8 Dec 2018
She passed away at the age of 91 Lyudmila Alekseeva — Soviet dissident and human rights activist. One of the founders of the Moscow Helsinki Group.
In their youth, future Soviet leaders and future dissidents sat at desks in the same classrooms, listened to teachers who taught the same subjects using standard methods, and saw Stalin's image before them every day.
Maiden name - Slavinskaya. She was born in 1927. Her parents were both 20 years old; her father studied economics, her mother mathematics. Both, from poor families, believed the revolution gave them the opportunity to study.
In 1937, they moved to the center of Moscow, to a building where Tsentrosoyuz employees lived. They settled in the apartment of an arrested official. The building was good—a gas stove and running water. However, people periodically disappeared—over the course of a year, 29 apartments changed tenants.
That night, they came for my neighbor, the wife of an arrested official. I vaguely remember the sound of heavy footsteps in the hallway, doors slamming, and a little girl crying. The next morning, when the neighbor's room was empty, I was still convinced I lived in the best country in the world.
Soon, my father's boss was arrested. During interrogation, he revealed that he had created an "underground fascist organization" at the Central Union of Workers, whose meetings were disguised as banquets. 297 people were targeted for repression. My father, a teetotaler, avoided the banquets—a relief. He spent several months lying slumped against the back of the sofa.
When the war began, her father died at the front. Lyuda couldn't understand it: at school, they taught her the Soviet army was invincible, while she was retreating toward Moscow, losing hundreds of thousands of soldiers. "Could the teachers really be wrong?" After the war, her doubts grew.
The vague feeling that something was wrong didn't subside. I didn't feel happy, and I didn't see anyone around me who could be called happy. If the 1917 Revolution was made for a happy future, then where was that future?
In 1945, she enrolled in the history department at Moscow State University. She was elected Komsomol organizer, but the decision was reversed when orders came in that the Komsomol organizer had to be a veteran of the front.
A special breed of front-line soldiers eagerly enrolled in the history department—those who had become Komsomol and party functionaries in the army. The war had instilled in them a taste for power. <> They were, for the most part, striving for the same career path: a university degree to secure a position in the party apparatus.
She enrolled in the archaeology department, away from politics. She became fascinated with the history of the Decembrists, seeking parallels with modern reality. She married a military man and took her surname. Alekseeva.
She was 29 when Khrushchev shocked the country with her report on Stalin's crimes. She wrote: "It was the time of our awakening." People stopped being afraid and began to realize that everyone has the right to be themselves—to say what they think, to write and read what they consider important.
And then came the Prague Spring. With the introduction of tanks into Czechoslovakia in August 1968, the "thaw" in the USSR ended. But the desire to live freely remained.
Alekseyeva's apartment became a meeting place for dissidents. They gave interviews to Western correspondents there and stored samizdat materials. She reprinted the "Chronicle of Current Events." She visited political prisoners in camps and provided legal assistance.
In 1968, she was fired from her editorial position at the Nauka publishing house for speaking out against the trials. Daniel, Sinyavsky, Galanskov и Ginzburg.
In 1976, she became one of the founders of the oldest human rights organization in Russia - Moscow Helsinki Group. Over the course of six years, eight members of the Moscow Helsinki Group were arrested and convicted, and six emigrated. Alekseyeva also fled under threat of arrest.
In the United States, she wrote "A History of Dissent in the USSR." She also published her memoirs, "The Thaw Generation."
She returned to Russia in 1993. In 1996, she became the chairperson of the revived Moscow Helsinki Group.
Since August 31, 2009, she has been participating in "Strategy-31," speaking at Triumfalnaya Square in defense of Article 31 of the Constitution on freedom of assembly. When 82-year-old Alekseyeva was detained by riot police, the international community was shocked.
In 2011, she was ranked 10th among the most influential women in Russia.
I believed that Russia would become a democratic country by 2017. It didn't happen.