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Dr. Yuri Orlov, a founder of the Helsinki human
rights movement and one of its main guiding lights, died on 27
September 2020, at age 96.Orlov was a physicist who became a leading
Soviet human rights dissident, beginning in the mid-1950s with his
courageous denunciations of Stalin’s atrocities.
He is best known for having co-founded, along with
the late historian Ludmilla Alexeyeva, the Moscow Helsinki Group in
1976, following the signing of the Helsinki Accords the previous
year. The organization inspired the formation of numerous other
“Helsinki committees” throughout the Helsinki signatory states, both
behind Iron Curtain and in the West. These organizations, by
documenting the communist regimes’ abuses, played a significant role
in their eventual demise.
As punishment for initiating this remarkable
process, Orlov spent seven years in Soviet gulag camps.
It was my great privilege to know and work with
Yuri Orlov during my tenure as executive director of the
International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF), of which
Orlov was Honorary Chairman.
Yuri Orlov articulated a non-partisan, scientific
approach to defending and promoting human rights. Neither the Moscow
Helsinki Group, nor the other organizations adhering to its
principles, were political opposition organizations; instead, they
sought to objectively monitor their governments’ compliance with
human rights commitments undertaken in the Helsinki process, and
with international law.
He once explained that “human rights is not about
what, but about how.” By this he clarified that human rights work,
properly conceived, was not aimed at any particular political goal,
but at protecting basic freedoms.
This ethical position has inspired human rights
organizations ever since, and around the world, and where it has
been honored, it has increased their credibility and effectiveness.
All of us who try to defend and promote human
rights, as well as the many millions who gained freedoms after 1989,
owe a huge debt to Yuri Orlov.
May he rest in peace.
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