Sergei Kovalev giving a press conference after coming back from Chechnya, January 2, 1995, Moscow (Photo: Memorial Society).
Read the human rights legend’s indictment of Yeltsin (and Putin)
Soviet dissident did time in the gulag at Perm 36 and Magadan, founded earliest monitor groups and edited key Chronicle, served as first independent Russian human rights ombudsman, resigned in protest over Chechen war, turning point for Russia
Washington, D.C., August 10, 2021 – The National Security Archive mourns the passing yesterday in Moscow of Sergei Kovalev, our friend and colleague and inspiration, a legend among human righters in the Soviet Union and in the Russian Federation today.
Sergei Adamovich established a life-long standard of courage and forthrightness, dating back to his biology graduate student days in the 1950s when he led a protest against the anti-scientific Lysenko orthodoxy blessed by Stalin to dominate the study of genetics. Kovalev left his Moscow State University job to take on human rights full time in the late 1960s, founding perhaps the earliest independent monitoring group in the Soviet Union, then editing the landmark Chronicle of Current Events, before the regime put him away in 1975 through a fake trial inside a Lithuanian court.
Testament to Kovalev’s standing and integrity, outside the court’s doors the protest was led by his close friend, Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov. After seven years in the penal camps, most notably the infamous Perm 36, and three more of internal exile in far Siberia, Kovalev came back to Moscow in time to help found the extraordinary human rights group Memorial, which led the late 1980s reckoning with Soviet history.
Kovalev won election to the parliament of the Russian Federation as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990 and 1991, not from political savvy but from his reputation for integrity, and then was appointed by new Russian president Boris Yeltsin as the first human rights ombudsman for independent Russia – chair of the presidential human rights commission.
A turning point for Kovalev came with the gruesome war in Chechnya, started by Yeltsin in late 1994 at the urging of his closest aides (notably his former KGB bodyguard Alexander Korzhakov and his vainglorious generals led by Pavel Grachev), with the promise of quick victory over supposed “terrorists.” Kovalev personally went to Chechnya, risking his own life to seek negotiated solutions, and reported the awful cost in civilian lives and in conscripted Russian soldiers’ lives, yet was ignored by Yeltsin.
Kovalev’s eloquent and blistering resignation letter in 1996 predicts the rise of Vladimir Putin, and indicts Putin’s mentor, Boris Yeltsin, on the same grounds that Kovalev continued to argue for 25 more years against the authoritarian consolidation in Russia.
In 2009 the European Union recognized Kovalev’s lifelong leadership in human rights, together with his colleagues Lyudmila Alexeyeva of the Moscow Helsinki Group and Oleg Orlov of Memorial, by awarding them the Sakharov Prize.
The National Security Archive pays tribute today to Sergei Adamovich’s indomitable character, his personal courage, his foresightedness, and his unforgettable legacy by publishing the original Russian versions, together with English translations, of two of his most striking reports from Chechnya, and his final resignation letter in 1996.
We were honored to work with him to document the Soviet dissident history of which he was such a leader, the Chechen wars against which he fought, and the turn to authoritarianism in Russia which he predicted yet always defied.
Document 1
Memorial Society Archive, Moscow, Russia
Document 1a
Memorial Society Archive, Moscow, Russia
This document is a summary of a telephone report from Sergei Kovalev, the human rights commissioner of the Russian Federation, to Ivan Rybkin, chairman of the Duma, as dictated to N. I. Semina, Kovalev's assistant. Kovalev is calling from Grozny, on a trip with a group of Duma deputies to investigate the situation and the possibility of a peaceful resolution. The parliamentary delegation traveled to the areas of Achkoy-Martan and Novy Sharoy in Chechnya. The group had conversations with Russian soldiers, who were reportedly "distinctly" aware that the "development of the conflict" would lead to "increasingly more serious casualties among the civilian population," about which the soldiers had an "obvious" negative attitude. Kovalev had witnessed the bombing of the building that housed the Chechen Republic's Department of State Security, and noted that the central authorities failed to mention the fact that it was located in "the midst of the heavily populated central area of Grozny." Kovalev describes a "chasm of misunderstanding" between the Russian authorities and the Chechen side, and believes that "a crime is being committed not only against the [Chechen] people, but also against Russian soldiers."
Document 2
Memorial Society Archive, Moscow, Russia
Document 2a
Memorial Society Archive, Moscow, Russia
This letter from Commissioner for Human Rights of the Russian Federation Kovalev to Prime Minister Chernomyrdin addresses Chernomyrdin's January 16 speech on the conflict in Chechnya. Kovalev, who at the time was still in Grozny, but about to fly back to Moscow, is writing to share his four key points for the negotiation process. The first is the "de facto recognition of the administration of General Dudaev as one of the parties to the negotiations," since the administration "is still recognized by a large part of the Chechens."
The second is the "gradual termination of military conflict, without setting preconditions at any given stage," as Kovalev believed that "even minimal success" would have "enormous public and international resonance" which would in turn "stimulate the continuation of the process."
His third thought concerns resolving "humanitarian issues," such as prisoner exchanges and assistance for civilians. His final point addresses the importance of "the quickest unveiling of the specific government plan," as well as the necessity of the "openness and transparency of the federal government's position in the negotiations." Kovalev indicates that he will be available for a personal meeting with Chernomyrdin when he arrives in Moscow.
Document 3
Memorial Society Archive, Moscow, Russia
Document 3a
NYRB
In January 1996, after 13 months of bitter confrontation with Yeltsin over the war in Chechnya, Kovalev decided to resign his position as Russia’s first ombudsman. By this time, Yeltsin had already dissolved the President’s Human Rights Commission, but Kovalev kept it functioning.
In this letter, the early supporter of democratization blames Yeltsin for abandoning the hope of Russian democracy. Kovalev does not absolve himself and admits that he supported Yeltsin in his use of force against the parliament in October 1993, but points to the signs of sliding toward authoritarianism due to Yeltsin’s power grab (via the 1993 Constitution) and demonization of the opposition.
From 1993 on, instead of implementing democratic reforms, Yeltsin “revived the blunt and inhumane might of a state machine that stands above justice, law, and the individual.” Kovalev indicts the Russian president for abandoning transparency and reviving excessive secrecy, for selecting government officials on the basis of personal loyalty. In Kovalev’s view, Yeltsin’s “policies compromised” even the word “democracy” and “democrats.”
Speaking about the upcoming elections, Kovalev says that Yeltsin is no better than his Communist (Gennady Zyuganov) and nationalist (Vladimir Zhirinovsky) opponents and that “if we have to choose among you, it will be like choosing which mafia organization to apply to for protection,” and so he tells the president he is not going to vote for him.
Above all, he blames Yeltsin for unleashing the murderous war in Chechnya, which claimed thousands of civilian lives.
As a former close supporter, Kovalev adds a very personal note; he tells Yeltsin that he “lost [his] soul, that [he was] unable to evolve from a Communist Party secretary into a human being.”
As the translation notes, the letter was first published in Izvestia and then in The New York Review of Books.