[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 141 (Thursday, October 31, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1971-E1973]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     TRIBUTE TO TATYANA VELIKANOVA

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BOB SCHAFFER

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 31, 2002

  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, there are certain times in our lives when 
we do well to pause, reflect upon, and honor those outstanding persons 
who have fought, at great personal sacrifice, to make a real difference 
in the never-ending struggle around the world for basic human rights. 
Now is one of those special times for sure.
  On September 21 of this year one of the greatest heroines in the long 
fight against the horrible human terrors of the Soviet Union died in 
Moscow after a battle with cancer at age seventy. Tatyana Velikanova 
was a leading champion of the Soviet-era dissident movement. She was 
described by Andrei Sakharov, the 1975 Noble Peace Prize winner, as an 
``embodiment of the . . . purity and strength of the Soviet human 
rights movement.''
  Andrei Sakharov lauded Ms. Velikanova in a statement written during 
his own banishment from Moscow for her dedication to the cause of the 
oppressed, regardless of whether she agreed with their views. ``Her 
only consideration was whether someone had suffered injustice,'' he 
wrote.
  ``She was a symbol of the human rights movement,'' said Sergei 
Kovalyov in an Associated Press story about her death. Kovalyov, a 
prominent dissident who worked alongside Ms. Velikanova, described her 
as ``absolutely reliable, a crystally honest person.'' Kovalyov regards 
Andrei Sakharov and Tatyana Velikanova as the brightest representatives 
of the Soviet human rights movement.
  Mr. Speaker, I stand today to honor the amazing life of Tatyana 
Velikanova. Freedom-loving people everywhere join us in honoring her 
life, her commitment, her courage, her dedication and her long struggle 
to tell the world the truth about the unbelievable human rights abuses 
perpetrated throughout the Soviet Union for so many long years 
including those in the country of my heritage, Ukraine.
  Marjorie Farquharson, a writer on human rights issues, wrote in a 
recent article published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. ``The 
death on 21 September this year of Tatyana Velikanova, the editor of 
`Khronika tekushchykh sobytii' (`A Chronicle of Current Events'), draws 
a line under the most remarkable publishing venture of the Soviet 
era.''
  Tatyana Velikanova was arrested in 1979 on charges of ``anti-Soviet 
propaganda,'' and received a nine-year sentence, serving four years in 
prison camp before being exiled to a desolate part of Kazakhstan.
  Mr. Speaker, according to Mr. E. Morgan William, a personal friend of 
mine and an expert on Eastern European affairs, ``all those around the 
world today who love and support the cause of human rights and basic 
human freedom owe a debt to Tatyana Velikanova. Her life and the cause 
she fought for must not be forgotten.'' Mr Williams' personal 
appreciation of Velikanova has motivated him to articulate the 
magnitude of her legacy on a mass scale. In fact, these very remarks 
are inspired by his passion for liberty and his devotion to 
Velikanova's cause for human dignity.
  Williams is right to suggest the conflict is ongoing and the 
champions of freedom continue where Velikanova's efforts have ended. 
``The fight for basic human rights still goes on today,'' Williams told 
me. ``We must step up the long struggle against those who crush the 
human spirit and deny people their basic human rights.''
  Mr. Speaker, I ask the House to join me now in offering the prayers 
and supplications of a thankful nation to the Almighty God of our 
country for life and works of His servant, Tatyana Velikanova. May her 
soul and all souls of the faithfully departed, through the Mercy of 
God, rest in eternal peace.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, I hereby submit for the Record, three published 
accounts of Tatyana Velikanova's life. This submission is particularly 
important because of the constrained

[[Page E1972]]

press that still exist throughout the former Soviet Union. Even today, 
those whose freedom was advanced by the sacrafice of Velikanova are 
least likely to be exposed to stories like these that document her 
courage.

           [lsqb]From the New York Times, Oct. 17, 2002[rsqb]

    Tatyana Velikanova, Soviet Human Rights Activist, Dies at Age 70

                         (By Sophia Kishkovksy)

