16 October marked the 117th anniversary of the birth of Major General Petro Grigorenko, a well-known human rights defender, one of the founders of the Ukrainian and Moscow Helsinki Groups.<\/p>\n
Petro Grigorenko was born in the village of Borisovka, Primorsky district (now the village of Primorsky municipal community of Berdyansk district), Zaporizhzhya region, in a peasant family. In the man’s life one can clearly observe two completely different periods. At first, he was a Soviet general who went through the war and firmly believed in the ideals of the party, but later he became an ardent oppositionist to the Soviet regime.<\/p>\n
Indeed, Petro Grigorenko had a successful military and teaching career. However, all this lasted only until 1961. After all, on September 7, at the party conference of the Lenin district in Moscow, the man criticized the political system in the USSR. After that, Mr Petro was sent \u2018into exile in the Ussuriysky region\u2019 to serve in the Far Eastern Military District.<\/p>\n
Of course, after the experience, Grigorenko spoke publicly about the absence of any historical truth and justice. In particular, the man began to be interested in the problem of \u2018punished peoples\u2019 and became an active participant in the movement for the return of the Crimean Tatars.<\/p>\n
\u2018Do not consider your cause as only domestic. Seek help from the world progressive community and from international organisations. What was done to you in 1944 has a very definite name. This is purest genocide – one of the most serious types of crimes against humanity…\u2019 – Grigorenko said.<\/p>\n
Thanks to the hard work of Petro Grigorenko, the problem of the Crimean Tatar people went beyond the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n
Crimean Tatars even tried to protect Mr Petro from any \u2018reprisals\u2019 and secretly watched the general’s house and himself. Although Grigorenko himself knew nothing about it.<\/p>\n
In 1977, Petro Grigorenko was forced to go to the United States for medical treatment, and a few months later he was deprived of Soviet citizenship.<\/p>\n
Petro Grigorenko died on 21 February 1987 in New York, buried in the Ukrainian cemetery Boundbrook (New Jersey) in the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
16 October marked the 117th anniversary of the birth of Major General Petro Grigorenko, a well-known human rights defender, one of the founders of the Ukrainian and Moscow Helsinki Groups. Petro Grigorenko was born in the village of Borisovka, Primorsky district (now the village of Primorsky municipal community of Berdyansk district), Zaporizhzhya region, in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242169,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[315],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n