People of the Revolution and the USSR

Activity(set)
Any Political and party leadership 11 Government and administration 2 Legislature and state representation 1 Military command 1 Diplomacy and international organization 1 Ideology and propaganda 1 Social movements and organizing 17 Scholarship and theory 4 Science and technology 3 Literature and arts 6 Religion 1
Affiliation

Most people

Any Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks 1 Soviet Unionstate 1

All 2 affiliations

Soviet Union

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks 1 Soviet Unionstate 1
Position(set)
Any Imperial establishment and White movement 34 Counter-revolutionary forces 106 Left critics of Bolshevism 8 Socialist-bloc reform leader 3 Dissident 1 Anarchists 3 Non-Bolshevik socialists 3 Jacobins and French revolutionary radicals 2 Fascists and Nazis 11 National liberation and anti-colonial movements 6 Marxism and communism 264 Revolutionary socialism 1 Liberalism and republicanism 1 Conservatism and Christian democracy 3 Monarchy and royalism 7 Nationalism 12
Citizenship
Any Soviet Union 1
Background
Any Ukraine 1
Era
Any

People of the Soviet Union

People of the thaw and the stagnation1953–1985 1
Military command Dissident Clear all

Petro Grigoryevich Grigorenko

Пётр Григорьевич Григоренко
Soviet Union Dissident Soviet Ukrainian 1907–1987 ○ Stroke

Soviet major general who turned dissident to defend human rights and deported nations

"In the underground one can meet only rats" — his credo of open, public dissent, which became the title of his memoirs.

A Soviet major general (1959) turned dissident, Grigorenko led the Crimean Tatars' struggle for the right of return and co-founded both the Moscow and Ukrainian Helsinki Groups. He openly condemned the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia and endured two forced psychiatric incarcerations (1964–65, 1969–74), becoming the landmark case exposing Soviet political abuse of psychiatry.

Career timeline
  • 1927–1929Komsomol secretary, member of Ukrainian Komsomol Central Committee
  • 1934–1939Graduated with honors from Military Engineering Academy and General Staff Academy
  • 1939–1943Khalkhin Gol, Far Eastern Front staff officer, brigade commander
  • 1943–1945WWII: deputy chief of staff, 10th Guards Army; chief of staff, 8th Rifle Division (wounded)
  • 1945–1961Frunze Military Academy professor, head of cybernetics department; major general 1959
  • 1961–1964Dismissed for political speech, exiled to Far East, founded League for Revival of Leninism
  • 1964–1974Forced psychiatric incarceration — two periods in special psychiatric hospitals
  • 1976–1977Founding member, Moscow Helsinki Group and Ukrainian Helsinki Group