Borshchev Valery Vasilievich

Genus. in 1943 in the village Chernyanoye, Tambov region. Russian. In 1966 he graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov. Was invited to “Komsomolskaya Pravda”. He left the newspaper in protest against the condemnation of A.I. Solzhenitsyn by the editorial board. Since 1974, he headed the journalism department of the magazine “Soviet Screen” and was a member of the editorial board.
After meeting A.D. Sakharov in 1975, he joined the human rights movement. In the 1970s helped “refuseniks”, participated in collecting money for political prisoners and their families. In 1978, he left the CPSU and resigned from the editorial office of the magazine “Soviet Screen”. He did not have a permanent job; he worked under a contract as a carpenter, scraper, painter, and firefighter at the Taganka Theater. On February 8, 1980, he went underground because he was threatened with criminal prosecution for his activities in the Christian Committee, all of the founders of which by mid-1980 had been arrested and were under investigation. He spent the entire 1980 in an illegal apartment, working as a bookbinder in an underground publishing house of Christian literature, which was headed by V. Burdyug. At the end of 1980, after the trial of G.P. Yakunin ended, V.V. Borshchev came out of hiding. He continued to work in the printing house of V. Burdyug, transmitted human rights information to the West, and repeatedly traveled to the places where Ogorodnikov and Yakunin were serving their sentences. In February 1985, the KGB issued him an official warning, classifying his activities as anti-Soviet propaganda.
In 1981-1989 worked as a proofreader and editor at the Meditsina publishing house. In 1989-1990 - editor of the magazine “Knowledge is Power”. He continued to engage in human rights activities and worked at the A.I. Solzhenitsyn Foundation. In 1987-1990 was one of the authors of letters in defense of the rights of believers. Member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, revived in 1987. Since 1991, he has been a member of the board of the International Research Center for Human Rights, which was formed on the initiative of the Moscow Helsinki Group, and coordinated the activities of 12 human rights organizations.