Ban exposes Putin’s regime as a legacy of the Soviet Union

Due to the ban of the Moscow Helsinki Group on January 25, 2023, the International Society for Human Rights accuses Putin’s regime of direct succession with the Soviet regime. The human rights organisation calls on member states of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to take the renewed ban on human rights organisations in Russia as an opportunity to unite, reinforce the Helsinki Accords of 1975, call on Russia to respect the human rights agreements reached at that time and return to negotiations.

Following the example of the Moscow Helsinki Group, relevant committees were established in Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia and Armenia in 1976 and in the spring of 1977. Their reports on human rights violations were very well-reasoned and tried to be as objective and impartial as possible. One of their particular merits was that they also raised the often deplorable supply situation and lack of rights of Soviet workers.

Human rights initiatives have existed in the Soviet Union longer than in any other Eastern Bloc country. With the formation of the civil rights movement in the 1950s, new groups emerged again and again with essentially the same goals, but none of them – including Dr. Sakharov’s Human Rights Committee – attracted the world’s attention as much as the Moscow Helsinki Group did.

Accordingly, persecution of its members began quite early: Professor Yuri Orlov, a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR, who was appointed head of the Helsinki Group, was arrested on February 10, 1977 and charged with “spreading deliberately false information discrediting the Soviet state and public order” (USSR Criminal Code, Article 190); Alexander Ginzburg was arrested on February 3, 1977 and charged under Article 70 with “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”. Characteristic of this period were attempts by the Soviet secret service of the KGB to plant compromising materials (foreign currency, weapons) on members of the Helsinki groups, even linking them to the terrorist attack in the Moscow underground. The efforts of the authorities were aimed at making the term “dissident” synonymous with foreign-inspired and paid traitors, spies and criminals.

The International Society for Human Rights maintained close contact with members of the Helsinki groups throughout the years. We published numerous reports, for example on the “abuse of psychiatry for political purposes” and other documents, including “samizdat,” the underground literature of the Soviet civil rights movement. Members of the Moscow Helsinki Group, such as Vladimir Bukovsky, Josef Terelya, Petr Grigorenko and Alexander Ginzburg, were guests at the annual ISHR meetings or spoke at the ISHR rallies.

The co-founder of the Moscow Helsinki Group and a great civil rights activist, Lyudmila Alexeeva, who passed away at the age of 91 in 2018, mentioned the following in her speech at the ISHR annual meeting in 1999:

Russia will become a stable state only if the society is strong and active enough to make the authorities respect civil rights, cooperate with public organisations and treat them as equal partners.

In commemorating the long-standing work of the Moscow Helsinki Group, the ISHR recalls its founding declaration, which has not lost its relevance even under the Putin regime.

Founding Declaration of the Moscow Helsinki Group

On May 12, 1976, a Group was set up in Moscow to promote implementation of the Helsinki Accords in the USSR. This group set itself the task of demanding compliance with the humanitarian articles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe. The articles of the Final Act were as follows:

1. Declaration on Principles Governing Relations between States Parties:

Paragraph VII, Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief.

2. Cooperation in humanitarian and other fields:

1. human contacts (including item b – family reunification),

2. information,

3. cooperation and exchange in the field of culture,

4. cooperation and exchange in the field of education.

The Group considers its main task to inform all Heads of Government, signatories to the Final Act of August 1, 1975, and to inform the public about cases of direct violation of the above-mentioned articles.

For this purpose, the Group undertakes to receive written complaints from Soviet citizens concerning them personally and relating to violations of the mentioned articles; to communicate these complaints to all Heads of Government who have signed the Act and to make them public; the originals of the letters signed by the complainants will remain in the possession Group.

With public involvement, it collects all information on violations of the above-mentioned articles, processes it and sends it to the relevant Heads of Government and the public, attaching its judgement on the credibility of the content.

In cases where the Group comes across specific information about particularly egregious inhumanities, such as:

– situations where children are taken away from religious parents who want to bring up their children in their faith;

– forced psychiatric treatment to influence and change conscience, religion, beliefs;

– particularly dramatic cases of family separation;

– cases of particularly inhumane treatment of “prisoners of conscience”,

the Group will seek to request government leaders and the general public to form international commissions to examine this information on the ground, as the Group will not always have the opportunity to verify such important and responsible information on its own and directly.

The Group hopes that its information will be taken into account at all official meetings provided for in the Final Act under the paragraph “Further steps after the conference”.

The members of the Group operate on the conviction that issues of humanity and open information are directly linked to international security issues; they therefore call on the public in other member states of the Helsinki Conference to establish groups on their part that will call for strict implementation of the Helsinki Accords by their governments.

We hope that in the future a relevant international demand committee will also be created.

Members of the Group who advocated the implementation of the Helsinki Accords in the USSR:

Lyudmila Alexeeva

Mikhail Bernshtam

Elena Bonner

Alexander Ginzburg

Petr Grigorenko

Dr. Alexander Korchak

Malva Landa

Anatoly Marchenko

Prof. Yuri Orlov

Prof. Vitaly Rubin

Anatoly Sharansky

Moscow, May 1976

(Declaration published in July 1977 by the International Society for Human Rights with the support of the Swiss Institute G2W under “Documents of the Moscow Helsinki Group”)