Moscow Helsinki Group
Encyclopedia
The Moscow Helsinki Group (also known as the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group) is an influential human rights
monitoring non-governmental organization
, originally established in what was then the Soviet Union
; it still operates in Russia
.
It was founded in 1976 to monitor the Soviet Union's compliance with the recently-signed Helsinki Final Act
of 1975, which included clauses calling for the recognition of universal human rights. Its pioneering efforts inspired the formation of similar groups in other Warsaw Pact
countries and support groups in the West. In Czechoslovakia, Charter 77
was founded in January 1977; members of that group would later play key roles in the overthrow of the communist dictatorship
in Czechoslovakia. In Poland, a Helsinki Watch Group was founded in September 1979. Eventually, the collection of Helsinki monitoring groups inspired by the Moscow Helsinki Group formed the International Helsinki Federation.
On May 12, 1976, physicist Yuri Orlov announced the formation of the "Public Group to Promote Fulfillment of the Helsinki Accords in the USSR" (Общественная группа содействия выполнению хельсинкских соглашений в СССР, Московская группа "Хельсинки") at a press-conference held at the apartment of Andrei Sakharov
. The newly inaugurated NGO was meant to monitor Soviet compliance with the Helsinki Final Act. The eleven founders of the group also included Lyudmila Alexeyeva
, Mikhail Bernshtam, Yelena Bonner
, Alexander Ginzburg
, Pyotr Grigorenko
, Alexander Korchak, Malva Landa, Anatoly Marchenko
, Gregory Rosenstein, Vitaly Rubin, and Anatoly Shcharansky. Ten other people, including Sofia Kalistratova
, Naum Meiman
, Yuri Mniukh, Victor Nekipelov, Tatiana Osipova, Felix Serebrov, Vladimir Slepak, Leonard Ternovsky, and Yuri Yarym-Agaev joined the Group later.
The group's goal was to uphold the government of the Soviet Union to implement the commitment to human rights it had made in the Helsinki documents. Their group's legal validity was based on the provision in the Helsinki Final Act, Principle VII, which establishes the rights of individuals to know and act upon their rights and duties.
The Soviet authorities responded with severe repression of the group's members over the following three years. They used tactics that included arrests and imprisonment, internal exile, confinement to psychiatric hospitals, and forced emigration. On 18 October 1976, 13 Jewish refuseniks came to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet
to petition for explanations of denials of their right to emigrate from the U.S.S.R., as affirmed under the Helsinki Final Act. Failing to receive any answer, they assembled in the reception room of the Presidium on the following day. After a few hours of waiting, they were seized by the agents of militia
, taken outside of the city limits and beaten. Two of them were kept in police custody. In the next week, following an unsuccessful meeting between the activists' leaders and the Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs, General Nikolay Shchelokov, these abuses of law inspired several mass demonstrations in the Soviet capital. On Monday, October 25, 22 activists, including Mark Azbel, Felix Kandel
, Alexander Lerner
, Ida Nudel
, Anatoly Shcharansky, Vladimir Slepak, and Michael Zeleny, were arrested in Moscow on their way to the next demonstration. They were convicted of hooliganism
and incarcerated in the detention center Beryozka
and other penitentiaries in and around Moscow. An unrelated party, artist Victor Motko, arrested in Dzerzhinsky Square on the account of wearing a woolly black beard, was detained along with the protesters in recognition of his prior attempts to emigrate from the U.S.S.R. These events were covered by several British and American journalists including David K. Shipler
, Craig R. Whitney, and Christopher S. Wren. The October demonstrations and arrests coincided with the end of the 1976 United States presidential election. On October 25, U.S. Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter
expressed his support of the protesters in a telegram sent to Scharansky, and urged the Soviet authorities to release them. (See Léopold Unger, Christian Jelen, Le grand retour, A. Michel 1977; Феликс Кандель, Зона отдыха, или Пятнадцать суток на размышление, Типография Ольшанский Лтд, Иерусалим, 1979; Феликс Кандель, Врата исхода нашего: Девять страниц истории, Effect Publications, Tel-Aviv, 1980.) On 9 November 1976, a week after Carter won the Presidential election, the Soviet authorities released all but two of the previously arrested protesters. Several more were subsequently rearrested and incarcerated or exiled to Siberia.
