Arnold Lockshin

Arnold Lockshin is a biochemist and cancer researcher whose political identity became central to an international controversy during the late Cold War. A longtime socialist and Communist Party USA organizer, he said he faced harassment and threats tied to his beliefs after losing a research position, and he used his case to argue that political repression could operate inside the United States.

In 1986, he and his family sought and received political asylum in the Soviet Union, where they gave public interviews and press conferences describing their departure as escape from persecution. He later obtained Russian citizenship and continued to appear publicly at intervals in discussions of asylum and political dissent.