Sergei Kovalev

Biography

Sergei Adamovich Kovalev was born on March 2, 1930, in Seredyna-Buda, a small town now in Ukraine. He studied biophysics at the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University, where he later worked as a researcher. His scientific career blended biology and physics during a time when the Soviet Union was investing heavily in the natural sciences, and he contributed to early work in mathematical biology. However, his strong principles, rather than his lab work, defined his public life.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Kovalev became active in the Soviet dissident movement, working with people who demanded that the Soviet government uphold its constitutional promises of civil liberties. In 1976, he co-founded the Moscow Helsinki Group, which was set up to monitor Soviet compliance with the human rights parts of the Helsinki Accords. His activism led to his arrest in 1974, and he was convicted in 1975 for anti-Soviet activities. He spent seven years in a labor camp in the Perm region and then three years in internal exile in Siberia.

After his release and the relaxing of Soviet political control under Mikhail Gorbachev, Kovalev became a well-known public figure. He joined the Congress of People's Deputies and later worked in the State Duma after the Soviet Union's breakup. From 1993 to 1996, he was Russia's first Human Rights Commissioner, using this role to highlight abuses by the Russian state. His most dramatic action in this role was in December 1994, when he traveled to Grozny during the first Chechen war and broadcast live radio reports from inside a hospital under siege by Russian federal forces, criticizing the military operation.

Kovalev's opposition to the Chechen war put him at odds with Boris Yeltsin's administration and led to his dismissal as Human Rights Commissioner. He continued serving in the State Duma until 2003, consistently opposing what he viewed as authoritarian measures and using his position to speak out against the second Chechen war and the centralization of power under Vladimir Putin. He led the human rights organization Memorial for a time and remained a vocal critic of Russian government policies throughout his life.

Sergei Kovalev died in Moscow on August 9, 2021, at the age of 91. Throughout his life, he received many international awards for his human rights work, including the Homo Homini Award in 1994, the Nuremberg International Human Rights Award and the Theodor Haecker Prize in 1995, the Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights of Scientists Award in 1996, the Geuzenpenning in 1998, the European Human Rights Prize, the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk second class in 2003, the Olof Palme Prize in 2004, the Bruno Kreisky Award for Services to Human Rights, and the Victor Gollancz Prize in 2005.