Defending Human Rights in Russia

Sergei Kovalyov is a central figure in the struggle for human rights in Russia. He was a leading Soviet biology academic and in the 1970s after becoming active in dissident circles was arrested by the KGB tried imprisoned and subjected to internal exile. After his release he continued to work for human rights eventually becoming chairman of the Soviet Human Rights Committee and chairman of the Presidential Human Rights Commission in which positions he was extremely influential in framing human rights provisions in post-Communist Russia. He subsequently took President Yeltsin to task for human rights failings eventually resigning in protest. This book by tracing Kovalyov's political career shows how human rights developed in Russia in late Soviet and post Soviet times.