Born in 1933, he worked as a radio engineer, belonged to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and held the rank of major. In 1969, Genrikh Altunyan, along with a mathematician from Kiev, Leonid Pliushch, joined the Moscow Action Group for Human Rights. It was then that he was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment for speaking out in defence of dissident general Pyotr Grigorenko and signing a collective letter to the UN. Altunyan served his sentence in a medium-security penal colony in Krasnoyarsk Territory.

In 1981, the Kharkov Regional Court sentenced him to seven years in prison and five years internal exile for circulating anti-Soviet samizdat publications and works by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Between 1981 and 1987 Genrikh Altunyan served his sentence in the Political Prison-36 in Perm and in another political prison in Chistopol. In early 1987 he was pardoned by the Supreme Council of the USSR along with 140 other political prisoners.

In the 1990’s Altunyan became a deputy of the Supreme Rada of Ukraine and one of the founders of the Memorial branch in Kharkov. In late 2004 he took part in the “Orange Revolution”, supporting the leader of the Ukrainian opposition, Victor Yushchenko, at rallies.


Alexander Podrabinek
He was an incredibly energetic and happy man. It is hard to believe that someone who went through the Soviet prisons and labour camps could still remain so open-hearted, have so much love for life and so much optimism. It is impossible to imagine him despondent or broken. At the age of seventy years he had many plans for the future, he worked, followed the news and took part in many political events. Nothing could defeat him, and only death ceased this plethora of energy.

Last time I saw him was at the Kouroultai (congress) of the Crimean Tartars in Simferopol last year. He gave a welcome speech that was met with a round of rousing applause. Behind the scenes he embraced his friends and many considered it an honour to exchange just a few words with him. He joined me as I drove back to Moscow to be dropped off in Kharkov where he lived all his life. I stopped off at his home overnight. He treated me to home-made vodka, showed the house that he had built and spoke about his plans for the near future. He feared nothing and lived as if he were only twenty and had a whole life ahead of him.

But death took him away, leaving us many photographs, memoirs, samizdat documents, copies of court sentences and fond memories of Genrikh Altunyan — the man at whose side I was very fortunate to march.


I. Zakharova. 20 Years On
The trial against Altounyan under presiding judge Karpoukhin began in late March 1981. Until then Genrikh had been held in pre-trial detention for three months. It was customary for trials involving dissidents to be closed. Altounyan’s case, as it was heard in the Regional Court, drew the attention of many people who previously had never known him. During this trial the KGB departed from their the usual rules. Not only Altounyan’s relatives were allowed to be present in the courtroom but also some of his friends. Access inside the court was only denied to Genrikh’s friends whom the security services knew to be hard-mouthed and active. One could assume that the trial was open for the same reason: the KGB wished to intimidate society to the limit and conduct a spectacular show trial. But even then the KGB experts failed in their actions… Altounyan’s high moral ground was so evident that the attempt to intimidate the population was considered to have been a failure. The KGB realised it instantly and no more family members, except his closest relatives and witnesses, were then allowed to attend the trials that followed.

Altunyan was given the maximum sentence allowed by Article 70, Part 1 of the Criminal Code: namely 7 years in labour camps with a subsequent five-year exile. He served a little more than six years and was released a year after Gorbachev declared Perestroika.


Altunyan’s friends recall:
"On 20 June 1969 a group of officials turned up to search his flat. They knocked: ‘Altunyan, open the door!’ Silence. ‘Altunyan, we know you’re in!’ No response. ‘Altunyan, we’ll break the door!’ No result. Some twenty minutes later the door opened — thick smoke inside and Altunyan on the threshold, smiling. ‘I noticed you in the street. I just had some unnecessary papers here. It took a while before I burned them. And now come in, my dear, and search me!’"