As you know, the Moscow Helsinki Group was created on 05/12/1976 - an organization engaged in monitoring compliance with the third part of the Helsinki Agreements containing humanitarian articles. They include provisions on fundamental human rights, the observance of which members of the human rights movement in the USSR have been monitoring for several decades. The creation of the group was announced at a press conference in the house of the 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 together with the Soviet Union of any violations.
In addition to Yuri Orlov, the group included Alexander Ginzburg, Lyudmila Alekseeva, Nathan Sharansky, Vitaly Rubin, Malva Landa, Alexander Korchak, Elena Bonner, Anatoly Marchenko, Mikhail Bernshtam and Petr Grigorenko.
Forced Signing
The Helsinki Accords laid the foundation of a mechanism for monitoring compliance with their requirements. In particular, the heads of delegations were supposed to evaluate the compliance of all partner states with the declaration they signed at annual conferences. The Moscow Helsinki Group hoped that information provided on violations of articles relating to human rights would be considered at these meetings and that democratic states would demand that the Soviet Union comply with the signed agreements in full, including humanitarian articles. Their non-compliance could lead to the collapse of the Helsinki Accords, which the Soviet leadership could not allow. It was in the interests of the Soviet Union to preserve a treaty that was extremely beneficial to him, taking into account the fact that the country was bloodless by prolonged isolation from the rest of the world and a frantic arms race.
Effective work
A human rights organization of only eleven members seemed to be unable to monitor the entire vast territory of the Soviet Union. In the end, the members of the MHG were just as powerless as all the 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 then, had collected a large amount of material on the subjects involved. Moreover, foreign radio stations broadcasting on the territory of the Soviet Union constantly published reports on the MHG's work, and it began to receive information about human rights violations from all over the country. In particular, members of the organization were informed by activists of the Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Georgian and Armenian national movements.
Over the 6 years of its existence, the group drafted and submitted to the West 195 reports on human rights violations in the Soviet Union. These reports contained information regarding restrictions on the right to use the mother tongue, education in the mother tongue, etc. Religious activists (Baptists, Adventists, Pentecostals, and Catholics) spoke 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, from which they themselves or their relatives suffered.
A worthy example
Subsequently, following the MHG model, the Lithuanian and Ukrainian Helsinki groups were formed in November 1976, the Georgian in January 1977, the Armenian in April, the Christian Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Believers in the USSR in December 1976 and in November 1978 d. - 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 MHG Chairman Yuri Orlov. On May 18, 1978, he was sentenced to 7 years in prison with heavy labor and 5 years in exile. The court regarded his activity as anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda with the goal of undermining the Soviet state and system. On June 21 of the same year, Vladimir Slepak was sentenced to 5 years of exile. On June 14, Nathan Sharansky was sentenced to 3 years in prison and 10 years in a maximum security camp.
By the fall 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.
Wave of solidarity
Media in the democratic countries - partners of the Soviet Union under the Helsinki Accords covered the Helsinki process and the persecution of its participants in the USSR and its satellite states. The public in these countries responded 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 arose in Canada and a number of countries in Western Europe. Their goal was to end the persecution of their colleagues and put pressure on their national governments to decisively demand that the Soviet Union implement the Helsinki Accords.
Fruits of work
These efforts have borne fruit. Beginning with the Madrid Conference in October 1980, democratic participating States began to unanimously voice 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 the case of all signatories.
Thus, the MHG became the seed that spawned the international Helsinki movement. It had 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 Moscow, Ukrainian and Lithuanian groups.
Gorbachev thaw
Under pressure from democratic countries, not only the Helsinki Moscow Group, but 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 given the right to freely leave and return to the country, and the persecution of believers ceased.
The experience gained during this close cooperation with non-governmental organizations was reflected in the fact that the OSCE became the first international association to include them in the process of work as equal partners. At conferences on the human dimension, representatives of non-governmental organizations participate on a parity basis with official representatives of the OSCE member states, and they are given the floor on equal terms.
Back in service
The MHG, which at the time of its founding was the only independent public organization in the Soviet Union, today plays a leading role in the human rights movement and civil society that formed in the Russian Federation. The main focus of the MHG continues to be monitoring of the human rights situation. Today, however, it is carried out not only on the basis of humanitarian articles of the Helsinki Agreements, 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 Alekseeva MHG headed 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 broadcast on Radio Liberty and Voice of America.
In 2012, a new law of the Russian Federation entered into force, determining that the Moscow Helsinki Group is a foreign agent receiving funds from abroad and having contacts abroad. To get rid of the stigma that was historically 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 for outstanding work in the field of human rights protection received the Vaclav Havel Prize. Handing 60,000 € at a ceremony held at the Palais de Europa in Strasbourg on the day the plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe begins, PACE President Anna Brasser said that the human rights activist, taking on 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 talking about human rights violations in the Soviet Union. She now leads the Moscow Helsinki Group, a free-thinking non-governmental organization that often faces hostility, but still continues to condemn the facts of lawlessness and provide assistance to victims.
The 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 accusing the opposition leader Alexei Navalny of receiving funding from British intelligence, including through the Moscow Helsinki Group. “Documents” and “correspondence” were presented, allegedly testifying to his connections with the head of the Hermitage Capital investment fund, William Browder. An analysis of the “materials” of MI-6 and the CIA showed that they abound in factual and verbal errors typical of Russian-language authors. The head of the MHG rejected the accusations of the state media, saying that she never received any money from Alexei Navalny and did not give him any money. The human rights activist said that the Moscow Helsinki Group does not conduct financing and does not deal with financial operations, such as placing funds in hedge funds.
Apparently, another attempt to denigrate the MHG and the opposition failed miserably.