Yelena Bonner
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Yelena Georgiyevna Bonner (russian: link=no, Елена Георгиевна Боннэр; 15 February 1923 – 18 June 2011)
,
RIA Novosti RIA Novosti (russian: РИА Новости), sometimes referred to as RIAN () or RIA (russian: РИА, label=none) is a Russian state-owned domestic news agency. On 9 December 2013 by a decree of Vladimir Putin it was liquidated and its asse ...
, 19 June 2011.
was a
human rights activist A human rights defender or human rights activist is a person who, individually or with others, acts to promote or protect human rights. They can be journalists, environmentalists, whistleblowers, trade unionists, lawyers, teachers, housing campai ...
in the former
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
and wife of the physicist
Andrei Sakharov Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov ( rus, Андрей Дмитриевич Сахаров, p=ɐnˈdrʲej ˈdmʲitrʲɪjevʲɪtɕ ˈsaxərəf; 21 May 192114 December 1989) was a Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident, nobel laureate and activist for nu ...
. During her decades as a dissident, Bonner was noted for her characteristic blunt honesty and courage.


Biography


Early life and education

Bonner was born Lusik Georgiyevna Alikhanova in Merv,
Turkmen SSR Turkmen, Türkmen, Turkoman, or Turkman may refer to: Peoples Historical ethnonym * Turkoman (ethnonym), ethnonym used for the Oghuz Turks during the Middle Ages Ethnic groups * Turkmen in Anatolia and the Levant (Seljuk and Ottoman-Turkish desc ...
, Soviet Union (now
Mary, Turkmenistan Mary (), formerly named Merv, Meru and Alexandria Margiana, is a city on an oasis in the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan, located on the Murgab River. It is the capital city of Mary Region. In 2010, Mary had a population of 126,000, up from 92,00 ...
). Her father, Georgy Alikhanov (Armenian name Gevork Alikhanyan), was an
Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
who founded the Soviet Armenian Communist Party, and was a highly placed member of the
Comintern The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet Union, Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to ...
; her mother, Ruf (
Ruth Bonner Ruf Grigorievna Bonner (russian: Руфь Григорьевна Боннер; 1900 — 25 December 1987), also known as Ruth Bonner, was a Soviet Communist activist and who spent eight years in a labor camp during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge. She ...
), was a Jewish Communist activist. She had a younger brother, Igor, who became a career naval officer. Her family had a summer
dacha A dacha ( rus, дача, p=ˈdatɕə, a=ru-dacha.ogg) is a seasonal or year-round second home, often located in the exurbs of post-Soviet countries, including Russia. A cottage (, ') or shack serving as a family's main or only home, or an outbu ...
in
Sestroretsk Sestroretsk (russian: Сестроре́цк; fi, Siestarjoki; sv, Systerbäck) is a municipal town in Kurortny District of the federal city of St. Petersburg, Russia, located on the shores of the Gulf of Finland, the Sestra River ...
and Bonner had fond memories there. In 1937, Bonner's father was arrested by the
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...
and executed as part of
Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
's
Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Nikolay Yezhov, Yezhov'), was General ...
; her mother was arrested a few days later as the wife of an enemy of the people, and served ten years in the
Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
near
Karaganda Karaganda or Qaraghandy ( kk, Қарағанды/Qarağandy, ; russian: Караганда, ) is the capital of Karaganda Region in the Republic of Kazakhstan. It is the List of most populous cities in Kazakhstan, fourth most populous city in Kaza ...
,
Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...
, followed by nine years of internal exile. Bonner's 41-year-old maternal uncle, Matvei Bonner, was also executed during the purge, and his wife internally exiled. All four were exonerated (rehabilitated) following Stalin's death in 1953. In 1941 she volunteered for the Red Army's Hospital when the Soviet Union was invaded, and she became head nurse. While serving during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Bonner was wounded twice, and in 1946 was honorably discharged as a disabled veteran. In 1947 Bonner was accepted as student in the medical institute in Leningrad. After the war she earned a degree in
pediatrics Pediatrics ( also spelled ''paediatrics'' or ''pædiatrics'') is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, paediatrics covers many of their youth until th ...
from the First Leningrad Medical Institute, presently First Pavlov State Medical University of St. Peterburg.


Marriage and children

In medical school she met her first husband, Ivan Semyonov. They had a daughter, Tatiana, in 1950, and a son, Alexey, in 1956. Her children immigrated to the United States in 1977 and 1978, respectively. Bonner and Semyonov separated in 1965, and eventually divorced. In October 1970, while attending the trial of human rights activists Revol't (Ivanovich) Pimenov and Boris Vail in
Kaluga Kaluga ( rus, Калу́га, p=kɐˈɫuɡə), a city and the administrative center of Kaluga Oblast in Russia, stands on the Oka River southwest of Moscow. Population: Kaluga's most famous resident, the space travel pioneer Konstantin Tsiol ...
, Bonner met
Andrei Sakharov Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov ( rus, Андрей Дмитриевич Сахаров, p=ɐnˈdrʲej ˈdmʲitrʲɪjevʲɪtɕ ˈsaxərəf; 21 May 192114 December 1989) was a Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident, nobel laureate and activist for nu ...
, a
nuclear Nuclear may refer to: Physics Relating to the nucleus of the atom: * Nuclear engineering *Nuclear physics *Nuclear power *Nuclear reactor *Nuclear weapon *Nuclear medicine *Radiation therapy *Nuclear warfare Mathematics *Nuclear space *Nuclear ...
physicist and human rights activist; they married in 1972. The year before they met, 1969, Sakharov had been widowed from his wife, Klavdia Alekseyevna Vikhireva, with whom he had two daughters and a son.Drell, Sidney D., and Sergei P. Kapitsa (eds.), ''Sakharov Remembered'', pgs. 3, 92. New York: Springer, 1991.


