Petro Grigorenko

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Petro Grigorenko or Petro Hryhorovych Hryhorenko (Template:Langx, Template:OldStyleDate – 21 February 1987) was a high-ranking Soviet Army commander of Ukrainian descent, who in his fifties became a dissident and a writer, one of the founders of the human rights movement in the Soviet Union.<ref name="Rich">Template:Cite journal</ref>

For 16 years, he was a professor of cybernetics at the Frunze Military Academy<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and chairman of its cybernetic section<ref>Template:Cite bookTemplate:Dead link</ref><ref name=Turning>Template:Cite news</ref> before joining the ranks of the early dissidents. In the mid-1970s Grigorenko helped to found the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, before leaving the USSR for medical treatment in the United States. The Soviet government barred his return, and he never again returned to the Soviet Union.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In the words of Joseph Alsop, Grigorenko publicly denounced the "totalitarianism that hides behind the mask of so-called Soviet democracy."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Early life

Petro Grigorenko was born in Borysivka village<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp in Taurida Governorate, Russian Empire (in present-day Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine).

In 1939, he graduated with honors from the Kuybyshev Military Engineering Academy and the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia.<ref name=Gluzman>Template:Cite news</ref> He took part in the battles of Khalkhin Gol, against the Japanese on the Manchurian border in 1939, and in the Second World War.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He commanded troops in initial battles following 22 June 1941.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> During the war, he also commanded an infantry division in the Baltic for three years.<ref name=Barron>Template:Cite news</ref>

He went on a military career and reached high ranks during World War II. After the war, being a decorated veteran, he left active career and taught at the Frunze Military Academy, reaching the rank of a Major General.

In 1949, Grigorenko defended his Ph.D. thesis on the theme "Features of the organization and conduct of combined offensive battle in the mountains."<ref name="Казнимые">Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1960, he completed work on his doctoral thesis.<ref name="The Sakharov Center">Template:Cite web (The biography of Grigorenko on the website of the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center)</ref> Over 70 of his scientific works on military science were published.<ref name=Grigorenko>Template:Cite news</ref>

Dissident activities

In 1961, Petro Grigorenko started to openly criticize what he considered the excesses of the Khrushchev regime.<ref name=Bursten>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp He maintained that the special privileges of the political elite did not comply with the principles laid down by Lenin.<ref name=Bursten />Template:Rp Grigorenko formed a dissident group—The Group for the Struggle to Revive Leninism.<ref name=Bursten />Template:Rp Soviet psychiatrists sitting as legally constituted commissions to inquire into his sanity diagnosed him at least three times—in April 1964, August 1969, and November 1969.<ref name=Stone>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp When arrested, Grigorenko was sent to Moscow's Lubyanka prison, and from there for psychiatric examination to the Serbsky Institute<ref name=Bursten /> where the first commission, which included Snezhnevsky and Lunts, diagnosed him as suffering from the mental disease in the form of a paranoid delusional development of his personality, accompanied by early signs of cerebral arteriosclerosis.<ref name=Stone />Template:Rp Lunts, reporting later on this diagnosis, mentioned that the symptoms of paranoid development were "an overestimation of his own personality reaching messianic proportions" and "reformist ideas."<ref name=Stone />Template:Rp Grigorenko was thereby forcibly committed to a special psychiatric hospital.<ref name=Bursten />Template:Rp After six months, Grigorenko was found to be in remission and was released for outpatient follow-up.<ref name=Bursten />Template:Rp After the release, his pension was severely reduced.<ref name=Bursten />Template:Rp

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.<ref name="Executed">Template:Cite book</ref> During the closed political trials of 1965–1969, he was often present at the courthouses, demanding to open the doors of the courtrooms for everyone, explained to the people gathered around the goals of the defendants, expressed his dissatisfaction with the distortions in the internal political life of the country, a demanded a return to "true Leninism".<ref name="Gluzman-expertise">Template:Cite journal</ref>

