Political Activities
Shafarevich came into conflict with the Soviet authorities in the early 1950s, but was protected by Ivan Petrovsky, the Rector of the Moscow University. He belonged to a group of dissidents who endorsed the Orthodox Christian tradition. Shafarevich published a book, The Socialist Phenomenon (French edition 1975 English edition 1980), which was cited by Solzhenitsyn in his 1978 address to Harvard University.
In the 1970s Shafarevich, with Valery Chalidze, Grigori Podyapolski and Andrei Tverdokhlebov, became one of Sakharov's human rights investigators, and was consequently dismissed from Moscow University. Shafarevich opposed political interference in universities. The algebraic geometer Miles Reid gives the example of Shafarevich asserting that plagiarism and poor work was being ignored in a doctorate obtained by a Communist Party functionary.
Read more about this topic: Igor Shafarevich
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