       Moscow, Oct. 14.--Tatyana M. Velikanova, a Soviet human 
     rights activist who was a leading editor of the most 
     important samizdat journal of human rights abuses and spent 
     nearly nine years in prison camp and exile, died of cancer on 
     Sept. 19. She was 70 and lived in Moscow.
       Ms. Velikanova, a mathematician by profession, became a 
     dissident in 1968, when she went to Red Square with her 
     husband, Konstantin Babitsky, who was one of only seven 
     people to demonstrate openly against the Soviet-led invasion 
     of Czechoslovakia that crushed the Prague Spring reforms.
       Mr. Babitsky was arrested and banished for several years to 
     the far north of Russia. The next year, Ms. Velikanova helped 
     found the Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in 
     the U.S.S.R., and became the backbone of the Chronicle of 
     Current Events, a samizdat news bulletin, after the arrest of 
     its founder, Natalya Gorbanevskaya. The chronicle was the 
     main uncensored source of information about the dissident 
     movement around the Soviet Union during the rule of Leonid I. 
     Brezhnev.
       At a time when photocopying machines were rare and kept 
     literally under lock and key in Soviet offices, the compilers 
     of the chronicle gathered information and then produced 
     multiple copies by typing through layers of carbon paper.
       The chronicle was written in a dry, telegraphic style, and 
     defended all repressed groups, from Pentecostal believers to 
     Jewish refuseniks, Russian Orthodox priests, Georgian 
     nationalists, deported Crimean Tatars, and intellectuals and 
     religious believers in the Baltic republics.
       Ms. Velikanova herself was an observant Orthodox Christian.
       She was arrested in 1979 on charges of ``anti-Soviet 
     propaganda,'' and a report in the Chronicle around that time 
     detailed official questioning of her sister about her ties to 
     the West, as well as the interrogator's relaying his 
     prisoner's request for a Bible and photographs of her 
     grandchildren.
       Ms. Velikanova received a nine-year sentence, serving four 
     years in prison camp and then being exiled to a desolate part 
     of Kazakhstan.
       In a statement written during his own banishment from 
     Moscow to the city of Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod), Andrei D. 
     Sakharov lauded Ms. Velikanova for her dedication to the 
     cause of the oppressed, regardless of whether she agreed with 
     their views. ``Her only consideration was whether someone had 
     suffered injustice,'' he wrote.
       During the reforms of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Ms. Velikanova 
     was allowed to return to Moscow before her nine-year term was 
     fully served. In her final years, she lived out of the public 
     eye, teaching math and Russian language and literature at a 
     Moscow school until just months before her death.
       She is survived by three children, Natalie Babitsky of 
     France, Fyodor Babitsky of Moscow and Yulia Keidan of Italy; 
     13 grandchildren; two brothers, Andrew Velihan of Northport, 
     N.Y., and Kirill Velikanov of Moscow; and two sisters, 
     Yekaterina Velikanova of Moscow and Mary Velihan Grigorenko 
     of New York City.

                                  ____
                                  

            [lsqb]From the Boston Globe, Oct. 18, 2002[rsqb]

    Tatyana Velikanova, Leading Soviet-Era Dissident, Dies at Age 70

       Moscow.--Tatyana Velikanova, a leading member of the 
     Soviet-era dissident movement who was arrested and jailed for 
     chronicling human rights abuses by the authorities, has died 
     in Moscow of cancer. She was 70.
       ``She was a symbol of the human rights movement,'' Sergei 
     Kovalyov, a prominent dissident also persecuted by the 
     authorities, said yesterday. Ms. Velikanova, a mathematician, 
     first defied the authorities in 1968, when she appeared in 
     Red Square with her husband and six other people to protest 
     the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. After her husband, 
     Konstantin Babitsky, was arrested, Ms. Velikanova became an 
     active participant in the dissident movement.
       In 1969, Ms. Velikanova helped found the Initiative Group 
     for the Defense of Human Rights and later played a leading 
     role in publishing the Chronicle of Current Events, a 
     samizdat, or self-published bulletin reporting human rights 
     abuses by the authorities and news about the dissident 
     movement. The Chronicle was the cornerstone of the dissident 
     movement for many years.
       ``She was absolutely reliable, a crystally honest person,'' 
     said Kovalyov, who worked on the Chronicle alongside Ms. 
     Velikanova until his arrest in 1974. ``For me, 
     [lsqb]Andrei[rsqb] Sakharov and Velikanova were the brightest 
     representatives of the Soviet human rights movement.''
       Sakharov, who won the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize for his human 
     rights activities, once hailed Ms. Velikanova as an 
     ``embodiment of the . . . purity and strength of the Soviet 
     Union's human rights movement.''
       Following years of harassment by the authorities, Ms. 
     Velikanova was arrested in 1979 and sentenced to four years 
     in a prison camp and five years of exile in the steppes of 
     western Kazakhstan. She was pardoned by the government in 
     1987 as part of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, 
     but she refused to return to Moscow for another half-year.
       For the past decade, Ms. Velikanova taught in Moscow.

                                  ____
                                  

    [lsqb]From Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Oct. 16, 2002[rsqb]

  Honoring a Samizdat Pioneer--The Amazing Life of Tatyana Velikanova

                       (By Marjorie Farquharson)

