Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989)

Russian physicist, campaigner for human rights and civil liberties. Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1975. Exiled for 6 years to Nijni-Novgorod from 1980 to 1986, led 2 hunger strikes. Founder of the Memorial association.

Boris Nemtsov (1959-2015)

Russian physicist and statesman, Deputy Prime Minister from 1997 to 1998. An opponent of Putin, he denounced the corruption of the Sochi Olympic Games. Murdered in Moscow on 27 February 2015, while preparing a demonstration against Russian intervention in the Donbass region in 2014.

Léonid Pliouchtch (1939-2015)

Ukrainian mathematician, Soviet dissident and member of the Initiative Group for the Defence of Human Rights in the USSR. Interned in a psychiatric hospital from 1972 to 1976, when he was deported to France.

Maksym Butkiewicz (born in 1977)

Ukrainian journalist, Euro-Maidan activist in 2014. Defender of human rights and civil liberties, committed to the defence of his country. Taken prisoner in June 2022, sent to Moscow and sentenced in July to 13 years in prison for "human rights violations".

Varlam Chalamov (1907-1982)

Russian journalist and writer. An opponent of Stalin who was sentenced several times in 1929, 1937 and 1951, he was deported to the Gulag in the Kolyma region of northern Siberia. He is the author of Récits de la Kolyma, published in samizdat.

Ales Bialiatski (born in 1962)

Professor of Belarusian literature. Human rights activist, founder of the NGO Viasna (Spring). Arrested and imprisoned in 2021, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2022, sentenced in March 2023 to 10 years' imprisonment.

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Larissa Bogaraz (1929-2004)

Linguist born in Kharkiv, Ukraine. A Soviet dissident, she was one of 7 dissidents who protested against the invasion of Czechoslovakia on Red Square on 25 August 1968, unfurling a banner reading "For their freedom and ours”. Sentenced to 4 years' exile in Siberia. In 1986, she launched a campaign for the release of all political prisoners.

Maria Ponomarenko (born in 1979)

Russian journalist. Opposition activist, patriot and pacifist, sentenced to six years' imprisonment in a penal colony for having posted on social networks on 16 March 2022 about the bombing by the Russian air force of the Marioupol theatre, which had been designated as a refuge for children.

Andrei Sinyavsky (1925-1997)

Writer, tried with Iouli Daniel in 1966 and sentenced to six years in the Gulag, for having published in the West their novels, Gentlemen, the Court and Ici Moscow. The Siniavski-Daniel trial marks the end of the thaw initiated by Krutchev and the rise of repression under Brezhnev, as well as the rise of dissent. Siniavski emigrated to France in 1973.

Vladimir Kara-Mourza (born 1981)

Russian journalist and filmmaker. Opponent of Putin since 2000, advisor to Boris Nemtsov, then in 2014, coordinator of the Open Russia foundation. Victim of poisoning by the FSB in 2015, then in 2017. Opponent of the invasion of Ukraine, sentenced to 25 years in a penal colony in April 2023.

Elena Bonner (1923-2011)

Paediatrician, founder of the Helsinki-Moscow Human Rights Group in 1976. Exiled for 6 years to Nijni-Novgorod with her husband Andrei Sakharov. First signatory in 2010 of the petition "Putin must go".

Anna Politkovskaya (1958-2006)

Russian journalist with Novaya Gazeta, denounced the crimes of the war in Chechnya in 1999, then those of Kadyrov's administration, which threatened her with death. She was arrested and beaten in 2001, poisoned in 2004 and murdered on 7 October 2006 in her Moscow apartment building.

Arseny Roginsky (1946-2017)

Historian and Soviet dissident, editor of samizdat, in particular the "Chronicle of Current Events". Sentenced to 4 years in a penal colony in 1981, co-founder of the Memorial organisation.

Alexeï Navalny (born in1976)

Russian lawyer and anti-corruption activist. A presidential candidate in 2018, he was attacked and burned in the right eye, then poisoned with Novichok in August 2020. In 2021, he directed the documentary A Palace for Putin: The Story of the Biggest Bribe. Sentenced several times to prison terms until 2032, he is quite regularly in solitary confinement.

Victor Fainberg (1931-2023)

Linguist, born in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Sentenced to 1 year in prison in 1957 for fighting with an anti-Semitic policeman, he was one of 7 dissidents who protested against the invasion of Czechoslovakia on Red Square on 25 August 1968, unfurling a banner reading "For their freedom and ours". His teeth were knocked out by the KGB, but he was not tried and sent to a psychiatric hospital for 4 years. He emigrated to Israel and then to France.

Ilia Iachine (born in 1983) 

Russian politician, co-founder of the Solidarnost movement in 2008, organiser of protests from 2011 to 2013. Opponent of the invasion of Ukraine, arrested in June 2022 and sentenced to 8 and a half years in prison.

Tatiana Velikanova (1932-2002)

Mathematician and Soviet dissident, co-founder in 1969 of the Initiative Group for the Defence of Human Rights in the USSR. A contributor to samizdat, the Chronicle of Current Events, from 1970. Arrested in 1979, she was sentenced in 1980 to 4 years in prison, followed by 5 years in exile in Kazakhstan. She was the last dissident to be imprisoned in the USSR when she was released in 1987.

Alexandra Skochilenko (born in 1990)

Artist and musician. She replaces supermarket price labels with anti-war slogans. On remand, she faces 10 years in a penal colony.