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Yelena Bonner dead
Jun 19, 2011 14:46 Moscow Time
The widow of the late Soviet dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Andrei Sakharov, died after a grave illness in Boston, Massachussetts,
on Saturday at the age of 88, RIA Novosti reports.
Yelena Bonner was born on February 15, 1923 in what is now Mary in
Turkmenistan. Her father, Gevork Alikhanov, an Armenian, was a
prominent Communist and a secretary of the Comintern, mother, Ruth
Bonner, a Jewish Communist activist.
Her parents were both arrested in 1937 during Stalin's Great Purge.
Her father was executed the following year and her mother was
sentenced to eight years in exile in Kazakhstan.
Serving as a nurse during WW2, Bonner was wounded twice, and in 1946
was honorably discharged as a disabled veteran. After the war she
earned a degree in pediatrics from the First Leningrad Medical
Institute. In 1965 she joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
In 1972 Bonner ended her membership of the Communist party and in
that same year she married the nuclear scientist and fellow human
rights activist Andrei Sakharov, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in
1975.
Yelena Bonner became active in the human rights movement in the 1960s,
and was a founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a rights
monitoring body.
When in January 1980 Sakharov was exiled to Gorky, now Nizhny
Novgorod, Bonner joined him there and became his lifeline traveling
between Gorky, then a city closed to foreigners, and Moscow to bring
out his writings.
In 1987 Bonner and Sakharov helped establish the Memorial and Moscow
Tribune rights advocacy groups. Yelena Bonner was a member of a human
rights commission under President Boris Yeltsin but dropped out on
December 1994 in protest against the war in Chechnya. Following
Sakharov's death December 14, 1989, Yelena Bonner established the
Andrei Sakharov Foundation, and the Sakharov Archives in Moscow. A
board member of the UN's International Human Rights League, Bonner
held honorary law degrees of a number of leading American and European
universities.
Until her last day Yelena Bonner remained outspoken on democracy and
human rights in Russia and worldwide, authoring a wealth of human
rights-related publications in Russian and foreign press.
Yelena Bonner's daughter, Tatiana Yankelevich, said that her mother
would be buried in Moscow.
`According to her will, her body will be cremated and the cinerary urn
will be buried at the Vostryakovo cemetery in Moscow next to her
husband, mother and brother," Yankelevich said in a statement.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Jun 19, 2011 14:46 Moscow Time
The widow of the late Soviet dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Andrei Sakharov, died after a grave illness in Boston, Massachussetts,
on Saturday at the age of 88, RIA Novosti reports.
Yelena Bonner was born on February 15, 1923 in what is now Mary in
Turkmenistan. Her father, Gevork Alikhanov, an Armenian, was a
prominent Communist and a secretary of the Comintern, mother, Ruth
Bonner, a Jewish Communist activist.
Her parents were both arrested in 1937 during Stalin's Great Purge.
Her father was executed the following year and her mother was
sentenced to eight years in exile in Kazakhstan.
Serving as a nurse during WW2, Bonner was wounded twice, and in 1946
was honorably discharged as a disabled veteran. After the war she
earned a degree in pediatrics from the First Leningrad Medical
Institute. In 1965 she joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
In 1972 Bonner ended her membership of the Communist party and in
that same year she married the nuclear scientist and fellow human
rights activist Andrei Sakharov, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in
1975.
Yelena Bonner became active in the human rights movement in the 1960s,
and was a founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a rights
monitoring body.
When in January 1980 Sakharov was exiled to Gorky, now Nizhny
Novgorod, Bonner joined him there and became his lifeline traveling
between Gorky, then a city closed to foreigners, and Moscow to bring
out his writings.
In 1987 Bonner and Sakharov helped establish the Memorial and Moscow
Tribune rights advocacy groups. Yelena Bonner was a member of a human
rights commission under President Boris Yeltsin but dropped out on
December 1994 in protest against the war in Chechnya. Following
Sakharov's death December 14, 1989, Yelena Bonner established the
Andrei Sakharov Foundation, and the Sakharov Archives in Moscow. A
board member of the UN's International Human Rights League, Bonner
held honorary law degrees of a number of leading American and European
universities.
Until her last day Yelena Bonner remained outspoken on democracy and
human rights in Russia and worldwide, authoring a wealth of human
rights-related publications in Russian and foreign press.
Yelena Bonner's daughter, Tatiana Yankelevich, said that her mother
would be buried in Moscow.
`According to her will, her body will be cremated and the cinerary urn
will be buried at the Vostryakovo cemetery in Moscow next to her
husband, mother and brother," Yankelevich said in a statement.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress