Soviet dissident and physicist Yuri Orlov, one of the founders of the Moscow Helsinki group, has died at the age of 96, the human rights organization, one of the largest in Russia, announced Monday (September 28th).
According to the organization, the former dissident died on Sunday in the United States.
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Physicist, human rights activist, thinker, he had a long and active life, teaching the physics he loved so much until the last opportunity and continuing to stay in touch with the human rights movement
," wrote the Moscow Helsinki group on its website.
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Its idea that citizens can ensure respect for the human dimension of the Helsinki agreements and, together, urge States to respect their commitments, launched the International Helsinki Movement in 1976
", notes the organization.
The Moscow Helsinki Group was created in 1976 to ensure that the Soviet authorities respect their human rights commitments made in the Helsinki Final Act in 1975 at the end of the Security Conference. and cooperation in Europe.
Nuclear physicist and World War II veteran Yuri Orlov was its first president.
In 1977, he was arrested and then imprisoned for his human rights defense activities.
He was released in 1986 under the presidency of Mikhail Gorbachev under an agreement with the United States and stripped of his Soviet citizenship, which was not restored to him until 1990. Continuing his career as a physicist at the Cornell University in the United States and collaborating in particular with CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), he obtained American nationality in 1993.
