13 May 2026
A half-century of the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG)
by Leonid Nikitinsky
Source: Novaya Gazeta
The remaining members of the Moscow Helsinki Group, which was dissolved in January 2023 by a decision of the Moscow City Court, held a ‘semi-underground’ meeting in honour of the 50th anniversary of its founding on 12 May 1976. Some of the participants met up in a Moscow room provided by supporters, while others joined via Zoom.
Does the human rights movement have a future? This was a particular concern for those present (who were mostly senior citizens).
The term pravozashchitnik (‘right/law defender’) does not directly translate into other languages; it emerged out of a rally that took place by the Pushkin monument on 5 December 1965, USSR Constitution Day. One of the main rallying cries was: ‘Respect your Constitution!’ An assortment of Soviet dissidents, holding a wide array of beliefs (from monarchist to anarchist), were able to unite under this slogan and around the notion of human rights.
Right up until its dissolution, the Moscow Helsinki Group was considered the oldest and most respected human rights organisation. It was founded in response to the 1975 signing by the USSR of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Along with military, political and economic issues, the Helsinki Accords provided for a ‘third basket’ whereby the signatory states undertook to respect human rights and freedoms.
The MHG included, among others, the physicist Yuri Orlov, the biologist Sergei Kovalev, and its future chairperson Liudmila Alekseeva. The group supported political prisoners (a fate that regularly befell its own members) and also published the typewritten Chronicle of Current Events, a regular tracker of political persecution. In 1982, members of the group were forced to announce its self-dissolution, but in 1989, during the wave of perestroika, the MHG resumed its work.
The 50th anniversary of the MHG prompts a comparison between the position of human rights defenders in the group’s early days and today. Political repression is now an order of magnitude greater than in Brezhnev’s USSR. Neither government accepted the doctrine of human rights, and Russia has left the Council of Europe, rejecting it on both a theoretical and a practical level.
On the other hand, the idea of human rights, which emerged as a safeguard against totalitarianism after World War II and prioritised human rights and freedoms over the sovereignty of states, remains valid. It is the sort of concept that, once created, never disappears from human civilisation — along with, for example, the concept of democracy.
The supremacy of human rights is enshrined in Article 2 of the Russian Constitution:
Man, his rights and freedoms are the supreme value. The recognition, observance and protection of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen shall be the obligation of the State.
Despite all the repression, the human rights movement of today has a broader scope of action than was the case in the USSR.
The notion of human rights, which spread through the USSR and then Russia, has taken root in the mass consciousness. This is evident today in protests against internet restrictions, while every last drunkard will appeal to human rights when faced with time in a drunk tank.
The USSR did not maintain a pretence of democracy in the way that today’s Russia does. The next State Duma elections are coming up in the autumn, but electoral democracy without the free flow of information – at least about candidates and parties – is no democracy.
The Soviet Union signed the OSCE’s Helsinki Act to improve economic ties with other states. In the future, the same driver will likewise be unavoidable for Russia. If we are to believe a leak from the Presidential Administration, an amnesty for political prisoners may form part of an action plan following a purported victory in the ‘special military operation.’
The human rights movement is currently in crisis, and those who gathered on 12 May were short on ideas. But a lack of ideas is also evident at the other end of the spectrum, among those who oppose the doctrine of human rights and support the machinations of ‘statehood.’
Perhaps only through the lens of human rights can we render a positive vision of the future. The MHG may have been dissolved, but the movement itself has not gone anywhere. Despite all the repression, demonstrations in defence of political prisoners are springing up in various forms here and there. The challenge is how to find common ground between the generations and unite these fragmented initiatives at a time of intense pressure from the state.
Translated by Lindsay Munford