On 1 June 1978, refuseniks Vladimir and Maria Slepak stood on the eighth story balcony of their apartment building. By then they had been denied permission to emigrate for over 8 years. Vladimir displayed a banner that read "Let us go to our son in Israel
". His wife Maria held a banner that read "Visa for my son". Fellow refusenik and Helsinki activist Ida Nudel held a similar display on the balcony of her own apartmemt. They were all arrested and charged with malicious hooliganism in violation of Article 206.2 of the Penal Code of the Soviet Union
. The Helsinki Group protested their arrests in circulars dated 5 and 15 June of that year. (http://www.mhg.ru/history/14DB1C9) Vladimir Slepak and Ida Nudel were convicted of all charges. They served 5 and 4 years in Siberian exile. (http://www.angelfire.com/sc3/soviet_jews_exodus/SovietNews_s/Gilbert_Secrets.shtml, http://www.eleven.co.il/article/15420)
along with a 47 year-old self-educated worker Feliks Serebrov, a 30 year-old computer programmer Vyacheslav Bakhmin and Irina Kuplun established the Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes. The Commission was formally linked to and constituted as an offshoot of the Moscow Helsinki Group. The commission was composed of five open members and several anonymous ones, including a few psychiatrists who, at great danger to themselves, conducted their own independent examinations of cases of alleged psychiatric abuse. The leader of the commission was Alexandr Podrabinek who published a book Punitive Medicine containing a ‘white list’ of two hundred of prisoners of conscience in Soviet mental hospitals and a ‘black list’ of over one hundred medical staff and doctors who took part in committing people to psychiatric facilities for political reasons.
The psychiatric consultants to the Commission were Dr Alexander Voloshanovich and Dr Anatoly Koryagin
. The task stated by the Commission was not primarily to diagnose persons or to declare people who sought help mentally ill or mentally healthy. However, in some instances individuals who came for help to the Commission were examined by a psychiatrist who provided help to the Commission and made a precise diagnosis of their mental condition. At first it was psychiatrist Aleksandr Voloshanovich from the Moscow suburb of Dolgoprudny
, who made these diagnoses. But when he had been compelled to emigrate on 7 February 1980, his work was continued by the Kharkov psychiatrist Anatoly Koryagin
. Koryagin's contribution was to examine former and potential victims of political abuse of psychiatry by writing psychiatric diagnoses in which he deduced that the individual was not suffering from any mental disease. Those reports were employed as a means of defense: if the individual was picked up again and committed to mental hospital, the Commission had vindication that the hospitalization served non-medical purposes. Also some foreign psychiatrists including the Swedish psychiatrist Harald Blomberg and British psychiatrist Gery Low-Beer helped in examining former or potential victims of psychiatric abuse. The Commission used those reports in its work and publicly referred to them when it was essential.
The commission gathered as much information as possible of victims of psychiatric terror in the Soviet Union and published this information in their Information Bulletins. For the four years of its existence, the Commission published more than 1,500 pages of documentation including 22 Information Bulletins in which over 400 cases of the political abuse of psychiatry were documented in great detail. Summaries of the Information Bulletins were published in the key samizdat publication, the Chronicle of Current Events. The Information Bulletins were sent to the Soviet officials, with request to verify the data and notify the Commission if mistakes were found, and to the West, where human rights defenders used them in the course of their campaigns. The Information Bulletins were also used to provide the dissident movement with information about Western protests against the political abuse. Peter Reddaway said that after he had studied official documents in the Soviet archives, including minutes from meetings of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
, it became evident to him that Soviet officials at high levels paid close attention to foreign responses to these cases, and if someone was discharged, all dissidents felt the pressure had played a significant part and the more foreign pressure the better.
