Petro Grigorenko: Difference between revisions

Petro Hryhorovych Hryhorenko (Pyotr Grigoryevich Grigorenko)
Петро Григорович Григоренко (Пётр Григорьевич Григоренко)
File:GrigirenkoPetrZina043.jpg Pyotr Grigorenko and his wife Zinaida Grigorenko, 10 October 1980
Born	16 October [O.S. 3 October] 1907 the village of Borisovka, Taurida Governorate,  Russian Empire
Died	21 February 1987(1987-02-21) (aged 79) New York City, USA, buried in South Bound Brook, New Jersey at the cemetry of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA
Nationality	Ukrainian
Citizenship	Russian Empire (1907–1922) →  Soviet Union (1922–1977)
Alma mater	the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute, the Military Engineering-Technical University, the Kuybyshev Military Engineering Academy, the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia
Occupation(s)	commanding officer, military scientist, cyberneticist
Employer	the Frunze Military Academy
Known for	human rights activism with participation in the Moscow Helsinki Group, the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, the Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes, struggle against political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union
Movement	dissident movement in the Soviet Union
Spouse	Zinaida Grigorenko
Children	five sons: Anatoly, Andrew, Georgi, Oleg, Viktor
Military career
Allegiance	Soviet Union
Years of service	1939–1945
Rank	Major General
Unit	infantry division
Battles / wars	battles of Khalkhin Gol and the Second World War
Awards	Order of the Patriotic War, Order of the Red Banner, Order of the Red Star, Order of Lenin, Order For Courage

Petro Grigorenko or Petro Hryhorovych Hryhorenko or Pyotr Grigoryevich Grigorenko (Template:Lang-uk, Template:Lang-ru, 16 October [O.S. 3 October] 1907, Borisovka, Taurida Governorate – 21 February 1987, New York City) was a high-ranked Soviet Army commander of Ukrainian descent, one of the founders of the human rights movement in the Soviet Union,^[1] dissident and writer.

He was a professor of cybernetics at the Frunze Military Academy.^[2]

Petro Grigorenko was born in Borisovka village^[3]: 46 in Taurida Governorate, Russian Empire (in present-day Zaporizhia 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.^[4] He took part in the battles of Khalkhin Gol, against the Japanese on the Manchurian border in 1939, and in the Second World War.^[5] During the war, he commanded an infantry division in the Baltic for three years.^[6]

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.”^[7]

In 1960, he completed work on his doctoral thesis.^[8]

In 1961 Grigorenko criticized Nikita Khrushchev's policies and was transferred to Russian Far East as punishment. In 1963 he created the Union of Struggle for the Restoration of Leninism. The authorities sent him to a psychiatric imprisonment psikhushka from 1964–1965, and he was stripped of his military rank, medals, and retirement benefits.^[9]

After his release, Grigorenko actively participated in the struggle for the Crimean Tatar autonomy. He also demonstrated against the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and became a leading figure in Soviet human rights movement along with his fellow celebrated dissidents Vladimir Bukovsky, Andrei Sakharov, Alexander Yesenin-Volpin and others. At the funeral of Alexei Kosterin in 1968, he referred to the deportation of the Crimean Tatars as a genocide.^[9]

He was arrested on May 7, 1969 and incarcerated for five years. Colonel-Doctor Lunts diagnosed his activities as evidence of paranoid schizophrenia and arranged to have him sent to the Chernyakhovsk prison hospital. On January 17, 1971 Grigorenko was asked whether he had changed his convictions and replied that "Convictions are not like gloves, one cannot easily change them".^[10]

In 1971, Dr. Semyon Gluzman wrote a psychiatric report on Grigorenko.^[11][4] Gluzman came to the conclusion that Grigorenko was mentally sane and had been taken to mental hospitals for political reasons.^[11] In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Gluzman was forced to serve seven years in labor camp and three years in Siberian exile for refusing to diagnose Grigorenko with a mental illness.^[12]

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.

Following the signing of the Helsinki Accords by the USSR, the USA, and all European countries in 1975, Grigorenko became a member of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group which set itself the task of monitoring the observance of the Accords, especially as concerns human rights.