He 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.<ref name=Bursten />Template:Rp In 1968, after 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<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> until being freed on 26 June 1974 after 5 years of detention.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> As Grigorenko had followers in Moscow, he was lured to the far-away Tashkent.<ref name=Bursten />Template:Rp While there, he was again arrested and examined by a psychiatric team.<ref name=Stone />Template:Rp None of the manifestations or symptoms cited by the Lunts commission were found there by the second examination conducted under the chairmanship of Fyodor Detengof.<ref name=Stone />Template:Rp The diagnosis and evaluation made by the commission was that "Grigorenko's [criminal] activity had a purposeful character, it was related to concrete events and facts... It did not reveal any signs of illness or delusions."<ref name=Stone />Template:Rp The psychiatrists reported that he was not mentally sick, but responsible for his actions.<ref name=Bursten />Template:Rp He had firm convictions which were shared by many of his colleagues and were not delusional.<ref name=Bursten />Template:Rp Having evaluated the records of his preceding hospitalization, they concluded that he had not been sick at that time either.<ref name=Bursten />Template:Rp The KGB brought Grigorenko back to Moscow and, three months later, arranged a second examination at the Serbsky Institute.<ref name=Bursten />Template:Rp Once again, these psychiatrists found that he had "a paranoid development of the personality" manifested by reformist ideas.<ref name=Bursten />Template:Rp The commission, which included Lunts and was chaired by Morozov, recommended that he be recommitted to a special psychiatric hospital for the socially dangerous.<ref name=Stone />Template:Rp Eventually, after almost four years, he was transferred to a regular mental hospital.<ref name=Bursten />Template:Rp On 17 January 1971 Grigorenko was asked whether he had changed his convictions and replied that "Convictions are not like gloves, one cannot easily change them".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1971, Dr. Semen Hluzman wrote an in-absentia psychiatric report on Grigorenko.<ref name=Gluzman /><ref name="Medicine betrayed">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref> Hluzman came to the conclusion that Grigorenko was mentally sane and had been taken to mental hospitals for political reasons.<ref name="Medicine betrayed" /> In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hluzman was forced to serve seven years in labor camp for defending Grigorenko against the charge of insanity.<ref name=":0" /><ref name="Sabshin">Template:Cite book</ref> Amnesty International declared Grigorenko a prisoner of conscience.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Grigorenko became the key defender of Crimean Tatars deported to Soviet Central Asia.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He advised the Tatar activists not to confine their protests to the USSR, but to appeal also to international organizations including the United Nations.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Grigorenko was one of the first who questioned the official Soviet version of World War II history. He pointed out that just prior to the German attack on June 22, 1941, vast Soviet troops were concentrated in the area west of Białystok, deep in occupied Poland, getting ready for a surprise offensive, which made them vulnerable to be encircled in case of surprise German attack. His ideas were later advanced by Viktor Suvorov.

After publishing Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov's book Stalin and the Soviet Communist Party: A Study in the Technology of Power, Grigorenko made and distributed its copies by photographing and typewriting.<ref name="Григоренко">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp In 1976, Grigorenko helped found the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.<ref name=Turning />

In the United States

On 20 December 1977, Grigorenko was allowed to go abroad for medical treatment.<ref name=Aleshchenko>Template:Cite news</ref> His health was ruined during forcible confinement in KGB-run mental hospitals.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> On 30 November 1977, Grigorenko arrived in the United States<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and was stripped of his Soviet citizenship.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In Grigorenko's words, Leonid Brezhnev signed the decree of depriving Grigorenko of Soviet citizenship on the ground that he was undermining the prestige of the Soviet Union.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> The 1970s marked a peak in the use of external exile as a punitive measure by the Soviet Union (as opposed to the internal type, which was highest between the mid-1930s and early 1950s); often the pattern was that a trip abroad for work or medical treatment was transformed into permanent exile.<ref name="Medvedev_1984">Template:Cite book</ref> In the same year, Grigorenko became a U.S. citizen.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

File:Petro Grigorenko monument.jpg
Monument at Petro Grigorenko's grave. Cemetery of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of St. Andrew in South Bound Brook, New Jersey

Being in USA since 1977, Grigorenko took an active part in the activities of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group foreign affiliate.<ref>"Права человека в России", Human rights network, in Russian</ref> On 23 July 1978, Grigorenko made a statement condemning the trials of Soviet dissidents Anatoliy Shcharanskyi, Alexander Ginzburg and Viktoras Petkus.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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.<ref name="Abuse">Template:Cite book</ref> The team could find no evidence of mental disease in Grigorenko and his history consistent with mental disease in the past.<ref name="Abuse"/> Their findings were drawn up and publicized by Walter Reich.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Grigorenko's case confirmed accusations, Stone wrote, that psychiatry in the Soviet Union was at times a tool of political repression.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Petro Grigorenko described his life and views, and his assessment by Soviet psychiatrists and periods of incarceration in prison hospitals in his 1981 memoirs V Podpolye Mozhno Vstretit Tolko Krys… (In the Underground One Can Meet Only Rats…).<ref name="Григоренко"/> In 1982, the book was translated into English by Thomas P. Whitney under the title Memoirs<ref name=Memoirs>Template:Cite book</ref> and reviewed by Alexander J. Motyl,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Raymond L. Garthoff,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> John C. Campbell,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Adam Ulam,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Raisa Orlova and Lev Kopelev.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1983, he said he considered the American political-economic system to be "the best that mankind has found to date."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 1983, a stroke he suffered left him partially paralyzed.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Grigorenko died on 21 February 1987 in New York City.<ref name=Turning/>

