Alexander Lavut

Alexander Lavut was born on 4 July 1929, the son of entrepreneur Pavel Ilyich Lavut (1898–1979), an ebullient figure on the cultural scene of the Soviet 1920s, mentioned in the works of Vladimir Mayakovsky ("that soft-spoken Jew Lavut").

Alexander graduated in 1951 from the Mechanics and Mathematics faculty of Moscow State University. After graduation, he taught at secondary schools in the city, and in Kazakhstan. In 1966–1969, he worked at the Laboratory of Mathematical Geology at Moscow State University.[1][2]

In 1968, like dozens of others, Lavut added his name to an open letter[3] in defense of the poet Alexander Ginzburg. Ginzburg had been arrested as one of the compilers, with Yuri Galanskov, of the White Book documenting the trial of writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel.

In May 1969 Lavut joined the Action Group for the Defense of Human Rights, the first such organization in Soviet history. Together with other members, he signed an open letter to the UN Human Rights Commission.[4] He lost his job in November that year. Of Lavut's 14 co-signatories, ten would be arrested later and imprisoned.[2]

Lavut also worked for the samizdat periodical A Chronicle of Current Events. Founded in April 1968, the Chronicle ran until 1983, producing 65 issues in 14 years.[5] It documented the extensive human rights violations committed by the Soviet government and the ever-expanding samizdat publications (political tracts, fiction, translations) circulating among the critical and opposition-minded. Each issue was produced as a few dozen typewritten copies, passed on to friends and then replicated in the manner of a chain-letter.

After chief editor Sergei Kovalev was arrested in 1975 and imprisoned for his work on the Chronicle, Lavut became one of the principal editors, both as a contributor and in compiling and finalising the contents of many issues. This continued until his own arrest in 1980.[2][6][7]

Lavut was particularly active in campaigning on behalf of the Crimean Tatars, an ethnic group forcibly exiled to Central Asia under Stalin in 1944 and not permitted to return once the Soviet dictator was dead. After their champion Pyotr Grigorenko was expelled from the USSR in 1977, Lavut became one of their main contacts in Moscow. He had already dedicated one entire issue of the Chronicle to their cause.[1][8]

Lavut became involved in a variety of initiatives that were now possible under Gorbachev's regime, although keeping always in the background.[13]

He helped Sergei Kovalyov in his successful bid to enter the Soviet parliament. He joined Memorial, and served on its board. After Andrei Sakharov died in December 1989 he became a member of the Public Committee for the Preservation of Legacy of Andrei Sakharov, which led to the creation of the Sakharov Museum and Center in Moscow.

An opponent of Yeltsin's First Chechen War (1994–1996), Lavut was briefly detained in December 1994 during an unsanctioned picket of the presidential administration in Moscow's Old Square (Staraya ploshchad). In May the following year he joined an observer mission to the Chechen conflict zone sent by several human rights NGOs.[2]

• Chronicle of Current Events
• samizdat
• Memorial
• Tatyana Velikanova
• Sergei Kovalev

• De Boer, S. P.; Driessen, Evert; Verhaar, Hendrik (1982). "Lavut, Aleksandr Pavlovič". Biographical dictionary of dissidents in the Soviet Union: 1956–1975. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. pp. 312–313. ISBN 9024725380.
• Горелик, Кристина (27 June 2014). "Лавут: на том стою" [Lavut: I stand that ground]. Радио Свобода (in Russian). Radio Liberty.