Defending Human Rights in Russia

Sergei Kovalyov is a central figure in the struggle for human rights in Russia. He was a leading Soviet biologist and, in the 1970s after becoming active in dissident circles, was arrested by the KGB, tried, imprisoned and subjected to internal exile.

After his release, he continued to work for human rights, eventually becoming chairman of the Supreme Soviet Human Rights Committee and chairman of the Presidential Human Rights Commission. He rose to become Russia’s first Human Rights Commissioner under President Yeltsin, in which he was extremely influential in framing human rights provisions in postCommunist Russia.

He subsequently took President Yeltsin to task for the tragic war in the southern republic of Chechnya, eventually resigning in protest. This book, by tracing Kovalyov’s political career, shows his attempts to shape a new human rights culture in Russia in the late Soviet and post-Soviet era.

Emma Gilligan received a PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia, in 2002. She spent five years in Moscow, researching for this book and working for The Andrei Sakharov Foundation. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the History Department at the University of Chicago, working on a book on human rights and Chechnya.