Head of the YABLOKO’s Evening University and First Deputy Chair
of the Moscow branch of YABLOKO, Galina Mikhalyova announced
another set of lectures by Memorial and a new programme –
the Ecological School – which will be launched in October.
The Fall Session was opened by Alexander Daniel’s lecture
“Human Rights Organisations in the USSR”. (Prof.Daniel is
member of the Board of the Memorial human rights society).
Prof.Daniel spoke in detail about the development of human
rights movement in the USSR drawing the attention of the audience
to the specifics of the organisations. According to Daniel,
Russian dissidents’ movement was mainly the way of heroic
persons (such as Anna Barkova and Revolt Pimenov) in 1930-1950s.
However, in the mid 1960s a large number of people who had
a high position in the society joined this way.
“The specifics of the second half of 1960s was that it was
not simply an era of independent initiative, but this was
a period of an independent collective protest initiative.
An important characteristics of any totalitarian regime is
elimination of the civil society and, first of all, elimination
of collective initiative: political (by opposing parties),
civil, economic (ruining of the consumer cooperation), social
(elimination of Pompolit by Ekaterina Peshkova – an organisation
helping to political prisoners), intellectual and creative
initiatives (ruining by mid 1930s of literary schools and
directions and establishing of the Writers’ Union),” Daniel
stressed.
Later in 1969 the first human rights association – “The Initiative
Group for Human Rights Protection in the USSR” – was created.
The Group included Sergei Kovalyov, now a renowned human rights
activist and Co-Chair of YABLOKO’s Human Rights faction.
In 1970 Committee for Human Rights was created by Valery
Chalidze, Andrei Sakharov and Andrei Tverdokhlyobov. The third
human rights association – The Public Fund for Aiding Political
Prisoners and Their Families (known as Solzhenitsin’s Find)
– was founded in 1974. After Solzhenitsin’s arrest it was
headed by Alexander Ginzburg.
Different national associations were created in the Soviet
Republics too: Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia.
The Moscow Helsinki Group was founded by Yuri Orlov, Anatoli
Scharansky, Valentin Turchin and Andrei Amalrik in 1974, after
the USSR signed the acts of the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). The group focused on monitoring
of violations of human rights in the USSR. The same groups
were organised in the Soviet republics.
After USSR invasion to Afghanistan the KGB began arresting
the key people in the human rights organisations which led
to breaking up of these organisations being left their leaders.
“The activities of the dissidents focused on informing people
of violation of their rights. Public opinion adopted their
values, and the dissidents’ movement disappeared having implemented
its historic tasks. And we can not regard our transfer to
perestroika after the dissidents era as an accidental event,”
Daniel noted.
The next lecture of the Evening University will take place
on September 29 and will be devoted to “Modern Historical
Memory of Stalinism”.
It is also planned to organise a round table discussion with
invited experts after a course of Alexander Daniel’s lectures.
See also:
Evening
University
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