The well-known fighter for human rights Sergei Kovalev, a dissident who fought for democratic freedoms since Soviet times, died yesterday in Russia at the age of 92, his son Ivan wrote on Facebook.
Biophysicist Kovalev was part of the first independent human rights association in the Soviet Union, co-authored a chapter of the Russian constitution, and served as Russia's first ombudsman.
Human Rights Watch stated in a statement that Kovalev was a well-known and respected defender of fundamental rights, always spoke his mind and never compromised on his principles.
He was born in a small town in Ukraine in the then Soviet Union in 1930.
Two years later, his family moved to a village near Moscow.
He graduated from the Faculty of Biology at the University of Moscow in 1954 and later worked at the university.
In 1969, he became part of the Initiative for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR, the country's first independent human rights group, and was pressured to resign from the university.
From 1971 to 1974, he worked on publishing the Chronicle of Current Events, where human rights violations were documented.
He was arrested in 1974 for spreading anti-Soviet propaganda, and a year later he was sentenced to seven years in prison, followed by three years of exile.
He returned to activism in the late 1980s after serving his sentence and was among the co-founders of the Glasnost press club, which later turned into the Moscow Helsinki Group, one of Russia's best-known human rights organizations.
During the 1990s, Kovalev was a member of the Russian parliament, was the country's first human rights ombudsman and co-authored a chapter of the Russian constitution.
He also became co-chairman of Memorial, a prominent human rights group in Russia.
Since 2006, he has been a member of the Russian liberal party Jabloko. B
and was a vocal critic of the Kremlin during the reigns of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.
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