On November 3 Valery Borshchev — a human rights defender, public figure, Soviet dissident, and journalist, as well as the author of the law on public oversight of places of detention — passed away at the age of 82.
Valery Borshchev was born on December 1, 1943, in the village of Chernyanoye, Tambov Region. He graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University. After meeting Andrei Sakharov in 1975, he became actively involved in human rights work, for which he was banned from practicing journalism. Thanks to the support of Valery Zolotukhin and Vladimir Vysotsky, Borshchev found work at the Taganka Theatre, where he served as a carpenter, painter, and firefighter.
In 1982, he was severely beaten because of his human rights activities, and in 1985, the KGB classified his work as “anti-Soviet propaganda.”
From December 1994, Borshchev was part of Sergei Kovalev’s group, which operated directly in the conflict zone in Chechnya. During the First Chechen War, he helped evacuate women and children from combat areas, according to the Moscow Helsinki Group.
In June 1995, during the Budyonnovsk hostage crisis, he volunteered to take the place of a hostage.
Borshchev co-authored the law on public monitoring of detention facilities, which later led to the creation of Moscow’s Public Monitoring Commission — an institution he went on to lead.
He was a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group and became its co-chair in January 2019.
In recent years, Valery Vasilyevich suffered from serious illness.
May his memory live on.
Read more about Valery Borshchev in Radio Svoboda’s article “A True Hero.”