The founder of the Moscow Helsinki Group, dissident Yuri Orlov, has died

The founder of the Moscow Helsinki Group, dissident Yuri Orlov, has died. This was reported by dissident and former political prisoner Ivan Kovalev, the son of the Commissioner for Human Rights in Russia in 1992-1995, Sergei Kovalev.

“Yuri Fedorovich Orlov died. He lived a wonderful life. I was lucky to know him,” Kovalev wrote.

The Moscow Helsinki Group was created in May 1976, headed by Orlov. Less than a year later he was arrested and sent to Lefortovo, and in May 1978 he was sentenced to seven years in maximum security camps and five years of exile under Article 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (“anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”). In 1986 he was expelled from the USSR.