The Moscow Helsinki Group is a human rights organization. Lyudmila Alekseeva - Chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group

As is known, on 12.05.1976 the Moscow Helsinki Group was established, an organization that monitors compliance with the third part of the Helsinki agreements containing humanitarian articles. They include provisions on basic human rights, the observance of which members of the human rights movement in the USSR controlled for several decades. The creation of the group was announced at a press conference in the house of Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov.

History of creation

The Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG) represented by Yuri Orlov, its founder and first chairman, presented its goals as follows. The organization will monitor compliance with the Helsinki Declaration in the USSR and inform all states that have signed this document with the Soviet Union of any violations.

In addition to Yuri Orlov, the group included Alexander Ginzburg, Lyudmila Alekseyeva, Nathan Sharansky, Vitaly Rubin, Malva Landa, Alexander Korchak, Elena Bonner, Anatoly Marchenko, Mikhail Bernshtam and Pyotr Grigorenko.

Forced signing

The Helsinki agreements laid the foundation for a mechanism to monitor compliance with their requirements. In particular, the heads of delegations were to assess compliance by all partner states with the declaration they signed at the annual conferences. The Moscow Helsinki Group hoped that the information provided on violations of articles relating to the observance of human rights would be considered at these meetings and that the democratic states would demand that the Soviet Union comply with the signed agreements in full, including humanitarian articles. Their failure to comply could lead to the collapse of the Helsinki Accords, which the Soviet leadership could not tolerate. It was in the interests of the Soviet Union to maintain an extremely advantageous treaty for him, taking into account that the country was exsanguinated by prolonged isolation from the rest of the world and a frenzied arms race.

Effective work

The human rights organization, consisting of only eleven members, seemed unable to monitor the vast territory of the Soviet Union. In the end, the members of the MHG were as powerless as all other citizens of the USSR, and all their equipment consisted of two old typewriters. On the other hand, the Moscow Helsinki Group included experienced human rights defenders, who by that time had gathered a large amount of material on the subjects concerned. Moreover, foreign radio stations broadcasting in the territory of the Soviet Union constantly announced the reports on the work of the MHG, and it began to receive information about human rights violations from all parts of the country. In particular, members of the organization were informed by activists of the Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Georgian and Armenian national movement.

For 6 years of its existence, the group compiled and transmitted to the West 195 reports on human rights violations in the Soviet Union. These reports contained information on restrictions on the right to use their mother tongue, to receive education in their native language, etc. Religious activists (Baptists, Adventists, Pentecostals and Catholics) told about violations of the right to freedom of religion. Citizens who were not members of any movements, reported non-compliance with the third part of the Helsinki Accords, which either they or their relatives suffered from.

A worthy example

Later, following the MHG model, in November 1976, Lithuanian and Ukrainian Helsinki groups were formed, in January 1977 - Georgian, in April - Armenian, in December 1976 - the Christian Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Believers in the USSR and in November 1978 - Catholic Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Believers. Helsinki committees also arose in Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Reaction

In February 1977, arrests began in the Ukrainian and Moscow groups. One of the first detainees was the chairman of the MHG, Yuri Orlov. May 18, 1978 he was sentenced to 7 years in prison with heavy work and 5 years of exile. The court regarded his activities as anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda aimed at undermining the Soviet state and the system. June 21 of the same year, Vladimir Slepak was sentenced to 5 years of exile. On June 14, Natan Sharansky was sentenced to 3 years in prison and for 10 years in a strict regime camp.

By the autumn of 1977, more than 50 members of the Helsinki groups were deprived of their liberty. Many of them were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, some died before they were released.

The wave of solidarity

The media in the democratic partner countries of the Soviet Union under the Helsinki agreements covered the Helsinki process and the persecution of its participants in the USSR and its satellite states. The public of these countries reacted to these persecutions by creating their own groups and Helsinki committees.

