Lyudmila Alexeyeva: Russian human rights campaigner from the Soviet era who stood up to Putin

An unbowed critic of Moscow’s tendency towards authoritarianism, she was still getting arrested at protests in her eighties

At the State Duma in 2015 protesting against the ‘sadists’ law’ which critics claimed legitimised torture in Russian jails (Getty)

Not many Russian nonagenarians get a birthday visit from Vladimir Putin. Not many Russian nonagenarians would take advantage of that presidential birthday visit to lobby for the release of a senator convicted on shaky grounds.

But though she called herself “Grandma Lyuda”, Lyudmila Alexeyeva was never going to be a harmless little old lady. The human rights activist, who died aged 91, made it her business to be a thorn in the side of the Kremlin until the very end of her life.

Lyudmila Alexeyeva was born in Yevpatoria, Crimea, at the height of Stalin’s reign of terror. She came from a well-connected Communist family and took a degree in history. During the Second World War she worked as a volunteer labourer. She experienced her political awakening during the tenure of of Nikita Khrushchev.

Between 1953 and 1964, the Soviet Union experienced what became known as the Krushchev Thaw. As the state’s grip on the private thoughts and philosophies of its citizens seemed to loosen, the reality of Stalin’s regime was re-examined. That thaw came to an abrupt end when Khrushchev was forced from the Kremlin. One of the writers arrested in the period that followed was Yuli Daniel, Alexeyeva’s friend.

Alekseyeva on her 90th birthday in July last year (Getty)

Fearing that Daniel wouldn’t get a fair hearing as the Soviet Union returned to the old system of secret political trials, Alexeyeva campaigned for access to the court and did her best to spread the word about the state’s slide back into authoritarianism. As a result, in April 1968 she was fired from her publishing job and expelled from the Communist Party. However, Alexeyeva did not falter.

She began to work in secret on The Chronicle of Current Events, a pamphlet dedicated to documenting the treatment of those who opposed the post-Thaw regime. And in 1976, she helped to found the USSR’s first human rights organisation, The Moscow Helsinki Group, in response to the Soviet Union having signed up to the Helsinki Accords. The group was intended to monitor the Soviet Union’s observance of those accords. However in 1977, Alexeyeva was given a choice of prison or exile for her involvement in the group and The Chronicle. She chose to leave Russia for the United States.

Alexeyeva would spend a total of 16 years in exile. During that time, she worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America. She wrote in English and Russian, publishing Soviet Dissent, a history of the dissidents, and The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era.

Alexeyeva became an American citizen in 1982, but after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1993, she returned to her homeland as soon as she was able. The Moscow Helsinki Group was brought back to life and from 1996, Alexeyeva chaired the group in Russia once again.

When Putin came to power in 1999, Alexeyeva was vocal in her disapproval of his government and in particular its actions during the second Chechen War. However, in 2000, she made the controversial decision to become part of a commission to advise Putin on human rights issues. The move drew disapproval from some of her fellow campaigners, but Alexeyeva wasn’t about to become a Kremlin stooge. As Putin continued to curtail civil liberties, Alexeyeva continued to call him out, taking part in protests on the streets of Moscow even as she headed into her eighties.

In 2009, while protesting in defence of Article 31 of the Russian constitution, which enshrines the right to assemble peacefully, Alexeyeva was arrested and detained by riot police. She was dressed as a traditional Russian Christmas elf at the time. Her detention made the front page of The New York Times and drew international concern. However, while a small group of Russians lauded Alexeyeva’s bravery, there were many more who considered her the enemy. She was accused of being a Nazi by pro-Kremlin groups and was physically assaulted in a Moscow street.

Despite all this, it wasn’t until 2012 that Alexeyeva finally gave up on Putin’s human rights council. She had taken the view that she would be better positioned to affect change from the inside, but could no longer pretend her ploy was working as the regime continued to crack down on her fellow Russians’ human rights. Still, on her 90th birthday five years later, Putin visited Alexeyeva at home with a bottle of champagne and a picture of the Crimean town of her birth. Critics saw the gift of the picture as a cynical attempt to make it appear as though Alexeyeva approved of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, especially when it was discovered that the film of the visit had been doctored.

Alexeyeva’s friends were equally unimpressed by Putin’s appearance at her funeral. He stayed for just a short while before heading to the unveiling of a statue of Alexeyeva’s fellow dissident, the writer Solzhenitsyn. The Kremlin refused permission for Alexeyeva’s fellow activist, 77-year-old Lev Ponomaryov, serving a 16-day jail sentence for advertising an illegal rally on Facebook, to say goodbye to his former colleague and friend.

A week before her death, Alexeyeva was still working from her hospital bed. In an address intended for the Moscow Helsinki Group’s annual conference, she wrote: “It seems to me there are not easy times ahead. We all see very well how weak is civil society, the culture of law and democratic institutions in our country.”

Having seen Russia reach for more openness only to turn back to authoritarianism during her lifetime, Alexeyeva had grounds for pessimism. However, she urged her friends in the human rights movement to continue their work. “When we started our difficult path in defence of human rights, we had far less grounds for optimism than today, but we believed in our hopeless business! I wish you such belief and also strength and luck with all my heart!”

Alexeyeva is survived by two sons, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Lyudmila Alexeyeva, human rights activist, born 20 July 1927, died 8 December 2018