10 Facts About Lyudmila Alexeyeva

Lyudmila Mikhaylovna Alexeyeva was a Russian historian and human-rights activist who was a founding member in 1976 of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group and one of the last Soviet dissidents active in post-Soviet Russia.

In February 1977, Lyudmila Alexeyeva fled from the USSR to the United States following a crackdown against members of The Chronicle by Soviet authorities.

Lyudmila Alexeyeva wrote regularly on the Soviet dissident movement for both English and Russian language publications in the US and elsewhere, and in 1985 she published the first comprehensive monograph on the history of the movement, Soviet Dissent.

In 2000, Lyudmila Alexeyeva joined a commission set up to advise President Vladimir Putin on human rights issues, a move that triggered criticism from some other rights activists.

Lyudmila Alexeyeva was critical of the Kremlin's human rights record and accused the government of numerous human rights violations including the regular prohibitions of non-violent meetings and demonstrations and encouragement of extremists with its nationalistic policies, such as the mass deportations of Georgians in 2006 and police raids against foreigners working in street markets.

On December 31,2009, during one of these attempted protests, Lyudmila Alexeyeva was detained by the riot police and taken with scores of others to a police station.

On March 30,2010, Lyudmila Alexeyeva was assaulted in the Park Kultury metro station by a man as she was paying respect to the victims of the 2010 Moscow Metro Bombings.