The creation of the American Helsinki Group was announced in December 1978. Similar organizations later emerged in Canada and a number of countries in Western Europe. Their goal was to stop the persecution of their colleagues and put pressure on their national governments so that they resolutely demanded the implementation of the Helsinki agreements from the Soviet Union.

The fruits of work

These efforts have borne fruit. Since the Madrid Conference in October 1980, democratic participating States have unanimously voiced these demands at each meeting. Gradually, compliance with the obligations of the third "basket" has become one of the main aspects of the Helsinki process. During the Vienna Conference in 1986, an additional protocol was signed, according to which the human rights situation in the country party to the agreements is recognized as a matter for all signatories.

Thus, the MHG became the seed that gave birth to the international Helsinki movement. It exerted a growing influence on the content of the Helsinki process. Perhaps, for the first time in the history of diplomacy, a human rights organization played such a role in interstate agreements. The Soviet Union was accused of violating humanitarian articles on the basis of documents provided by the Moscow, Ukrainian and Lithuanian groups.

Gorbachev's Thaw

Under pressure from democratic countries, not only the Moscow Helsinki Group, but also all persons deprived of their liberty under the political articles of the Soviet Criminal Code, were released in 1987. In 1990, citizens of the USSR were granted the right to freely leave and return to the country, the persecution of believers ceased.

The experience gained in this close cooperation with non-governmental organizations was reflected in the fact that the OSCE became the first international association that included them in the process of working as equal partners. At conferences on the human dimension, representatives of non-governmental organizations participate on a par with official representatives of OSCE member states, and they are given the floor on equal terms.

Back in line

The MHG, which at its inception was the only independent public organization in the Soviet Union, now plays a leading role in the human rights movement and civil society that was formed in the Russian Federation. The main direction of the work of the MHG continues to be monitoring of the human rights situation. Today, however, it is implemented not only on the basis of the humanitarian articles of the Helsinki Accords, but also with the support of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms and other international human rights treaties signed by the Russian Federation.

Lyudmila Mikhailovna Alexeeva MHG led in 1996 Three years earlier she returned to Moscow from forced emigration to the United States in February 1977. All this time the woman continued to work in this human rights organization, and also broadcasted on Radio Liberty and Voice of America.

In 2012, the new law of the Russian Federation came into force, which determined that the Moscow Helsinki Group is a foreign agent receiving funds from abroad and having connections abroad. To get rid of the stigma that historically was used as a synonym for the word "spy", the organization decided to limit itself to the help of Russian citizens.

Honored award

In 2015, Lyudmila Alekseeva received the Vaclav Havel Award for her outstanding work in the field of human rights. Handing over 60 000 € at the ceremony held at the European Palace in Strasbourg on the day of the beginning of the work of the plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, PACE chairman Anna Brasser said that the human rights activist, having assumed the responsibility to fight for justice, inspired several generations of Russian and foreign activists . For decades Alekseeva was threatened, she lost her job and was forced to leave the country in order to be able to continue to talk about human rights violations in the Soviet Union. Now she heads the Moscow Helsinki Group - a freethinking non-governmental organization that often encounters hostility, but continues to condemn the facts of lawlessness and provide assistance to the victims.

Attacks continue

Recently, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the creation of the MHG, the state television channel "Russia-1" presented a "documentary" film in which accusations were made that opposition leader Aleksei Navalny received funding from British intelligence, including with the help of the Moscow Helsinki Group. There were presented "documents" and "correspondence", allegedly indicative of his connections with the head of the investment fund "Hermitage Capital" William Browder. The analysis of the "materials" of MI6 and the CIA showed that they are full of actual and verbal errors typical for Russian-speaking authors. The chairman of the MHG rejected accusations of the state-run media, saying that she had never received any money from Aleksei Navalny and did not give him any money. The human rights activist said that the Moscow Helsinki Group does not finance financing and does not deal with financial transactions, such as placing funds in hedge funds.

Apparently, another attempt to blacken the MHG and the opposition failed miserably.