Fridman was one of the 46 people who signed "the letter of the 46" in 1968 protesting against the closed court proceedings of four Moscow dissidents : A. Ginzburg, Yu. Galanskov, A. Dobrovolskii, and V. Lashkova, addressed to the Supreme Court of Russian Federal Republic and to the Attorney General of the USSR. The text of the letter was published in the New York Times on March 23, 1968. A massive internal political campaign of repressions followed; Fridman was fired from Novosibirsk University, but continued to hold a position at the Institute of Nuclear Physics.