       The death on 21 September this year of Tatyana Velikanova, 
     the editor of ``Khronika tekushchykh sobytii'' (``A Chronicle 
     of Current Events''), draws a line under the most remarkable 
     publishing venture of the Soviet era.
       Although it concentrated on reporting the here-and-now, 
     ``Khronika'' actually reached far into the future. Some of 
     the issues it highlighted have not been resolved even today.
       ``Khronika'' gave an uncensored account of what was going 
     on in the Soviet Union, and thus prefigured the events of the 
     late 1980s that so surprised the world in a way that 
     ``Izvestiya'' never could. Before then-Communist Party 
     General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev launched his policy of 
     ``glasnost'' in the late 1980s, you could scour the official 
     press in vain for indications of nationalism in Georgia or 
     Ukraine. By contrast, the pages of ``Khronika'' traced the 
     lives of some individuals who later became the first to head 
     their republics as independent states, and others who became 
     Nobel laureates or members of the new Russian government.
       ``Khronika'' was the only samizdat journal devoted to human 
     rights issues (Article 19 of the UN civil rights covenant was 
     its masthead) throughout the Soviet Union and it ran for 14 
     years--longer than almost any other. It began as a brief 
     record of what happened to the seven people who demonstrated 
     in Red Square against the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, 
     among them Velikanova's husband Konstantin Babitskii. By the 
     time the authorities finally suppressed the publication in 
     1983, it had regular rubrics on emigration, religion, 
     nationalities, psychiatry, prisoners, and the media.
       Compared with the websites available now, the legal 
     fragments in ``Khronika'' look like shards of ancient 
     pottery. In the chronicle's day through, Soviet readers had 
     no right to see the laws that governed them, and what was not 
     expressly permitted was wisest assumed forbidden. 
     ``Khronika'' published whatever secret decrees came its way, 
     some with enormous implications for human rights--such as 
     instructions of forcible psychiatric confinement from 1972, 
     residency restrictions on ex-offenders, and rules on prison 
     punishments. It was not until the USSR had collapsed that the 
     new 1991 Russian Constitution included the idea that laws 
     must be accessible to the public if they are to be legal.
       Journalists in democracies have a duty to impart 
     information, not merely the right to do so, according to 
     international standards accepted by Russia in 1998 and by 
     those other ex-Soviet republics that have been accepted into 
     the Council of Europe. ``Khronika'' chose to write in that 
     same spirit 34 years ago, but under the constraints of Soviet 
     censorship. An early issue advises: ``Our journal is by no 
     means illegal, but the peculiar notion of freedom of 
     information that has been bred over many years in Soviet 
     institutions prevents us from putting a return address on the 
     back page. If you want the public to know what is going on in 
     the country, give you information to the person who gave you 
     `Khronika,' and they will pass it on to the person who gave 
     it to them. Only don't try to follow the trail to the end or 
     people will take you for an informer.''
       In 1979 that trail led to Velikanova and her arrest, but by 
     then it had evidently become a long and intricate one. (Soon 
     afterward a Pentecostalist living 11 time zones away in the 
     Pacific town of Nakhodka was questioned about Velikanova's 
     case.) Well-versed in political trials, Velikanova took no 
     part in the investigation of here own case, refused a defense 
     lawyer, and did not appeal against her nine-year sentence in 
     1980 for ``anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda''--her only 
     response to the verdict being ``The farce is over.'' She 
     served four years in a Mordovian labor camp, then was exiled 
     to a camel station in Kazakhstan where she worked as a 
     bookkeeper. The first information about women political 
     prisoners and their conditions emerged when she was in 
     Mordovia.
       ``Khronika'' did not anticipate the explosion in 
     information technology that has ripped through the world 
     since 1990, carrying the Russian Federation with it. The 
     chroniclers were caught in an era when Soviet typewriters 
     were identifiable by their registration numbers, photocopiers 
     did not exist, and no one had dreamt of a fax or electronic 
     mail. Velikanova took enormous risks as editor of 
     ``Khronika.'' Apart from the constant danger of arrest, there 
     were the problems of protecting sources, distributing 
     material to trusted people and guarding against fake 
     information supplied by the KGB to discredit the journal. 
     Contributors too took risks. How did they know the journal 
     would represent them fairly? And protect their identity when 
     needed?
       The continual growth in the chronicle's depth and scope is 
     a counterpoint to Velikanova's own integrity and skill. From

[[Page E1973]]

     the first issue to the last, the same neutral and unassuming 
     voice speaks through its pages--a voice that must have been 
     very close to her own.
       ``Khronika'' foreshadowed many changes, but two causes it 
     espoused have not been resolved. The Meskhetians and the 
     Crimean Tartars, who were expelled from their homes by Stalin 
     during World War II still struggle for full civil rights. The 
     Tartars feature in the chronicle's earliest issues. Their 
     leader, Mustafa Dzhemilev, was a member of the Initiative 
     Group for the Defense of Human Rights set up by Velikanova 
     and her fellow ``Khronika'' founder Sergei Kovalev and 
     Tatyana Khodorovich in 1969.
       Until she was sacked from the Academy of Sciences in 1977 
     and began work as a cleaner in a children's hospital, 
     Velikanova engaged in mathematical research. After her 
     release in 1987, she united her two great loves and became a 
     mathematics teacher in a Moscow school, where she still 
     worked at the time of her death at 71. She was shy in public, 
     and in the 1990s never became known as a magnet for the 
     foreign media and financiers. A complete set of her edited 
     works survives her, however. ``A Chronicle of Current 
     Events'' is available in Russian on the website of the human 
     rights group Memorial (http://www.memo.ru) and in English 
     from Amnesty International.