Sergei Adamowitsch Kovalev

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Sergei Kovalev (2015)

Sergei Adamowitsch Kowaljow ( Russian Сергей Адамович Ковалёв ; born March 2, 1930 in Seredyna-Buda , Sumy Oblast , Ukrainian SSR , † August 9, 2021 in Moscow ) was a Soviet dissident and later a Russian human rights activist and politician of the Yabloko party . The biologist published a samizdat , was a member of parliament from 1990 to 2003 and from 1993 to 1995 chairman of the human rights commission in the Russian president's cabinet .

Life

profession

In 1932 the family moved to Moscow . In 1954 he graduated from the Biological Faculty of Moscow State University and received his doctorate in 1964. Until 1970 he carried out research at Moscow University in the fields of biology and biophysics. In total, he published over 60 scientific papers.

dissident

In 1956 he and friends protested against the Soviet intervention in Hungary on Moscow's Pushkin Square . In 1962 he participated in the scientific opposition against the chief biologist Trofim Lyssenko . In 1966 he made himself available as a defense witness in the political process of the Russian writers Andrei Sinjawski and Juli Daniel . In 1968 he collected signatures at his institute against the imprisonment of dissidents who had demonstrated against the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia and appeared as a witness at their trials.

In 1969 he joined the Initiative Group for the Protection of Human Rights in the USSR . In 1971 he became co-editor of the samizdat wrote Chronicle of Current Events (Russian Chronicles tekuschtschich sobyti ), the human rights violations in the Soviet Union pointed out (along with Tatiana Mikhailovna Velikanova and Tatyana Chodorowitsch ). He became friends with Andrei Sakharov , wrote petitions to the UN , and became a member of the Soviet section of Amnesty International in 1974 . His son and daughter-in-law supported his activities.

In December 1974, Kovalyov was arrested. In 1975 he was sentenced to seven years in a labor camp and three years in exile for anti-Soviet activities and propaganda in Vilnius, Lithuania . He served his imprisonment in the Perm-36 camp in Kuchino in the Perm region and the Chistopol prison; exile in the village of Matrossowo on the Kolyma. After that, he moved to the city of Kalinin . Son and daughter-in-law met a similar fate. In 1987 his children were allowed to leave for the USA and Kovalyov was allowed to return to Moscow. There he got a job at the Institute for Problems of Information Transfer of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR .

Politician

In the course of the perestroika initiated by the new CPSU General Secretary Mikhail Sergejewitsch Gorbachev , Kovalev founded the Glasnost press club in 1987 together with other human rights activists . In 1988 he became head of the human rights project group of the International Foundation For the Survival and Development of Mankind . In 1989, at Sakharov's suggestion, he successfully ran for the Russian human rights organization Memorial for the Supreme Soviet of Russia and was chairman of the parliamentary committee for human rights from 1990 to 1993 , at the same time he was head of the Russian delegation to the UN human rights commission in Geneva .

In 1993 he was re-elected to parliament for the radical democratic alliance Election Russia , had a decisive influence on the civil rights catalog in the Russian constitution, the rights and freedoms of people and citizens, and was again chairman of the parliamentary human rights committee. Boris Yeltsin appointed him chairman of the human rights commission in the president's cabinet in 1993 . He went on inspection trips to the Siberian penal camps, to Grozny in Chechnya and wrote drafts for the humanization of the Russian penal system.

In January 1995 he initiated a short-term ceasefire in Chechnya . He resigned from Yeltsin's cabinet in protest against Chechnya policies and accused the president of being responsible for escalating the conflict. After harsh criticism of the attacks by the Russian army in the First Chechen War, parliament withdrew from him the chairmanship of the Human Rights Committee in March 1995 by a vote of 240 to 75. On the other hand, during the Russian invasion of Grozny, Kovalyov was accused of having radioed the troops to surrender and voluntarily take Chechen captivity. In return, they were assured safe conduct from the republic. In fact, when Russian soldiers were captured, there were numerous tortures and executions. Because of his significant contribution to the formation of the official opposition to the First Chechen War , he was awarded the Homo Homini Prize in 1995.

In 1995 and 1999 he was re-elected as a liberal member of the Duma . From 1996 to 2003 he was a member of the Russian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. From 1996 he was President of the Russian Human Rights Institute. In 2000 he participated in the Vilnius International Public Tribunal , which was supposed to evaluate the crimes of communism. In 2002 he initiated a public commission to shed light on the background to the bomb attacks on Moscow apartment buildings in 1999. After the commission alleged that it was not Chechen terrorists but the Russian domestic secret service FSB who were behind the attack, leading commission members were either murdered ( Sergei Yuschenkow ), convicted in politically motivated trials ( Mikhail Trepashkin ), died under unexplained circumstances ( Yuri Shchekochichin ) or were brutally beaten ( Otto Lacis ).

