GINZBURG, Aleksandr Ilyich
Founding Member

Born November 21, 1936
Married, 2 children

Poet and publicist

As a young man in Moscow, Ginzburg was active in samizdat publication several years before the term samizdat even entered the common vocabulary.

He was first imprisoned in 1960, when he was sentenced to 2 years' imprisonment for "forgery", but his editorship of the samizdat journal Syntax was the real reason for his imprisonment. In 1964 he was charged with "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda", but the charge was dropped.

In 1966 Ginzburg compiled the White Book, a collection of materials on the 1965-66 trial of the writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuly Daniel (the first major "literature trial" since Stalin's death). For For this he was arrested in January of 1967 and charged with "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda". He was tried in January of 1968 along with three others and sentenced to 5 years imprisonment. That trial (known as the "Trial of the Four") provoked unprecedented expressions of indignation on the part of a number of Soviet citizens who were, in many cases, subsequently arrested themselves.

After his release in 1972, Ginzburg was not allowed to return. to his home city of Moscow. In March of 1974, Ginzburg was appointed by Solzhenitsyn (by then living outside the USSR) to manage the Russian Public Fund for the Aid of the Families of Political Prisoners.

On February 3, 1977, Ginzburg was arrested and held incommunicado until his trial on July 13, 1978. He was sentenced to 8 years of special regimen camp and 3 years of internal exile under Article 70 of the R.S.F.S.R. Code, "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda." On April 27, 1979, he was released to the U.S. as part of the prisoner exchange with the Soviet Union.

GRYGORENKO, Petro Grigoryevich
Founding Member

Born October 16, 1907

Married, 3 sons, 1 adopted son
Retired Major General

A major general in World War II with the Red Army, Grygorenko received many decorations, including the Order of Lenin. In 1959, he was made chief of the cybernetics department at the Frunze Military Academy, a prestigious institute in Moscow.

In 1960, he criticized Khrushchev for creating a new "cult of personality" reminiscent of that under Stalin and for protesting discrimination against Jewish military officers in the awarding of promotions. For this, he was transferred to the Soviet Far East, where he formed the Union of Struggle for the Revival of Leninism. The KGB arrested him in 1964 and he spent 14 months in the Leningrad Psychiatric Institute. In 1968, he and others protested the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. At this time, he was demoted to private and expelled from the Communist Party. He was again arrested and incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals until 1974.

He joined the Moscow Group at its formation in May of 1976 and was a founding member of the Ukrainian Group. His special areas of concern for the Group have been the issue of psychiatric abuse and defense of the rights of the Crimean Tatars, who were forcibly deported from their homeland by Stalin in the 1940's.

While on a six-month travel visa to the United States for medical care (granted to him by the Soviet authorities on November 11, 1977), Grygorenko was stripped of his citizenship. In a decree of the Supreme Soviet, signed by Brezhnev on February 13, 1978, but kept secret until March 10, (to coincide with the close of the Belgrade Conference), Grygorenko's citizenship was taken. away "for behavior damaging the prestige of the Soviet Union" and "actions irreconcilable with citizenship of the Soviet Union".

On April 19, 1978, Grygorenko was granted political asylum in the U.S., where he now resides with his family. He is the Ukrainian Group's Official Representative Abroad.

Kalistratova joined the Moscow Group on September 1, 1977. During her career as an attorney, Kalistratova served in the Kuntsevo region of Moscow oblast and was a member of the Moscow collegium of lawyers. She took on the defense of human rights activist and psychiatric prisoner of conscience Vladimir Bukovsky. Before she joined the Moscow Group, she acted as legal consultant to the Working Commission to Investigate the Abuse of Psychiatry for Political Purposes.