"I am a citizen of this country!"

Today marks 90 years of the Russian human rights activist, the head of the Moscow Helsinki group Lyudmila Alekseeva. Lyudmila Mikhailovna will celebrate her anniversary in the circle of relatives, friends and colleagues in human rights movement.

Lyudmila Alekseeva is known for her social activity and an active life position. It is considered one of the founders of the Soviet and Russian human rights movement. Since 2002, she has been in the Human Rights Commission under the President of the Russian Federation, later transformed into the Presidential Council for the Development of the Civil Society of Human Rights, but in 2012 came out of it due to disagreement with the procedure for its formation.

Lyudmila Alekseeva at a meeting of the Human Rights Council

The struggle for human rights in Russia is a difficult and not always grateful occupation. In August 2004, Alekseeva and her colleague Andrei Yurov received threats from the leader of the Slavic Union Dmitry Demushkin. A sniper was depicted on the sheet, under it the inscription: "Girenko, Yurov, Alekseev." (Nikolai Girenko, a scientist from St. Petersburg, was killed in June 2004 in his apartment.)

In June 2008, during a press conference in defense of prisoners, the human rights activist was thrown into eggs by a group of young people, presumably from the LDPR. On March 31, 2010, a certain Konstantin Pereverzev hit Lyudmila Alekseev when she laid flowers at the Park Culture Park metro station in memory of those who died in a terrorist act.

In the summer of 2010, Alekseeva became one of the characters of installation “here you are not happy to” the annual All -Russian Youth Educational Forum (Camp) “Seliger”. A plastic head with her photo image in a headdress with fascist symbols was planted on a stake.

Since August 31, 2009, Lyudmila Alekseeva actively participated in street protests in the framework of Strategy-31. On December 31, 2009, during an attempt to hold the next rally on the Triumphal Square in Moscow, Lyudmila Alekseev was detained by OMON. She was taken to the police department, which caused a great resonance in Russia and abroad.

Lyudmila Alekseeva on one of the protest promotions

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lyudmila Alekseeva consistently criticized the Russian authorities, in September 2014 she signed a statement demanding "stop the aggressive adventure."

Recently, Lyudmila Mikhailovna has not left home, but is watching what is happening in Russia, still criticizes the authorities and expresses her own position. She supports opponents of renovation in Moscow and acts in defense of detainees organized by Alexei Naavalny.

Lyudmila Mikhailovna is a long -standing friend of Radio Liberty, for a long time she conducted an author's program of human rights, often visited various programs as a guest. In March 2017, after the decision of the Ministry of Justice of Russia on the liquidation of Jehovah's Witnesses, the human rights activist opposed persecution of a religious organization

Last February, Lyudmila Alekseeva, among other famous public figures, concerned about the political situation in Russia, turned to the Yabloko parties and Parnas with a request to unite to participate in the elections to the State Duma. Then she explained her position in an interview with Radio Liberty:

The situation has become more acute

- Now the situation has become more sharp. Now this is not a matter of politics. I am a human rights activist, not a politician, and I got into everything not because I was going to engage in politics, but because the situation in the country is this: if these 14 percent through democratic parties will not declare themselves, then I do not know what will happen to the country and with each of us. And although the legislation was specially built so that it was very difficult to unite parties, civil debt requires the party leadership of democratic parties so that they overcome difficulties and use at least the few opportunities that are still for joint actions.

- In this discussion, 14 percent arose as a certain whole, opposing 86 percent. Do you really think that there are 14 percent in the country who are ready to unite for an arbitrarily wide coalition?

- Of course, this is a somewhat conditional figure. 86 percent expressed support for the official policy of Krymnash, and 14 percent refused to do this. So we believe that these 14 percent are people who are not infected with imperial syndrome, people with democratic thinking. Of course, this is conditional, maybe more, maybe a little less.

-But if in fact these 14 percent are split into some small groups, each has its own interests, then politicians will look for what is most profitable for them. And if 14 percent really have a common base in something, then it is a force, 14 percent is a lot.

- 14 percent are people who have a common basis. These are those people who want to see our country by a democratic legal state living according to our constitution, and not according to some decisions of our crazy Duma or the anti-constitutional decisions of our authorities.

-You feel a sufficient number of people around you who adhere to your views alone, although someone can support Yavlinsky, someone Kasyanov, someone Navalny.

- I am very comfortable in this regard. I rarely meet people who adhere to other views. Everyone with whom I communicate in one way or another adhere to my close views on life, and there are no special differences between those who support the “apple”, or Parnassus, or the Party of Navalny.

- You say that the situation has become more acute, that the ground has appeared for such an association.

The country on the threshold of heavy trials

- The country has an economic crisis, and it is aggravated. And from the point of view of not only mine, but everyone who surrounds me, the authorities do nothing to get out of the crisis, so that it is easier for people to transfer it. On the contrary, they try to shift the hardships of the crisis to the shoulders of the population, increasing pressure on both citizens as a whole and to business, from which one could expect some kind of improvement in the economic situation. And, in my opinion, the authorities are more occupied by the restoration of the international appearance of Russia as a country that is dangerous to others than the needs of their own population. And this is what causes terrible anxiety and the feeling that if you do not rectify the situation, then the country is on the threshold of very difficult tests.

Lyudmila Alekseeva

- Have you thought about what will happen if the democratic opposition unites? Will this lead to a new opposition suppression campaign?

The company must be protected

- I do not know how the authorities will act in this situation. On the one hand, they really try to tighten the nuts, without even waiting for the democratic opposition to unite, and on the other hand, remember, in 2011, when mass protests began against falsification of the elections, the authorities tried carefully, but somehow agree with society. I do not know how the authorities will act. I know how society should act. The company must be protected.

-Can you compare what is happening now in Russia, with some times of the Soviet Union?

- Never happens to be the same, but the feeling that ... Perhaps now it is worse in this sense. In the Soviet Union there was some idea that the authorities are trying to do something, another thing, that they do not know how, do not know how. And now I have the feeling that the authorities are rather busy bringing to the brilliance of an external image, and not the fate of their citizens.

- In the Soviet Union, you say, the authorities tried to do better ...

-They tried, tried to somehow appease people.

- And the current authorities do not even strive for this?

-Simply: "Do not crush us. If you demand anything, we probably will not fulfill, because we can not put pressure on us." Why can't you crush? Power for this exists to respond to the moods and desires of society. And our authorities are not: "We ourselves know, but you do not dare to indicate us."

-By the level of persecution of the human rights community, can one say to some extent that Soviet times returned, or is it incomparable?

- The situations are incomparable. Then we were a little handful, and we were almost only in Moscow. Now there is no region where there are no human rights organizations, and the authorities can behave anyway, but we are a completely different phenomenon. Of course, the unprecedented pressure that has recently been at the NGOs, the announcement of everyone in a row with "foreign agents" - this has done its job. But people remained, the human rights community is not broken. And although our opportunities to do anything to help citizens decreased, the human rights community exists, and the authorities know this.

- You are a human rights activist, but you turn to politicians, you tell them what you need to do in politics, you are acting with a completely political program.

I am also a citizen of this country!

- I am also a citizen of this country! And I am not indifferent to neither what is happening in the country, nor what will happen to me and with all those who think the same way as I am. And it was precisely because of the unusually acute current situation that I changed my rule. And not as a human rights activist, not as the chairman of the ICG, but as a Russian citizen Lyudmila Alekseeva, I took up what I did.