Over fifty victims examined by psychiatrists of the Moscow Working Commission between 1977 and 1981 and the files smuggled to the West by Vladimir Bukovsky
in 1971 were the material which convinced most psychiatric associations that there was distinctly something wrong in the USSR.
The Soviet authorities responded aggressively. Members of the group were being threatened, followed, subjected to house searches and interrogations. In the end, the members of the Commission were subjected to various terms and types of punishments: Alexander Podrabinek was sentenced to 5 years’ internal exile, Irina Grivnina to 5 years’ internal exile, Vyacheslav Bakhmin to 3 years in a labor camp, Dr Leonard Ternovsky to 3 years’ labor camp, Dr Anatoly Koryagin to 8 years’ imprisonment and labor camp and 4 years’ internal exile, Dr Alexander Voloshanovich was sent to voluntary exile.
In the autumn of 1978, the British Royal College of Psychiatrists
carried a resolution in which it reiterated its concern over the abuse of psychiatry for the suppression of dissent in the USSR and applauded the Soviet citizens, who had taken an open stance against such abuse, by expressing its admiration and support especially for Semyon Gluzman, Alexander Podrabinek, Alexander Voloshanovich, and Vladimir Moskalkov.
By the end of 1981, only Elena Bonner, Sofia Kalistratova
and Naum Meiman
were free, as a result of the unremitting campaign of persecution. The Moscow Helsinki Group was forced to cease operation.
The dissolution of the Moscow Helsinki Group was officially announced by Elena Bonner on 8 September 1982.
, it was re-established. A group of nine human rights activists, led by Larisa Bogoraz
, the widow of Anatoly Marchenko, formally restarted the group on July 28, 1989. Included among the re-founders were Yuri Orlov and Lyudmila Alexeyeva
, both part of the original group. Other prominent members are Larisa Bogoraz
, Sergey Kovalev, Viatcheslav Bakhmin, Lev Timofeev
, Henry Reznick, Lev Ponomarev, Gleb Yakunin
, and Aleksei Simonov.
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
monitoring non-governmental organization
Non-governmental organization
A non-governmental organization is a legally constituted organization created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any government. The term originated from the United Nations , and is normally used to refer to organizations that do not form part of the government and are...
, originally established in what was then the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
; it still operates in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
.
It was founded in 1976 to monitor the Soviet Union's compliance with the recently-signed Helsinki Final Act
Helsinki Accords
thumb|300px|[[Erich Honecker]] and [[Helmut Schmidt]] in Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Helsinki 1975....
of 1975, which included clauses calling for the recognition of universal human rights. Its pioneering efforts inspired the formation of similar groups in other Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...
countries and support groups in the West. In Czechoslovakia, Charter 77
Charter 77
Charter 77 was an informal civic initiative in communist Czechoslovakia from 1976 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. Founding members and architects were Václav Havel, Jan Patočka, Zdeněk Mlynář, Jiří Hájek, and Pavel Kohout. Spreading the text of the document was...
was founded in January 1977; members of that group would later play key roles in the overthrow of the communist dictatorship
Dictatorship
A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual, the dictator. It has three possible meanings:...
in Czechoslovakia. In Poland, a Helsinki Watch Group was founded in September 1979. Eventually, the collection of Helsinki monitoring groups inspired by the Moscow Helsinki Group formed the International Helsinki Federation.
Details
Helsinki monitoring efforts began in the Soviet Union shortly after the publication of the Helsinki Final Act in Soviet newspapers.On May 12, 1976, physicist Yuri Orlov announced the formation of the "Public Group to Promote Fulfillment of the Helsinki Accords in the USSR" (Общественная группа содействия выполнению хельсинкских соглашений в СССР, Московская группа "Хельсинки") at a press-conference held at the apartment of Andrei Sakharov
Andrei Sakharov
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was a Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. He earned renown as the designer of the Soviet Union's Third Idea, a codename for Soviet development of thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the...
. The newly inaugurated NGO was meant to monitor Soviet compliance with the Helsinki Final Act. The eleven founders of the group also included Lyudmila Alexeyeva
Lyudmila Alexeyeva
Lyudmila Mikhailovna Alexeyeva is a Russian historian, human rights activist, founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group, and one of the few veterans of the Soviet dissident movement still active in modern Russia.-Soviet period:...
