This man has been one of the ideologists of the human rights movement in our country for several decades. Valery Borschev, and it’s about him, he began to raise the problem of violation of human rights even at that time when the KGB authorities opened a real hunt for those who clandestinely tried to help ordinary citizens restore justice. First of all, he defended the interests of political prisoners, as well as people whom the authorities persecuted for their religious beliefs.
Today Valery Borshchev is an authoritative champion of the truth and an active fighter against lawlessness. He took these functions as a basis, working in the Human Rights Committee under the President of the Russian Federation, in the Moscow Helsinki Group, in the All-Russian human rights movement “For Human Rights”.
What was remarkable in the biography of this man? Let's consider this question in more detail.
Years of childhood and youth
Valery Vasilyevich Borschev - a native of the village Chernyannoe (Tambov region). He was born December 1, 1943 in an ordinary Soviet family. My father worked as an engineer in the military industry, and his mother worked as a civil engineer. The family often moved from place to place, so Valery repeatedly changed schools in which he studied. He received a certificate of maturity in Rostov-on-Don.
In his youth, Valery Borschev tried to stand out from the crowd, preferring to wear exceptionally stylish clothes. At the same time, the professors of Moscow State University, where the young man enrolled to study as a journalist, were critical of such marginality.
But in 1966 he still receives the coveted diploma.
"KP"
After graduating from the journalism department, Valery Borschev takes a job at Komsomolskaya Pravda. He becomes an employee of the Institute of Public Opinion (one of the structures of KP), and after a while the journalist is transferred to the Komsomol life and youth problems department, where he works as a correspondent. The heroes of his publications were people who secretly opposed themselves to the existing regime. Valery Borschev often went on business trips initiated on complaints. Once he met in provincial Rubtsovsk with a man who was the author of an angry letter against the Communists, written after political events in Czechoslovakia. Another time, upon arriving in Biysk, he managed to talk with young people who came up with an unusual Komsomol charter that did not quite correspond to the tasks of building a socialist state.
New Horizons
In the 70s, events took place that changed the vector of career development in the life of Valery Vasilievich.
The eminent Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn is expelled from the Soviet Union. In protest, he decides to break off his employment relationship with Komsomolskaya Pravda. He meets and talks with academician Andrei Sakharov on the subject of observing the rights of a Soviet citizen, after which a real revolution takes place in his inner consciousness. But in 1975, he was not yet ready to totally deal with the problem of lawlessness in the USSR. After his dismissal from Komsomolskaya Pravda, he gets a job in the printed publication Soviet Screen. For several years he has been interviewing pop and film stars: Alla Pugacheva, Bulat Okudzhava, Rolan Bykov, Oleg Tabakov and others.
Beginning of human rights activities
In parallel with this, Valery Borschev, whose biography is of great interest to many, begins active work as part of the Committee of the Rights of Believers. In a new quality for himself, he began to help political prisoners and their relatives. In particular, the exiles received food, literature, and cash.
Often Valery Vasilievich himself went to places of detention, handed over the parcel to the prisoners and personally asked them how the rights of those who are kept in prisons are respected. However, the Soviet leadership was not going to make concessions to political prisoners and only intensified the fight against dissidents. This position of officials only disappoints the novice human rights activist: he put his party card on the table and stopped working in the "Soviet Screen". Friends of the actors from the Taganka Theater - Vladimir Vysotsky and Valery Zolotukhin suggested Borschev to temporarily work as a fireman in the Melpomene church. After some time, he had the opportunity to try out such professions as a cyclist, a high-rise painter, and a carpenter. Valery Vasilievich even managed to work in an underground printing house, where religious literature was published. It was created by one of the friends of the human rights activist - Viktor Burdyug.
Opal
In the early 80s, KGB identified ideologists of the Committee of the Rights of Believers and handcuffed them. To avoid arrest, Borschev for some time leaves the capital. He left the underground only after the trial of dissident Gleb Yakunin took place.
But even after that, Valery Borschev (a human rights activist) was under vigilant surveillance by the KGB, which in the mid-80s warned him to stop anti-Soviet propaganda.
Moscow Helsinki Group
He entered this human rights organization shortly after its revival. In 1987, Valery Borschev took part in the first human rights forum, while law enforcement authorities then warned that the organizers of the event would face criminal prosecution. At the same time, the human rights activist did not leave the profession of a journalist, working in the late 80s as the editor of the journal “Knowledge is Power”.
Work in power structures
Of course, the old government was objectionable to Valery Borschev. Politics entered the sphere of his professional interests already when the USSR lived out its last days. In the early 90's, he took a deputy seat in the Moscow City Council (the predecessor of today's Moscow City Duma). After some time in the legislative body of the capital, he already headed the Commission, which oversees issues in the field of freedom of religion, conscience, mercy and charity.
In 1994, Borschev became a deputy of the State Duma. In this capacity, he helped to implement the legislative act “On charitable activities and charitable organizations”. Valery Vasilievich also dealt with the problematic affairs of religious organizations and public associations, oversaw the sphere of observance of the rights of prisoners serving sentences in prisons. An interesting fact: when the war broke out in Chechnya, Borschev was one of the first to try to persuade the separatist Dzhokhar Dudayev to abandon the idea of separating the republic from Russia. But unfortunately, such an initiative was unsuccessful, and blood began to be shed in Chechnya.
