Memorial service for Petro Hryhorenko held in Aqmescit (PHOTOS)

Society - 21 February 2012, Tuesday 14:08

AQMESCIT/ SIMFEROPIL (QHA) - A memorial service dedicated to the 25th anniversary of death of a prominent Soviet human rights activist Petro Hryhorenko has been held at the Cathedral of St. Vladimir and Olga (Aqmescit/ Simferopil) on February 21.
The service was attended by activists of the Crimean Tatar national movement Zampira Hasan, Vade Abdureşit and Lenara Umer, as well as the Ukrainian public led by the Head of the Crimean branch of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists Mr. Vasyl Ovcharuk.

Reference: Petro Hryhorenko (October 16, 1907 – February 21, 1987) was a high-ranked Soviet Army commander of Ukrainian descent, later a prominent Soviet human rights activist, dissident and writer.
In 1961 Hryhorenko criticized Nikita Khrushchev's policies and was transferred to Russian Far East as punishment. In 1963 he created the Union of Struggle for the Restoration of Leninism. In the 1970s Hryhorenko became a member of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group. The authorities sent him to a psychiatric imprisonment from 1964–1965, and he was stripped of his military rank, medals, and retirement benefits.
After his release, Hryhorenko actively participated in the struggle for the Crimean Tatar autonomy, and demonstrated against the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and became a leading figure in Soviet human rights movement along with his fellow celebrated dissidents Vladimir Bukovsky, Andrei Sakharov, Alexander Yesenin-Volpin and others.
Hryhorenko was one of the first who questioned the official Soviet version of World War II history. He pointed out that just prior to the German attack on June 22, 1941, vast Soviet troops were concentrated in the area west of Białystok, deep in occupied Poland, getting ready for a surprise offensive, which made them vulnerable to be encircled in case of surprise German attack. His ideas were later advanced by Victor Suvorov.
In 1981, Pyotr Grigorenko told about his psychiatric examinations, hospitalizations, life, and views in his memoirs V Podpolye Mozhno Vstretit Tolko Krys (In Underground One Can Meet Only Rats). In 1982, the book was translated into English under the title Memoirs.
Only in 1992, the official post-mortem forensic psychiatric commission of experts met at Hryhorenko’s homeland removed the stigma of mental patient from him and confirmed that the debilitating treatment he underwent in high security psychiatric hospitals for many years was groundless.

Niâra Nurmambet – Aliye Bekir


 
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