Tatyana Velikanova
| Tatyana M. Velikanova | |
|---|---|
| Native name | Татьяна Михайловна Великанова |
| Born | February 3, 1932 |
| Died | September 19, 2002 (aged 70) Moscow, Russia |
| Citizenship | USSR, Russia |
| Alma mater | Moscow State University |
| Occupation | mathematician, teacher |
| Known for | human rights activism |
| Movement | dissident movement in the Soviet Union |
| Criminal charge | Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda (Article 70 of the RSFSR Criminal Code) |
| Criminal penalty | Four years in corrective-labour camps; five years internal exile. |
| Spouse(s) | Konstantin Babitsky |
Tatyana Mikhailovna Velikanova (Russian: Татья́на Миха́йловна Велика́нова, 3 February 1932, Moscow – 19 September 2002, Moscow) was a mathematician and Soviet dissident. A prominent member of the human rights movement in the Soviet Union, she was for a long while an editor of A Chronicle of Current Events, its underground periodical.
Velikanova also co-founded the first human rights organizations in the post-Stalin Soviet Union, the Initiative Group (sometimes known as the "Action Group") on Human Rights in the USSR. For nearly nine years she was condemned to life in a prison camp and internal exile within the USSR as a political prisoner.
Born on 3 February 1932, Velikanova graduated from the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University in 1954. A mathematician by training, she began work as a teacher in a school in the Urals. Then, from 1957 onwards, she was employed as a programmer in Moscow.
Velikanova became a dissident in 1968. That year she witnessed the 1968 Red Square demonstration, an open protest by seven people against the crushing of the Prague Spring reforms by the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. She had gone to the Square with one of the demonstrators, her husband Konstantin Babitsky, so as to testify as a witness in court if needed.
Like the other protestors Babitsky was arrested on the spot. He was sentenced to three years in exile in the Far Northern Komi Region. Velikanova's experience at the trial where her testimony was distorted and used against Babitsky, led her to decide she would never again participate in such judicial proceedings. (Nor did she, see below, when she was herself put on trial in 1980.)
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