In 1977, when Grigorenko left for medical treatment in the United States, he was stripped of his Soviet citizenship.^[13] Leonid Brezhnev signed the decree of depriving Grigorenko of Soviet citizenship on the ground that he was undermining the prestige of the Soviet Union.^[14]

Being in USA since 1977, Petro Hryhorenko took an active part in the activities of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group foreign affiliate.^[15]

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.^[16] The team came to the conclusion that they could find no evidence of mental disease in Grigorenko and his history consistent with mental disease in the past.^[16] The conclusion was drawn up and publicized by Walter Reich.^{[17][18][19][20]}

In 1981, Pyotr Grigorenko told about his psychiatric examinations, hospitalizations, life, and views in his memoirs V Podpolye Mozhno Vstretit Tolko Krys… (In Underground One Can Meet Only Rats…).^[21] In 1982, the book was translated into English by Thomas P. Whitney under the title Memoirs.^[22]

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 the Grigorenko files, drew up 29 thick volumes of legal proceedings,^[1] and reversed the official diagnosis on Grigorenko in October 1991.^[11]: 73 In 1992, the official post-mortem forensic psychiatric commission of experts met at Grigorenko’s homeland removed the stigma of mental patient from him and confirmed that the debilitating treatment he underwent in high security psychiatric hospitals for many years was groundless.^[23]: 23 The 1992 psychiatric examination of Grigorenko was described by the Nezavisimiy Psikhiatricheskiy Zhurnal in its numbers 1–4 of 1992.^[24][25]

Pyotr Grigorenko had five sons Anatoly, Georgi, Oleg, Viktor and Andrew.^[6] In 1975, Andrew was declared a hereditary madman and expelled from the USSR to the USA where he lives now.^[26] Andrew was repeatedly told that since his father was mentally ill, then he was hereditarily mentally ill as well, and if he would not stop his appearances in defense of human rights and his father, he was told to go to psikhushka.^[27]

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 20th century, when he became internationally known. The correct modern transliteration would be 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 also retained by his surviving American descendants: son Andrew and granddaughters Tatiana and Olga.

• Григоренко, Пётр (1973). Мысли сумасшедшего: Избранные письма и выступления Петра Григорьевича Григоренко (in Russian). Амстердам: Фонд имени Герцена. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help) (publicly available unabridged Russian text)
• Grigorenko, Petr (1976). The Grigorenko Papers: Writings by General P.G. Grigorenko and Documents on his Case. Colorado: Westview Press. ISBN 0-89158-603-2.
• Григоренко, Пётр (1977). Сборник статей (in Russian). Нью-Йорк: Издательство "Хроника". {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help) (publicly available unabridged Russian text)
• Григоренко, Пётр (1981). В подполье можно встретить только крыс… (in Russian). Нью-Йорк: Детинец. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help) (publicly available unabridged Russian text)
• Grigorenko, Petr (1982). Memoirs (translated by Thomas P. Whitney). New York: Norton. ISBN 0-393-01570-X.
• "Интервью с Петром Григорьевичем Григоренко" [Interview with Pyotr Grigoryevich Grigorenko]. Kontinent (in Russian) (152). 2013 [1978].

• Serbsky Institute

• Speech of Petro Grigorenko to Crimean Tatars, 1968
• Petro G. Grigorenko - Review of a life and a book
• General Petro Grigorenko Foundation - English, Russian, Ukrainian
• Григоренко Петр Григорьевич (in Russian). The Moscow Helsinki Group. Retrieved 20 July 2011. (The biography of Grigorenko on the website of the Moscow Helsinki Group)
• Пётр (Петро) Григорьевич ГРИГОРЕНКО (1907-1987) (in Russian). The Online Library of Alexander Belousenko. Retrieved 20 July 2011. (The biography of Grigorenko on the website of the Online Library of Alexander Belousenko)
• Григоренко Пётр Григорьевич (1907-1987) (in Russian). The Sakharov Center. Retrieved 20 July 2011. (The biography of Grigorenko on the website of the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center)

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