Russian Human Rights Activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva Dies at 91

Russia’s most prominent and decorated human rights activists Lyudmila Alexeyeva who became a symbol of resistance in modern-day Russia has died Saturday in a Moscow hospital at the age of 91 after a long illness.
The activist who was forced into exile by Soviet authorities after founding Russia’s oldest human rights organization in 1976, was fighting with a long illness.
“She remained a human rights activist to the very end,” mourning her death, said Mikhail Fedotov, head of Russia’s Human Rights Council. “This is a loss for the entire human rights movement in Russia.”
Lyudmila risked her own freedom to protest the plight of political prisoners in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s and co-founded Russia’s oldest human rights organization “the Moscow Helsinki Group” in 1976.
The Activist icon trained as an archaeologist and in the late 1950s, her apartment became a meeting place for the Soviet dissident intelligentsia, and a point for storing and distributing banned publications.
For more than a half century, Lyudmila Alexeyeva never gave up and remained optimistic Russia would become democratic. “Today’s young people give me the feeling of not having lived in vain,” she stated in a report last year.
Ms Alexeyeva had been battling a long illness, and doctors revived her several times before her death on Saturday. She is survived by her two sons, five grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
> Shatabdi Sarker Poushi