Anatoly Marchenko

In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Tikhonovich and the family name is Marchenko.

Anatoly Marchenko
Анатолий Марченко
Born(1938-01-23)23 January 1938
Barabinsk, Novosibirsk Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
(now Russia)
Died8 December 1986(1986-12-08) (aged 48)
Chistopol, Tatar ASSR, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
(now Russia)
Cause of deathHunger strike
NationalityRussian
CitizenshipSoviet Union
Occupation(s)Driller, writer, human rights activist
Years active1958–1986
Known forHuman rights activism, Moscow Helsinki Group co-founder
MovementDissident movement in the Soviet Union
SpouseLarisa Bogoraz
AwardsSakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought

Anatoly Tikhonovich Marchenko (Russian: Анато́лий Ти́хонович Ма́рченко, 23 January 1938 – 8 December 1986) was a Soviet dissident, author, and human rights campaigner, who became one of the first two recipients (along with Nelson Mandela) of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought of the European Parliament when it was awarded to him posthumously in 1988.

Marchenko, originally an apolitical oil driller from a poor background, turned to writing and politics as a result of several episodes of incarceration starting in 1958, during which he began to associate with other dissidents.[1][2][3] Marchenko gained international fame in 1969 through his book, My Testimony, an autobiographical account written after his arrival in Moscow in 1966 about his then-recent sentences in Soviet labour camps and prisons.[4] After limited circulation inside the Soviet Union as samizdat, the book caused a sensation in the West after it revealed that the Soviet gulag system had continued after the death of Joseph Stalin.[5]

In 1968, in the run-up to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Marchenko wrote an open letter predicting the invasion. Arrested again, he was released in the early 1970s, but in 1974 he was interrogated and internally exiled to Irkutsk Oblast. In 1976, Marchenko became one of the founding members of the Moscow Helsinki Group, before being again arrested and imprisoned in 1981, where he kept writing throughout his prison time, publicizing the fate of Soviet political prisoners.[2] Having spent about 20 years in all in prison and internal exile, Nathan Shcharansky said of him: "After the release of Yuri Feodorovich Orlov, he was definitely the number one Soviet prisoner of conscience."[6] becoming one of the Soviet Union's "perpetual prisoner[s]".[2][7]

Marchenko died at age 48 in Chistopol prison hospital, as a result of a three-month-long hunger strike, the goal of which was the release of all Soviet prisoners of conscience.[8] The widespread international outcry over his death was a major factor in finally pushing then-Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to authorize the large-scale amnesty of political prisoners in 1987.

  1. ^ Marchenko, Anatoly (1980). Rubinstein, Joshua (ed.). From Tarusa to Siberia. Royal Oak, Michigan: Strathcona. ISBN 9780931554162., pg. 17
  2. ^ a b c Hyung-min, Joo (2004). "Voices of Freedom: Samizdat". Europe-Asia Studies. 56 (4): 571–94. doi:10.1080/0966813042000220476. JSTOR 4147387. S2CID 155084186.
  3. ^ Marchenko, Anatoly (1971) [1969]. Scammell, Nichael (ed.). My Testimony. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin., pg. 25
  4. ^ Marchenko, Anatoly (1989). Goldberg, Paul (ed.). To Live Like Everyone. New York: Henry Holt. ISBN 9780805008982., pg. 5
  5. ^ Toker, Leona (2000). Return from the Archipelago: narratives of Gulag survivors. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0253337870.
  6. ^ "To Live Like Everyone", pg. vi
  7. ^ Natan Shcharansky. "The Limits of Glasnost". Heritage Foundation. Retrieved 28 March 2013.
  8. ^ "To Live Like Everyone", pg. 219