Activism

Beginning as early as the 1940s, Bonner had helped political prisoners and their families. Although Bonner had joined the Soviet Communist Party in 1964 while she was working as a physician, only a few years later she was becoming active in the Soviet
human rights movement Human rights movement refers to a nongovernmental social movement engaged in activism related to the issues of human rights. The foundations of the global human rights movement involve resistance to: colonialism, imperialism, slavery, racism, segr ...
. Her resolve towards dissidence was strengthened in August 1968 after Soviet bloc tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia in order to crush the
Prague Spring The Prague Spring ( cs, Pražské jaro, sk, Pražská jar) was a period of political liberalization and mass protest in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First Sec ...
movement. That event strengthened her belief that the system could not be reformed from within. At the
Kaluga Kaluga ( rus, Калу́га, p=kɐˈɫuɡə), a city and the administrative center of Kaluga Oblast in Russia, stands on the Oka River southwest of Moscow. Population: Kaluga's most famous resident, the space travel pioneer Konstantin Tsiol ...
trial in 1970, Bonner and Sakharov met
Natan Sharansky Natan Sharansky ( he, נתן שרנסקי; russian: Ната́н Щара́нский; uk, Натан Щаранський, born Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky on 20 January 1948); uk, Анатолій Борисович Щаранський, ...
and began working together to defend Jews sentenced to death for attempting an escape from the USSR in a hijacked plane. Under pressure from Sakharov, the Soviet regime permitted Yelena Bonner to travel to the West in 1975, 1977 and 1979 for treatment of her wartime eye injury. When Sakharov, awarded the 1975
Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Chemi ...
, was barred from travel by the Soviet authorities, Bonner, in Italy for treatment, represented him at the ceremony in
Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...
. Bonner became a founding member of the
Moscow Helsinki Group The Moscow Helsinki Group (also known as the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group, russian: link=no, Московская Хельсинкская группа) is today one of Russia's leading human rights organisations. It was originally set up in 1976 ...
in 1976. When in January 1980 Sakharov was exiled to Gorky, a city closed to foreigners, the harassed and publicly denounced Bonner became his lifeline, traveling between Gorky and Moscow to bring out his writings. Her arrest in April 1984 for "
anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda (ASA) (russian: антисове́тская агита́ция и пропага́нда (АСА)) was a criminal offence in the Soviet Union. To begin with the term was interchangeably used with counter-revolu ...
" and sentence to five years of exile in Gorky disrupted their lives again. Sakharov's several long and painful hunger strikes forced the new Soviet leader,
Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...
to let her travel to the U.S. in 1985 for sextuple bypass heart surgery. Prior to that, in 1981, Bonner and Sakharov went on a dangerous but ultimately successful
hunger strike A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke a feeling of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most ...
to get Soviet officials to allow their daughter-in-law, Yelizaveta Konstantinovna ("Lisa") Alexeyeva, an exit visa to join her husband, Bonner's son Alexei Semyonov, in the United States. In December 1986, Gorbachev allowed Sakharov and Bonner to return to Moscow. Following Sakharov's death on 14 December 1989, she established the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, and the Sakharov Archives in Moscow. In 1993, she donated Sakharov papers in the West to
Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , pro ...
in the U.S.; in 2004 they were turned over to
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
. Bonner remained outspoken on democracy and
human rights in Russia Human rights in Russia have routinely been criticized by international organizations and independent domestic media outlets. Some of the most commonly cited violations include deaths in custody, the widespread and systematic use of torture by s ...
and worldwide. She joined the defenders of the Russian parliament during the
August Coup August is the eighth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars, and the fifth of seven months to have a length of 31 days. Its zodiac sign is Leo and was originally named ''Sextilis'' in Latin because it was the 6th month in ...
and supported
Boris Yeltsin Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin ( rus, Борис Николаевич Ельцин, p=bɐˈrʲis nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈjelʲtsɨn, a=Ru-Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.ogg; 1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician wh ...
during the
constitutional crisis In political science, a constitutional crisis is a problem or conflict in the function of a government that the political constitution or other fundamental governing law is perceived to be unable to resolve. There are several variations to this d ...
in early 1993. In 1994, outraged by what she called "genocide of the Chechen people", Bonner resigned from Yeltsin's Human Rights Commission and was an outspoken opponent to Russian armed involvement in
Chechnya Chechnya ( rus, Чечня́, Chechnyá, p=tɕɪtɕˈnʲa; ce, Нохчийчоь, Noxçiyçö), officially the Chechen Republic,; ce, Нохчийн Республика, Noxçiyn Respublika is a republic of Russia. It is situated in the ...
and critical of the Kremlin for allegedly returning to KGB-style authoritarianism under
Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...
. She was also critical of the international "quartet"
two-state solution The two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict envisions an independent State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel, west of the Jordan River. The boundary between the two states is still subject to dispute and negotiation ...
to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and has expressed fears about the rise of
anti-semitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...
in Europe. In 1999, Yelena Bonner received the
Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) is a non-profit anti-communist organization in the United States, authorized by a unanimous Act of Congress in 1993 for the purpose of "educating Americans about the ideology, history and legac ...
. Bonner was among the 34 first signatories of the online anti-Putin manifesto "
Putin must go "Putin Must Go" () is a Russian website and public campaign organised for the collection of signatures to an open letter demanding the resignation of President of Russia, President (formerly Prime Minister of Russia, Prime Minister) Vladimir Put ...
", published 10 March 2010. Her signature was the first.


