Crimean Tatars recall Grigorenko (03/10/96)

Crimean Tatars recall Grigorenko

by Marta Kolomayets
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - A memorial service marking the ninth anniversary of the death of human rights activist Gen. Petro Grigorenko was held in Symferopil on March 6, reported Interfax-Ukraine.

The service at Ss. Volodymyr and Olha Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral (Kyiv Patriarchate) was held on the initiative of the Crimean Tatar Culture Fund and the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars.

"Petro Grigorenko was a good friend of the Crimean Tatar people. He spent five years in prison for his participation in the Crimean Tatar national movement and fought for our peoples' rights until his dying hour," Mejlis Chairman Mustafa Jemilev told Interfax-Ukraine. Mr. Jemilev also told Interfax he was surprised that Ukrainian national organizations on the Crimean peninsula seemed indifferent to the memory of Gen. Grigorenko, an ethnic Ukrainian.

Indeed, Gen. Grigorenko, who was born in the Tavria Gubernia on October 16, 1907, rose to the rank of major general in the Soviet Red Army. He was reprimanded in 1941 for criticizing Stalin's purge of the military organization, but went on to be a division commander on the German front (1943-1945). He later taught at the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow and became head of the Faculty of Military Cybernetics.

Advocating the democratization of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and criticizing corrupt officials at a Moscow party conference, Gen. Grigo-renko was transferred from his post to the Far East.

He publicly championed the right of the Crimean Tatars - deported under Stalin - to return to their homeland. Arrested in 1964, he was committed to psychiatric prisons in 1964-1965 and 1969-1974 as punishment for his human rights defense activities.

Gen. Grigorenko, who died on February 21, 1987, in New York City, was a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and its representative to the Moscow Helsinki Group. In 1977, he left the Soviet Union for medical treatment in the United States and was stripped of his Soviet citizenship in absentia.

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