In 1991, a commission, composed of psychiatrists from all over the Soviet Union and led by Modest Kabanov, then director of the Bekhterev Psychoneurological Institute in St Petersburg, spent six months reviewing Grigorenko's patient files. They drew up 29 thick volumes of legal proceedings,<ref name="Rich"/> and in October 1991 reversed the official Soviet diagnosis of Grigorenko's psychiatric condition.<ref name="Medicine betrayed"/>Template:Rp In 1992, an official post-mortem forensic psychiatric commission of experts met in Ukraine. They removed the stigma of being a mental patient and confirmed that there were no grounds for the debilitating treatment he underwent in high security psychiatric hospitals for many years.<ref name="Коротенко">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp The 1992 psychiatric examination of Grigorenko was described by the Nezavisimiy Psikhiatricheskiy Zhurnal in its numbers 1–4 of 1992.<ref name="20-летие">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Отчетный доклад">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Family

Petro Grigorenko was married to Zinaida Mikhailovna Grigorenko<ref>Template:Cite periodical</ref> and they had five sons: Anatoliy, Heorhiy, Oleh, Viktor and Andrew.<ref name=Barron/> Two of them died as children.<ref name=Aleshchenko/>

In 1975, Andrew, an electrical engineer,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> was declared to have inherited his father's insanity. He was expelled from the USSR to the US, two years before Petro and Zinaida Hryhorenko themselves travelled to the United States.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Andrew was repeatedly told that since his father was mentally ill, then he was also mad. If he did not stop speaking out in defense of human rights and his father, they told him, he would also be sent to the psikhushka.<ref name=Grigorenko/> Subsequently, Andrew Grigorenko became the founder and president of General Petro Grigorenko Foundation, dedicated to the study of his father's legacy.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Name spelling versions

The different Latin spellings of 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. The correct modern transliteration would be Petro Hryhorenko. However, according to the American identification documents of the late general the official spelling of his name was established as Petro Grigorenko. The same spelling is engraved on his gravestone at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of St. Andrew in South Bound Brook, New Jersey, USA. The same spelling is also retained by his surviving American descendants: son Andrew and granddaughters Tetiana and Olga.

Honours and awards

File:Coin of Ukraine Hryhorenko r.jpg
Commemorative coin issued by the National Bank of Ukraine in Grigorenko's honor
Soviet Union
File:Order of Lenin Ribbon Bar.svg Order of Lenin
File:SU Order of the Red Banner ribbon.svg Order of the Red Banner, twice
File:SU Order of the Red Star ribbon.svg Order of the Red Star
File:POL Order Wojny Ojczyźnianej 1kl BAR.svg Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class
File:SU Medal For Battle Merit ribbon.svg Medal for Battle Merit
File:RUS Order of Saint George 4th class ribbon 2000.svg Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"
File:SU Medal Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 ribbon.svg Jubilee Medal "Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"
File:SU Medal Thirty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 ribbon.svg Jubilee Medal "Thirty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"
File:SU Medal 30 Years of the Soviet Army and Navy ribbon.svg Jubilee Medal "30 Years of the Soviet Army and Navy"
File:SU Medal 40 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR ribbon.svg Jubilee Medal "40 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR"
File:SU Medal 50 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR ribbon.svg Jubilee Medal "50 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR"
Ukraine
File:Order for Bravery 1st Class of Ukraine.gif Order For Courage, 1st class

In Kharkiv the local Georgy Zhukov Avenue was renamed to Petro Hryhorenko Avenue to comply with decommunization laws (this was several times undone by the Kharkiv City Council).<ref>Template:In lang Kharkiv City Council returned Zhukov Avenue to Hryhorenko Avenue for the third time, LB.ua (24 February 2021)</ref>

Books, interviews, letters

Further reading

Video

References

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