, Mikhail Bernshtam, Yelena Bonner
Yelena Bonner
Yelena Bonner was a human rights activist in the former Soviet Union and wife of the noted physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov. During her decades as a dissident, Bonner was noted for her characteristic blunt honesty and courage.-Youth:...
, Alexander Ginzburg
Alexander Ginzburg
Alexander Ilyich Ginzburg , was a Russian journalist, poet, human rights activist and dissident.During the Soviet period, Ginzburg edited the samizdat poetry almanac Sintaksis. Between 1961 and 1969 he was sentenced three times to labor camps...
, Pyotr Grigorenko
Pyotr Grigorenko
Petro Grigorenko or Petro Hryhorovych Hryhorenko or Pyotr Grigoryevich Grigorenko was a high-ranked Soviet Army commander of Ukrainian descent, later a prominent Soviet human rights activist, dissident and writer.-Early life:Petro Grigorenko was born in a village of rural Zaporizhzhia Oblast,...
, Alexander Korchak, Malva Landa, Anatoly Marchenko
Anatoly Marchenko
Anatoly Tikhonovich Marchenko was an influential and well-known Soviet dissident, author, and human rights campaigner...
, Gregory Rosenstein, Vitaly Rubin, and Anatoly Shcharansky. Ten other people, including Sofia Kalistratova
Sofia Kalistratova
Sofiya Vasilyevna Kalistratova , also known as Sofia Kallistratova September 1907 – 5 December 1989) was a public defense lawyer in the Soviet Union...
, Naum Meiman
Naum Meiman
Naum S. Meiman was a Soviet mathematician, and dissident. His is known for his work in complex analysis, partial differential equations, and mathematical physics, as well as for his dissident activity, in particular, for being a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group.-Life:In 1932 he graduated...
, Yuri Mniukh, Victor Nekipelov, Tatiana Osipova, Felix Serebrov, Vladimir Slepak, Leonard Ternovsky, and Yuri Yarym-Agaev joined the Group later.
The group's goal was to uphold the government of the Soviet Union to implement the commitment to human rights it had made in the Helsinki documents. Their group's legal validity was based on the provision in the Helsinki Final Act, Principle VII, which establishes the rights of individuals to know and act upon their rights and duties.
The Soviet authorities responded with severe repression of the group's members over the following three years. They used tactics that included arrests and imprisonment, internal exile, confinement to psychiatric hospitals, and forced emigration. On 18 October 1976, 13 Jewish refuseniks came to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet
Presidium of the Supreme Soviet
The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was a Soviet governmental institution – a permanent body of the Supreme Soviets . This body was of the all-Union level , as well as in all Soviet republics and autonomous republics...
to petition for explanations of denials of their right to emigrate from the U.S.S.R., as affirmed under the Helsinki Final Act. Failing to receive any answer, they assembled in the reception room of the Presidium on the following day. After a few hours of waiting, they were seized by the agents of militia
Militia
The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
, taken outside of the city limits and beaten. Two of them were kept in police custody. In the next week, following an unsuccessful meeting between the activists' leaders and the Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs, General Nikolay Shchelokov, these abuses of law inspired several mass demonstrations in the Soviet capital. On Monday, October 25, 22 activists, including Mark Azbel, Felix Kandel
Felix Kandel
Felix Kandel is a Russian-born writer, residing in Jerusalem, Israel.-Early life:He was born in 1932 in Moscow, Soviet Union. In 1950 he was admitted to the Moscow Aeronautic Institute, and graduated 5 years later. During his studies he and a classmate started writing sketches and directing...
, Alexander Lerner
Alexander Lerner
Alexander Yakovlevich Lerner , scientist and Soviet refusenik.- Biography :...
, Ida Nudel
Ida Nudel
Ida Nudel is a former refusenik and an Israeli activist. She was known as the "Guardian Angel" for her efforts to help the "Prisoners of Zion" in the Soviet Union.-Biography:...
, Anatoly Shcharansky, Vladimir Slepak, and Michael Zeleny, were arrested in Moscow on their way to the next demonstration. They were convicted of hooliganism
Hooliganism
Hooliganism refers to unruly, destructive, aggressive and bullying behaviour. Such behaviour is commonly associated with sports fans. The term can also apply to general rowdy behaviour and vandalism, often under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs....
and incarcerated in the detention center Beryozka
Beryozka
Beriozka was a twin chain of state-run retail stores in the Russian SFSR that sold goods for hard currency. Beriozkas sold goods that were either unavailable or more expensive in regular shops...
and other penitentiaries in and around Moscow. An unrelated party, artist Victor Motko, arrested in Dzerzhinsky Square on the account of wearing a woolly black beard, was detained along with the protesters in recognition of his prior attempts to emigrate from the U.S.S.R. These events were covered by several British and American journalists including David K. Shipler
David K. Shipler
David K. Shipler is an American author who won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1987 for Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land...
, Craig R. Whitney, and Christopher S. Wren. The October demonstrations and arrests coincided with the end of the 1976 United States presidential election. On October 25, U.S. Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
expressed his support of the protesters in a telegram sent to Scharansky, and urged the Soviet authorities to release them. (See Léopold Unger, Christian Jelen, Le grand retour, A. Michel 1977; Феликс Кандель, Зона отдыха, или Пятнадцать суток на размышление, Типография Ольшанский Лтд, Иерусалим, 1979; Феликс Кандель, Врата исхода нашего: Девять страниц истории, Effect Publications, Tel-Aviv, 1980.) On 9 November 1976, a week after Carter won the Presidential election, the Soviet authorities released all but two of the previously arrested protesters. Several more were subsequently rearrested and incarcerated or exiled to Siberia.
On 1 June 1978, refuseniks Vladimir and Maria Slepak stood on the eighth story balcony of their apartment building. By then they had been denied permission to emigrate for over 8 years. Vladimir displayed a banner that read "Let us go to our son in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
". His wife Maria held a banner that read "Visa for my son". Fellow refusenik and Helsinki activist Ida Nudel held a similar display on the balcony of her own apartmemt. They were all arrested and charged with malicious hooliganism in violation of Article 206.2 of the Penal Code of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. The Helsinki Group protested their arrests in circulars dated 5 and 15 June of that year. (http://www.mhg.ru/history/14DB1C9) Vladimir Slepak and Ida Nudel were convicted of all charges. They served 5 and 4 years in Siberian exile. (http://www.angelfire.com/sc3/soviet_jews_exodus/SovietNews_s/Gilbert_Secrets.shtml, http://www.eleven.co.il/article/15420)
The Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry For Political Purposes
In January 1977, Alexandr PodrabinekAlexandr Podrabinek
Alexandr Podrabinek is a Russian journalist, human rights activist and editor-in-chief of Prima information agency. He is a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism.-Dissident activities in the Soviet Union:...
along with a 47 year-old self-educated worker Feliks Serebrov, a 30 year-old computer programmer Vyacheslav Bakhmin and Irina Kuplun established the Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes. The Commission was formally linked to and constituted as an offshoot of the Moscow Helsinki Group. The commission was composed of five open members and several anonymous ones, including a few psychiatrists who, at great danger to themselves, conducted their own independent examinations of cases of alleged psychiatric abuse. The leader of the commission was Alexandr Podrabinek who published a book Punitive Medicine containing a ‘white list’ of two hundred of prisoners of conscience in Soviet mental hospitals and a ‘black list’ of over one hundred medical staff and doctors who took part in committing people to psychiatric facilities for political reasons.
The psychiatric consultants to the Commission were Dr Alexander Voloshanovich and Dr Anatoly Koryagin
Anatoly Koryagin
Anatoly Ivanovich Koryagin is a Russian psychiatrist and Soviet dissident. He holds a Candidate of Science degree .- Early career :...
. The task stated by the Commission was not primarily to diagnose persons or to declare people who sought help mentally ill or mentally healthy. However, in some instances individuals who came for help to the Commission were examined by a psychiatrist who provided help to the Commission and made a precise diagnosis of their mental condition. At first it was psychiatrist Aleksandr Voloshanovich from the Moscow suburb of Dolgoprudny
Dolgoprudny
Dolgoprudny is a town in Moscow Oblast, Russia, located about north of Moscow city center. The town's name is derived from Russian "" —a long and narrow pond situated in the northeastern part of the town. The town's name is sometimes colloquially shortened as Dolgopa. Population:...
, who made these diagnoses. But when he had been compelled to emigrate on 7 February 1980, his work was continued by the Kharkov psychiatrist Anatoly Koryagin
Anatoly Koryagin
Anatoly Ivanovich Koryagin is a Russian psychiatrist and Soviet dissident. He holds a Candidate of Science degree .- Early career :...
. Koryagin's contribution was to examine former and potential victims of political abuse of psychiatry by writing psychiatric diagnoses in which he deduced that the individual was not suffering from any mental disease. Those reports were employed as a means of defense: if the individual was picked up again and committed to mental hospital, the Commission had vindication that the hospitalization served non-medical purposes. Also some foreign psychiatrists including the Swedish psychiatrist Harald Blomberg and British psychiatrist Gery Low-Beer helped in examining former or potential victims of psychiatric abuse. The Commission used those reports in its work and publicly referred to them when it was essential.
The commission gathered as much information as possible of victims of psychiatric terror in the Soviet Union and published this information in their Information Bulletins. For the four years of its existence, the Commission published more than 1,500 pages of documentation including 22 Information Bulletins in which over 400 cases of the political abuse of psychiatry were documented in great detail. Summaries of the Information Bulletins were published in the key samizdat publication, the Chronicle of Current Events. The Information Bulletins were sent to the Soviet officials, with request to verify the data and notify the Commission if mistakes were found, and to the West, where human rights defenders used them in the course of their campaigns. The Information Bulletins were also used to provide the dissident movement with information about Western protests against the political abuse. Peter Reddaway said that after he had studied official documents in the Soviet archives, including minutes from meetings of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Politburo , known as the Presidium from 1952 to 1966, functioned as the central policymaking and governing body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.-Duties and responsibilities:The...
, it became evident to him that Soviet officials at high levels paid close attention to foreign responses to these cases, and if someone was discharged, all dissidents felt the pressure had played a significant part and the more foreign pressure the better.
Over fifty victims examined by psychiatrists of the Moscow Working Commission between 1977 and 1981 and the files smuggled to the West by Vladimir Bukovsky
Vladimir Bukovsky
Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky is a leading member of the dissident movement of the 1960s and 1970s, writer, neurophysiologist, and political activist....
in 1971 were the material which convinced most psychiatric associations that there was distinctly something wrong in the USSR.
The Soviet authorities responded aggressively. Members of the group were being threatened, followed, subjected to house searches and interrogations. In the end, the members of the Commission were subjected to various terms and types of punishments: Alexander Podrabinek was sentenced to 5 years’ internal exile, Irina Grivnina to 5 years’ internal exile, Vyacheslav Bakhmin to 3 years in a labor camp, Dr Leonard Ternovsky to 3 years’ labor camp, Dr Anatoly Koryagin to 8 years’ imprisonment and labor camp and 4 years’ internal exile, Dr Alexander Voloshanovich was sent to voluntary exile.
In the autumn of 1978, the British Royal College of Psychiatrists
Royal College of Psychiatrists
The Royal College of Psychiatrists is the main professional organisation of psychiatrists in the United Kingdom responsible for representing psychiatrists, psychiatric research and providing public information about mental health problems...
carried a resolution in which it reiterated its concern over the abuse of psychiatry for the suppression of dissent in the USSR and applauded the Soviet citizens, who had taken an open stance against such abuse, by expressing its admiration and support especially for Semyon Gluzman, Alexander Podrabinek, Alexander Voloshanovich, and Vladimir Moskalkov.
