15 May 2026
by Ekho Moskvy
Source: Facebook
What Happened?
In Moscow, human rights activist and dissident Nina Litvinova took her own life. She was 80 years old. On 13 May, state-run news agencies RIA Novosti and TASS, citing sources within law enforcement, reported that Litvinova had died by suicide and had left a note. However, neither one of the pro-government outlets mentioned that she had spent decades helping political prisoners and was closely connected to the Soviet dissident movement. RIA Novosti referred to her only as the granddaughter of Soviet People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maksim Litvinov, while TASS added that she had worked at the Institute of Oceanology. Later, her cousin, journalist Masha Slonim, published an excerpt from Litvinova’s suicide note, in which she linked her decision directly to the war against Ukraine and to political repression in Russia.
Granddaughter of the Soviet People’s Commissar
Nina Litvinova was born on August 9, 1945, in Moscow into a family closely connected to the Soviet political elite and, simultaneously, to the future dissident movement. Her father, Mikhail Litvinov, was a mathematician and the son of Soviet diplomat Maksim Litvinov, who presided over the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the USSR in the 1930s. Her mother, Flora Yasinovskaya, worked as a physiologist.
Maksim Litvinov occupied a unique place in Soviet history. Born Meir Wallach, he was a revolutionary, underground activist, and associate of Lenin. After years of exile, arrests, and clandestine work, he became one of the Soviet Union’s most prominent diplomats in the 1930s. Litvinov headed the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, and during the Second World War he served as the Soviet ambassador to the United States and took part in negotiations concerning the supply of Lend-Lease aid to the USSR, according to his biography. However, the Litvinov family history was shaped not only by the Soviet elite but also by a constant fear of state repression. In his later years, the diplomat fell out of favour and slept with a revolver nearby, fearing arrest.
Nina Litvinova herself did not seek publicity and, as the Memorial Society noted in its obituary, she said that the reputation of her family name was more burden than benefit. Memorial notes that Litvinova almost always declined interviews and tried to stay out of the media spotlight.
Nevertheless, family experience, memories of Soviet repression, and her social circle gradually drew her into the late Soviet dissident movement.
A Family of Dissidents
A particularly important influence on Nina Litvinova’s life was that of her brother, physicist and dissident Pavel Litvinov. In August 1968, he was one of the participants in the famous ‘Demonstration of the Seven’ on Red Square protesting against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. After the protest, he was sent into exile. Nina regularly visited her brother, and later became part of the Soviet dissident community herself. She distributed samizdat literature and typed copies of The Chronicle of Current Events, the principal underground human rights bulletin of Soviet dissidents, which documented political arrests, trials, and persecution in the USSR. Litvinova attended political trials, visited her brother and other dissidents in exile, and brought them letters, books, and parcels.
The dissident environment also surrounded Nina Litvinova through other family members besides her brother. Her cousin, Masha Slonim, later became a well-known journalist with the BBC Russian Service. In her youth, Slonim was also involved in the Soviet samizdat movement, distributing The Chronicle of Current Events and other dissident publications to foreign journalists, and was later subjected to interrogation by the KGB. In the 1970s, she emigrated first to the United States and then to the United Kingdom.
Litvinova later recalled that period: ‘It seems to me that we lived with a shared sense of compassion. Everyone helped one another.’
As Memorial notes, helping political prisoners and supporting those persecuted felt entirely natural to her and ‘required no heroization’. Assisting those who had been arrested, delivering packages to prisoners in labour camps, and reprinting banned texts became part of her everyday life.
A Scientist Who Studied Oceanography
Despite her involvement in political dissidence, Nina Litvinova spent a significant part of her life in science. For more than forty years, she worked at the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where she was a senior researcher and held a PhD in biological sciences. Her specialty was ophiuroids, marine echinoderms related to starfish. Litvinova studied their biology, published scientific papers, and described several new species.
‘Quiet and Almost Invisible Support for the Persecuted’
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nina Litvinova remained active in the human rights community. In later years, she became a regular participant in campaigns supporting political prisoners. By then, the prisoners she supported were no longer Soviet dissidents but defendants in contemporary political cases.
Memorial writes that over the last eight years, Litvinova, along with other activists, travelled to Petrozavodsk for the trials of historian Yuri Dmitriev and attended court hearings in the cases of human rights activist Oleg Orlov, theatre director Yevgenia Berkovich, and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk. She also helped many lesser-known political prisoners who received little media attention. Literary critic Anna Narinskaya recalls how Litvinova brought books to defendants in the ‘New Greatness’ case who had been placed under house arrest: ‘She was always so caring. May she be remembered forever.’
Fellow human rights activists highlighted her style of work – that it was without grandstanding or publicity. ‘This quiet and almost invisible support for the persecuted was her consciously chosen strategy,’ Memorial notes.
After the start of Russian aggression against Ukraine, Nina Litvinova openly opposed the invasion and, despite her age, continued to take part in anti-war picket lines. According to those close to her, the war and the growing political repression became a source of profound emotional distress for Litvinova. The day after reports of her death emerged, journalist Masha Slonim, her cousin, published excerpts from Litvinova’s suicide note. Slonim wrote that Litvinova’s death was first reported by RIA Novosti, citing sources within law enforcement, effectively making public information about the suicide and the existence of a note that the family had not intended to disclose. She added that neither the state news agencies nor other Russian media outlets published the contents of the letter, as it ‘too clearly explained the reasons for her death.’ ‘And so we decided to reveal the real cause’, Slonim wrote, ‘Putin killed her!’.
In her note, Litvinova directly linked her decision to the war against Ukraine and the ongoing political situation in Russia:
‘I love you all and think about you. But I have to go; life has become unbearable for me. It has been unbearable ever since Putin attacked Ukraine, killing innocent people, while here at home thousands of people are being endlessly imprisoned, people who suffer and die in prison simply because they, like I do, oppose the war and oppose the killing.’
She also wrote about the political prisoners whose fate had troubled her in recent years:
‘I tried to help them, but my strength has run out, and day and night I am tormented by my helplessness. I am ashamed, but I have given up. Please forgive me.’
Litvinova mentioned theatre director Yevgenia Berkovich, playwright Svetlana Petriychuk, former Inter RAO executive Karina Tsurkan, and ‘thousands of others’ who are behind bars.
Journalist Ksenia Larina wrote that Litvinova had ‘devoted her life to saving people from state terror’ and had died ‘from despair and helplessness.’
Memorial emphasized that Nina Litvinova embodied ‘modest but unbreakable courage and virtue’ and that she ‘was always there where the pain was greatest.’ The organization concluded that the best way to honour her memory would be ‘to continue her work’.
Translated by Annabel Pedgley
