Olga Medvedkov

Olga L. Medvedkov (Russian: Ольга Львовна Медведкова, Olga Lvovna Medvedkova, born May 1949) is a Russian-American geography professor and peace activist. In 1982, Medvedkov and her husband Yuri were among the founders of the Group to Establish Trust between the USSR and the USA (known as Trust-Builders). The organization hoped to develop peaceful dialog between the superpowers during the Cold War. As it was independent from the official Soviet World Peace Council, group members were seen as dissidents and frequently followed and arrested by the police and the KGB. Despite Soviet suspicions of the Trust-Builders, the group gained support from Western anti-war activists. In the 1980s, various groups from Europe, Canada, and the US had their members meet with Medvedkov and her husband. On December 7, 1983,three members of the Trust Group between the USSR and the USA were arrested in Moscow: Olga Medvedkova, 33, an employee of the USSR Academy of Sciences, a candidate of geographical sciences; Valery Godyak, 41, a candidate of physical sciences, a member of the European Physical Society and the American Academy of Sciences, who was dismissed two years ago with the sanction of the Soviet authorities from his teaching job at Moscow University, and Olga Lusnikova, 27, an economist. The Trust Group members were accused of “disobeying the authorities”. They were detained by police officers outside the courthouse where the case of the previously arrested Trust Group member Oleg Radzinsky was being heard. Medvedkova, Godyak, and Lusnikova were accused of beating a police officer, although, in fact, they themselves were beaten at the police station after their arrest. International pressure and media campaigns called for her release. Although she was convicted, Medvedkov's sentence was suspended. She, her husband, and her children and parents were granted visas to emigrate in 1986. Relocating to Ohio, she became a professor of geography and director of the Russian studies program at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio.