Moscow Helsinki Group
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The Moscow Helsinki Group (also known as the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group, Russian: Московская Хельсинкская группа) is a pathbreaking and influential human rights monitoring non-governmental organization, originally started 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, as well as 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.
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Helsinki monitoring efforts began in the then 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. 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 responsibility of the Soviet Union's government to implement the commitments on human rights made in the Helsinki documents. They based their group's legal viability 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 next 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 Russian Federation. The Helsinki Group protested their arrests in circulars dated 5 and 15 June of that year. ([1]) Vladimir Slepak and Ida Nudel were convicted of all charges. They served 5 and 4 years in Siberian exile. ([2], [3])
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, and it announced its own dissolution in September of 1982.
However, in 1989, in the atmosphere of glasnost, 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 Alekseyeva, 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.
[edit] Leaders
- Yuri Orlov (1976-1982)
- Larisa Bogoraz (1989-1993)
- Kronid Arkad’evich Lubarsky (1993-1996)
- Lyudmila Michailovna Alekseyeva (since 1996)
