Former Soviet dissident and one of Russia’s most famous human rights defenders, Sergei Kovalev, died Monday at the age of 91, his family said.
Kovalev, a biophysicist by profession, became one of the best-known members of the Soviet democracy support movement. He was imprisoned in Soviet labor camps for his political activities.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he sharply criticized the war in Chechnya and warned of the resignation of democracy when Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia in 2000.
His son Ivan Kovalev announced on social network Facebook that his father had died asleep early Monday morning.
The Russian human rights organization Memorial, once headed by Kovalev, said Kovalev “has always and everywhere been faithful to the idea of human rights – in war and in peace, politics and daily life”.
The “memorial”, which the Russian authorities have recognized as a “foreign agent”, also recalled that Kovalev had fought for human rights since 1969.
“He consistently fought for the same principles” in post-Soviet Russia, the organization added.
In 1994, Kovalev was appointed chairman of Russia’s President Boris Yeltsin’s human rights commission, but was fired for criticizing Moscow’s brutal actions in Chechnya.
Kovalev also criticized the political system created by Putin.
“Our country is building a controlled democracy that seeks to create problems for enemies both inside and outside,” Kovalev said in July 2001, two months after Putin’s first inauguration as president.
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