For the 2008 presidential election , he said there would be no winner without the approval of the Kremlin. If there is no chance of winning an election, the election becomes “a trap, a ploy for government propaganda”.

“'Putin's system is developing a historical lie. The question is how far the Russian President will and can go to defend them '. "

- Sergei Adamowitsch Kovalev : June 16, 2014

Kovalyov died in August 2021 at the age of 91.

Awards

Private

Kovalyov's health has been in poor health since his long stay in the labor camp. In July 1996 he suffered a serious heart attack.

He was married to the lawyer Ludmila Jurjewna Boizowa. They have a son and two daughters, Ivan, Marija and Varvara.

Fonts

  • S. A. Kovalev et al .: Rossiiskij bjulleten 'po pravam čeloveka . Memorial, Moskva 1991, ISBN 5-87106-020-X
  • Sergei Kovalev: The Flight of the White Raven: From Siberia to Chechnya: A Journey through Life . Rowohlt Berlin, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-87134-256-4
  • Sergej A. Kovalev: Russia's difficult path and its place in Europe . Collegium Europaeum Jenense, Jena 1999, ISBN 3-933159-05-9
  • Roger Hood, Sergei Kovalev: The death penalty: Abolition in Europe . Council of Europe Pub., Strasbourg 1999, ISBN 92-871-3874-5
  • Sergej Kovalev: Pragmatika političeskogo idealizma . Institut prav čeloveka, Moskva 1999
  • S. A. Kovalev: Mir, strana, ličnost ' . Izograf, Moskva 2000, ISBN 5-87113-085-2

Web links

Commons : Sergey Adamovich Kovalyov  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ German-Caucasian Society e. V. / people . dkg.de. Retrieved December 17, 2012.
  2. ↑ Elena Zhludova: The Greens and the Soviet Union in the Gorbachev era . 2014, p. 206 ( uni-heidelberg.de [PDF] doctoral thesis University of Heidelberg).
  3. ↑ The Russian conscience . zeit.de. 1995. Retrieved December 17, 2012.
  4. ↑ International Nuremberg Human Rights Prize Kowaljow . nuernberg.de. 10-01-1995. Retrieved December 17, 2012.
  5. ↑ Kowaljow: "The door and gate open to lawlessness" . amnesty.de. 03-1996. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved December 17, 2012.
  6. ↑ lib.ru (in Russian)
  7. ↑ Recipients of the Homo Homini Award ( English ) clovekvtisni.cz. Archived from the original on May 1, 2011. Retrieved December 17, 2012.
  8. ↑ Website on the commission and its results , terror99.ru (Russian)
  9. ↑ Russian party leader shot . On: faz.net of April 17, 2003
  10. ↑ The Trepashkin case at Amnesty International . Status: June 2006
  11. ↑ Deadly receipt for the criticism . In: Bietigheimer Zeitung of November 22, 2006
  12. ↑ Major political murders (Russian) On: grani.ru of October 12, 2006
  13. ↑ www.newsru.com (Russian)
  14. ^ The Tsars Opponent , New Yorker, October 1, 2007; "If there is no chance at all to win the elections, then the danger of participating in the elections is that it becomes a trap, a trick for government propaganda"
  15. ↑ The Carousel of Lies is turning faster and faster , NZZ, April 16, 2014; Putin's system develops a historical lie. The question is how far the Russian President will and can go to defend them.
  16. ↑ Human rights activist Sergei Kovalev calls on Chechens to refrain from harassment against Russians within the republic , Interfax-Religion, January 22, 1997
  17. ↑ France has awarded Sergei Kovalev with the Order of the Legion of Honor , yabloko.ru, December 12, 2006
  18. ↑ Chairman of the human rights society "Memorial" was appointed officer of the Order of the Legion of Honor of France , newsru.com, December 11, 2006
  19. ↑ Sakharov Prize 2009 goes to Russian civil rights organization “Memorial” , European Parliament , December 8, 2009
  20. ↑ The first Lithuanian “Freedom Prize” was given to the Russian human rights activist Sergei Kowaljow , hro.org, December 14, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Kovalev, Sergei Adamowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ковалёв, Сергей Адамович (Russian)
SHORT DESCRIPTION Soviet dissident, Russian politician and biologist
BIRTH DATE March 2, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Seredyna-Buda , Sumy Oblast , Ukraine
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 2021
PLACE OF DEATH Moscow