Lyubarsky Kronid Arkadievich

Lyubarsky Kronid Arkadievich

Lyubarsky Kronid Arkadyevich (April 4, 1934, Pskov - May 23, 1996, Bali, Indonesia) - participant in the human rights movement in the USSR, political prisoner, author of the idea of ​​​​establishing the Day of Political Prisoners in the USSR in 1974, political emigrant, member of the Moscow Helsinki Group since 1989 (headed the MHG in 1994-1996). Born into an intelligent family of noble origin. As an astrophysicist, he graduated from the Department of Astronomy at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University (1956). Until 1963 he worked in Turkmenistan at the Ashgabat Observatory. Author of many scientific and popular articles, translator of a number of books, including on astrobiology. Author of at least one book on astrobiology. In 1961, he was in the area of ​​the Tunguska disaster as part of the expedition of K. P. Florensky, which worked together with KSE-3 - the Complex Amateur Expedition to Study the Tunguska Meteorite. Upon returning from Ashgabat to Moscow, he entered graduate school at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of Moscow State University, and in 1966 defended his Ph.D. thesis. Then he worked at the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR, participated in the development of organizing spacecraft flights to Mars. While still a student, in 1953, Kronid Lyubarsky was the organizer of the first open collective letter of protest in the post-Stalin era to the newspaper Pravda. In the human rights movement since the mid-1960s, he cited “aesthetic contradictions” as the reason for his opposition to the Soviet regime (“the system causes such deep disgust that one day you feel it is impossible to exist in it”). He actively participated in the dissemination of samizdat. On January 17, 1972, he was arrested in the “Chronicles of Current Events” case (during a search of his apartment, more than 600 documents, manuscripts and books were seized); in October of the same year he was sentenced to five years of strict regime for “anti-Soviet agitation.” He served his sentence in the 19th camp in Mordovia, then for “systematic violations of the regime” he was transferred to Vladimir prison. In 1974, while in the camp, he put forward the idea of ​​​​organizing a single Day of Resistance for Political Prisoners, together with several comrades he developed the concept of holding a day of resistance and was able to spread this idea to other camps and prisons. Since 1974, October 30 has been celebrated as Political Prisoner Day in the USSR. (Since 1991, October 30 in Russia is the official Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression. After his release in January 1977, he was assigned to live in Tarusa. One of the successors of Alexander Ginzburg, arrested on February 3, as manager of the Fund for Assistance to Political Prisoners founded by Solzhenitsyn (together with Malva Landa and Tatyana Khodorovich). He joined the Soviet group of Amnesty International. As a result, criminal cases were again brought against him: first for “parasitism,” then for “violation of supervision rules,” and finally - again for "anti-Soviet agitation", this time under Article 70, Part 2, providing for a term of up to 10 years of special regime. As a result, under pressure from the authorities, on October 14, 1977, Kronid Lyubarsky left the USSR, upon departure he and his entire family were deprived of Soviet citizenship. From the beginning of 1978 he lived in Germany. In exile he continued to work, publishing the information bulletin “News from the USSR” (one issue every two weeks for 14 years), the annual “Lists of political prisoners in the USSR”, and from 1984 the journalistic magazine “ Country and World”, intended for a wide range of readers and telling not only about repression and resistance to the regime in the Soviet Union, but also about global problems of economics and politics, and possible ways to solve them. Both Russian and Western authors were published in the magazine. Soon the magazine's editorial office turned into a publishing house, releasing a number of books. Kronid Lyubarsky became a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, revived in 1989. In 1990, he was able to return to Moscow for the first time as part of an international commission investigating the circumstances of the death of Raoul Wallenberg. In August 1991, he took part in the defense of the White House. On June 2, 1992, Kronid Lyubarsky and his family members were returned to Russian citizenship; from the end of the same year, he began to work actively in Russia, and in February 1993, his family finally moved to Moscow, where Lyubarsky became the first deputy editor-in-chief of the New Time magazine. During the October events of 1993, he organized the defense of the Ekho Moskvy radio station building. He was a member of the Citizenship Commission and participated in the development of the liberal “Citizenship Law” of the Russian Federation. He was a member of the Constitutional Conference, the author of several articles of the new Constitution of the Russian Federation, the most important of which he considered the articles on freedom of movement and choice of place of residence (i.e., the abolition of registration), as well as on the freedom to travel outside of Russia. Kronid Lyubarsky traveled a lot. He died on May 23, 1996, drowning in the ocean during a trip to Bali. He was buried in the columbarium of the Donskoye Cemetery in Moscow.