By the end of 1981, only Elena Bonner, Sofia Kalistratova
Sofia Kalistratova
Sofiya Vasilyevna Kalistratova , also known as Sofia Kallistratova September 1907 – 5 December 1989) was a public defense lawyer in the Soviet Union...
and Naum Meiman
Naum Meiman
Naum S. Meiman was a Soviet mathematician, and dissident. His is known for his work in complex analysis, partial differential equations, and mathematical physics, as well as for his dissident activity, in particular, for being a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group.-Life:In 1932 he graduated...
were free, as a result of the unremitting campaign of persecution. The Moscow Helsinki Group was forced to cease operation.
The dissolution of the Moscow Helsinki Group was officially announced by Elena Bonner on 8 September 1982.
Rebirth of the group
However, in 1989, in the atmosphere of glasnostGlasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
, it was re-established. A group of nine human rights activists, led by Larisa Bogoraz
Larisa Bogoraz
Larisa Iosifovna Bogoraz was a dissident in the Soviet Union....
, the widow of Anatoly Marchenko, formally restarted the group on July 28, 1989. Included among the re-founders were Yuri Orlov and Lyudmila Alexeyeva
Lyudmila Alexeyeva
Lyudmila Mikhailovna Alexeyeva is a Russian historian, human rights activist, founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group, and one of the few veterans of the Soviet dissident movement still active in modern Russia.-Soviet period:...
, both part of the original group. Other prominent members are Larisa Bogoraz
Larisa Bogoraz
Larisa Iosifovna Bogoraz was a dissident in the Soviet Union....
, Sergey Kovalev, Viatcheslav Bakhmin, Lev Timofeev
Lev Timofeev
Lev Timofeev , , is a Russian economist, political commentator and novelist. The son of a high-ranking Russian government official, Timofeev graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations....
, Henry Reznick, Lev Ponomarev, Gleb Yakunin
Gleb Yakunin
Gleb Pavlovich Yakunin is Russian priest and dissident who fought for the freedom of conscience in the Soviet Union. He was member of Moscow Helsinki Group, and he was elected to Russian Parliaments from 1990 to 1999.-Life:...
, and Aleksei Simonov.
See also
- Sofia KalistratovaSofia KalistratovaSofiya Vasilyevna Kalistratova , also known as Sofia Kallistratova September 1907 – 5 December 1989) was a public defense lawyer in the Soviet Union...
- International Helsinki Federation for Human RightsInternational Helsinki Federation for Human RightsThe International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights was a self-governing group of non-governmental, not-for-profit organizations that act to protect human rights throughout Europe, North America and Central Asia...
- Helsinki WatchHelsinki WatchHelsinki Watch was a private American NGO devoted to monitoring Helsinki implementation throughout the Soviet bloc. It was created in 1978 to monitor compliance to the Helsinki Final Act...
/Human Rights WatchHuman Rights WatchHuman Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
Leaders
- Yuri Orlov (1976–1982)
- Larisa BogorazLarisa BogorazLarisa Iosifovna Bogoraz was a dissident in the Soviet Union....
(1989–1993) - Kronid Arkadyevich LyubarskyKronid LyubarskyKronid Arkadyevich Lyubarsky was a Russian journalist, dissident, human rights activist and political prisoner.-Early career and arrest:Born in the city of Pskov, Russia, on April 4, 1934, Lyubarsky graduated from Moscow University in 1956 and worked as an astrophysicist at the All-Union Institute...
(1993–1996) - Lyudmila Michailovna AlekseyevaLyudmila AlexeyevaLyudmila Mikhailovna Alexeyeva is a Russian historian, human rights activist, founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group, and one of the few veterans of the Soviet dissident movement still active in modern Russia.-Soviet period:...
(since 1996)
External links
Sources
- About the Netherlands Helsinki Committee
- Документы Московской Хельсинкской Группы 1976—1982 (The Russian text of the book in full is available online on the Memorial website by click) (The Russian text of the book in full is available online on the MHG website by click)