Last years and death

From 2006, Bonner divided her time between Moscow and the United States, home to her two children, five grandchildren, one great-granddaughter, and one great-grandson. She died on 18 June 2011 of heart failure in Boston, Massachusetts, aged 88, according to her daughter, Tatiana Yankelevich. She had been hospitalized since 21 February.


Works and awards

Bonner was the author of ''Alone Together'' (Knopf 1987), and ''Mothers and Daughters'' (Knopf 1992), and wrote frequently on Russia and human rights. She was a recipient of many international human rights awards, including the
Rafto Prize The Professor Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize (''Raftoprisen'') is a human rights award established in the memory of the Norwegian human rights activist, Thorolf Rafto. Organization The prize is awarded annually by the Rafto Foundation for Human Righ ...
in 1991, the European Parliament's Robert Schuman Medal in 2001, the awards of
International Humanist and Ethical Union Humanists International (known as the International Humanist and Ethical Union, or IHEU, from 1952–2019) is an international non-governmental organisation championing secularism and human rights, motivated by secular humanist values. Found ...
, the World Women's Alliance, the Adelaida Ristori Foundation, the U.S.
National Endowment for Democracy The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is an organization in the United States that was founded in 1983 for promoting democracy in other countries by promoting political and economic institutions such as political groups, trade unions, ...
, the Lithuanian Commemorative Medal of 13 January, the Czech Republic
Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk The Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk ( cz, Řád Tomáše Garrigua Masaryka) is an Order of the Czech Republic and the former Czechoslovakia. It was established in 1990 after the Velvet Revolution, and re-established in 1994 (following the diss ...
, and others. She was also awarded the
Giuseppe Motta Medal Giuseppe Motta Medal is presented annually since 2004 by the Geneva Institute for Democracy and Development to the people from any country or region of the world for exceptional achievement in the promotion of peace and democracy, human rights a ...
in 2004 for protection of human rights.http://motta.gidd.eu.org/#!medal-winners-2004/cqa4 Giuseppe Motta Medal Website In 2005 Bonner participated in "
They Chose Freedom ''They Chose Freedom'' (russian: Они выбирали свободу, Oni vybirali svobodu) is a four-part TV documentary on the history of political dissent in the USSR from the 1950s to the 1990s. It was produced in 2005 by Vladimir V. Kara-M ...
", a four-part television documentary on the history of the Soviet dissident movement. Bonner was on the Board of Advancing Human Rights (NGO).Robert Bernstei
"Why We Need A New Human Rights Organization
, 24 February 2011.


Depiction in media

Bonner was portrayed by
Glenda Jackson Glenda May Jackson (born 9 May 1936) is an English actress and former Member of Parliament (MP). She has won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice: for her role as Gudrun Brangwen in the romantic drama ''Women in Love'' (1970); and again for ...
in the 1984 film ''
Sakharov Sakharov (feminine: Sakharova) (russian: Сахаров, Сахарова) is a Russian surname, derived from the word ''"сахар"'' (sugar). Other spellings of the surname are Saharov / Saharova, Sakharoff , Saharoff. The surname may refer to: ...
''.


References


Works

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Further reading

* * * * * *


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bonner, Yelena 1923 births 2011 deaths People from Mary, Turkmenistan Soviet Jews Russian Jews Turkmenistan Jews Turkmenistan people of Armenian descent Russian people of Armenian descent Soviet pediatricians Soviet people of World War II Resigned Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Moscow Helsinki Group Jewish human rights activists Russian activists Russian women activists Russian political activists Russian dissidents Soviet dissidents Soviet human rights activists Women human rights activists Recipients of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, 3rd Class Recipients of the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Commanders of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland Soviet non-fiction writers Russian non-fiction writers 20th-century Russian writers Russian memoirists 20th-century Russian women writers Jewish women writers Women memoirists Soviet women writers