Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. In 1981, he was elected as a foreign member of the Royal Society. In 2017, Shafarevich was awarded the Leonhard Euler Gold Medal by the Russian Academy of Sciences. Soviet politics Shafarevich came into conflict with the Soviet authorities in the early 1950s but was protected by Ivan Petrovsky, the Rector of Moscow University. He belonged to a group of Pochvennichestvo-influenced dissidents who endorsed the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Shafarevich published a book, The Socialist Phenomenon (French edition 1975, English edition 1980), which was cited by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his 1978 address to Harvard University. In the 1970s, Shafarevich, with Valery Chalidze, Grigori Podyapolski and Andrei Tverdokhlebov, became one of Andrei Sakharov's human rights investigators and so was dismissed from Moscow University. Shafarevich opposed political interference in universities. The Socialist Phenomenon Shafarevich's book The Socialist Phenomenon, which was published in the US by Harper & Row in 1980, analyzed numerous examples of socialism from ancient times to various medieval heresies and a variety of modern thinkers and socialist states. From those examples, he claimed that all the basic principles of socialist ideology derive from the urge to suppress individualism. The Socialist Phenomenon consists of three major parts: Chiliastic Socialism: Identifies socialist ideas amongst the ancient Greeks, especially Plato, in numerous medieval heretic groups such as the Cathars, Brethren of the Free Spirit, Taborites, Anabaptists, in various religious groups during the English Civil War, in modern writers such as Thomas More, Tommaso Campanella and numerous Enlightenment writers in 18th-century France. State Socialism: Describes the socialism of the Incas, the Jesuit state in Paraguay, Mesopotamia, Egypt and China. Analysis: Identifies three persistent abolition themes in socialism: the abolition of private property, the abolition of the family, and the abolition of religion (mainly but not exclusively Christianity) Shafarevich argued that ancient socialism (such as Mesopotamia and Egypt) was not ideological, as an ideology socialism was a reaction to the emergence of individualism in the Axial Age. He compared Thomas More's (Utopia) and Tommaso Campanella's (City of the Sun) visions with what is known about the Inca Empire and concluded that there are striking similarities. He claimed that we become persons through our relationship with God and argued that socialism is essentially nihilistic and is unconsciously motivated by a death instinct. He concluded that we have the choice of pursuing death or life. Religious views Shafarevich adhered to Russian Orthodox Christianity