glasnost and perestroika.
Antanas Sniečkus was a Lithuanian communist politician who served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Lithuania from 15 August 1940 to 22 January 1974.
Neo-Stalinism is the promotion of positive views of Joseph Stalin's role in history, the partial re-establishing of Stalin's policies on certain or all issues, and nostalgia for the Stalinist period. Neo-Stalinism overlaps significantly with neo-Sovietism and Soviet nostalgia. Various definitions of the term have been given over the years. Neo-Stalinism is being actively promoted by Eurasianist currents in various post-Soviet states and official rehabilitation of Stalin has occurred in Russia under Vladimir Putin. Eurasianist philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, an influential neo-Stalinist ideologue in Russian elite circles, has praised Stalin as the “greatest personality in Russian history”, comparing him to Ivan the Terrible who established the Tsardom of Russia.
Arkady Nikolayevich Shevchenko was a Soviet diplomat who was the highest-ranking Soviet official to defect to the West.
Viktor Andriyovych Kravchenko was a Ukrainian-born Soviet defector, known for writing the best-selling book I Chose Freedom, published in 1946, about the realities of life in the Soviet Union.
Wolfgang Leonhard was a German political author and historian of the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic and Communism. A German Communist whose family had fled Hitler's Germany and who was educated in the Soviet Union, after World War II Leonhard became one of the founders and leaders of the German Democratic Republic until he became disillusioned and fled in 1949, first defecting to Yugoslavia and then moving to West Germany in 1950 and later to the United Kingdom. In 1956 he moved to the United States, where he was a popular and influential professor at Yale University from 1966 to 1987, teaching the history of communism and the Soviet Union, topics about which he wrote several books. After the Cold War ended, he returned to Germany.
Ernst Kolman or Arnošt Yaromirovich Kolman ; 6 December 1892 – 22 January 1979) was a Marxist philosopher, who renounced his former activities as an ideological enforcer in Soviet science. At the age of 84 he sought asylum in Sweden and published a retraction of his previous activity.
Pope Pius XII and Russia describes relations of the Vatican with the Soviet Union, Russia, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Eastern Catholic Churches resulting in the eradication of the Church in most parts of the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era. Most persecutions of the Church occurred during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII.
Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin was a Soviet secret police official who served as the chief executioner of the NKVD under the administrations of Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolay Yezhov, and Lavrentiy Beria.
Glenn Michael Souther, also known as Mikhail Yevgenyevich Orlov, was an American sailor who became a Soviet intelligence officer after defecting to the Eastern Bloc in 1986.
Grigory Aleksandrovich Tokaev also known as Grigory Tokaty; was a Soviet rocket scientist and politician. Eventually turned anti-communist, he defected to the United Kingdom and became a long-standing critic of Stalin's USSR.
The Order of Lenin was an award named after Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the October Revolution. It was established by the Central Executive Committee on 6 April 1930. The order was the highest civilian decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union. The order was awarded to:
Michael Lockshin is a film director and writer.
