Petro Grigorenko was born in Borysivka village in Taurida Governorate, Russian Empire.
27 Facts About Petro Grigorenko
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Petro Grigorenko took part in the battles of Khalkhin Gol, against the Japanese on the Manchurian border in 1939, and in the Second World War.
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Petro Grigorenko commanded troops in initial battles following 22 June 1941.
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Petro Grigorenko went on a military career and reached high ranks during World War II.
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In 1961, Petro Grigorenko started to openly criticize what he considered the excesses of the Khrushchev regime.
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Petro Grigorenko maintained that the special privileges of the political elite did not comply with the principles laid down by Lenin.
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Petro Grigorenko took part in the defense of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel and sharply protested against the arrests of young writers Alexander Ginzburg, Yuri Galanskov, Alexey Dobrovolsky, and others.
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Petro Grigorenko became much more active in his dissidence, stirred other people to protest some of the State's actions and received several warnings from the KGB.
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In 1968, after Petro Grigorenko protested the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he was expelled from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, arrested and ultimately committed to a mental hospital until being freed on 26 June 1974 after 5 years of detention.
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Petro Grigorenko had firm convictions which were shared by many of his colleagues and were not delusional.
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On 17 January 1971 Petro Grigorenko was asked whether he had changed his convictions and replied that "Convictions are not like gloves, one cannot easily change them".
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Hluzman came to the conclusion that Petro Grigorenko was mentally sane and had been taken to mental hospitals for political reasons.
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Petro Grigorenko became the key defender of Crimean Tatars deported to Soviet Central Asia.
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Petro Grigorenko advised the Tatar activists not to confine their protests to the USSR, but to appeal to international organizations including the United Nations.
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Petro Grigorenko was one of the first who questioned the official Soviet version of World War II history.
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In 1976, Petro Grigorenko helped found the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.
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On 20 December 1977, Petro Grigorenko was allowed to go abroad for medical treatment.
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Petro Grigorenko's health was ruined during forcible confinement in KGB-run mental hospitals.
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On 30 November 1977, Petro Grigorenko arrived in the United States and was stripped of his Soviet citizenship.
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On 23 July 1978, Petro Grigorenko made a statement condemning the trials of Soviet dissidents Anatoliy Shcharanskyi, Alexander Ginzburg and Viktoras Petkus.
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In 1979 in New York, Grigorenko was examined by the team of psychologists and psychiatrists including Alan A Stone, the then President of American Psychiatric Association.
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Petro Grigorenko's case confirmed accusations, Stone wrote, that psychiatry in the Soviet Union was at times a tool of political repression.
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Petro Grigorenko died on 21 February 1987 in New York City.
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Petro Grigorenko was married to Zinaida Mikhailovna Grigorenko and they had five sons: Anatoliy, Heorhiy, Oleh, Viktor and Andrew.
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Petro Grigorenko was expelled from the USSR to the US, two years before Petro and Zinaida Hryhorenko themselves travelled to the United States.
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Subsequently, Andrew Grigorenko became the founder and president of General Petro Grigorenko Foundation, dedicated to the study of his father's legacy.
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The different Latin spellings of Petro Grigorenko's name exist due to the lack of uniform transliteration rules for the Ukrainian names in the middle of the 20th century, when he became internationally known.