Pyotr Grigorenko

Petro Grigorenko or Petro Hryhorovych Hryhorenko or Pyotr Grigoryevich Grigorenko (Петро́ Григо́рович Григоре́нко, Пётр Григо́рьевич Григоре́нко; October 16, 1907 – February 21, 1987) was a high-ranked Soviet Army commander of Ukrainian descent, later a prominent Soviet human rights activist, dissident and writer.

Early life
Petro Grigorenko was born in Borysivka village in Taurida Governorate, Russian Empire (in present-day Zaporizhia Oblast, Ukraine). 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.”

In 1960, he completed the work on his doctoral thesis.

Dissident activities
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. In the 1970s Grigorenko became a member of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group. The authorities sent him to a psychiatric imprisonment psikhushka from 1964–1965, and he was stripped of his military rank, medals, and retirement benefits.

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.

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".

In 1971, Dr. Semyon Gluzman wrote a psychiatric report on Grigorenko. Gluzman came to the conclusion that Grigorenko was mentally sane and had been taken to mental hospitals for political reasons. 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 as having the mental illness.

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.

In 1977, when Grigorenko left for medical treatment in the United States, he was stripped of his Soviet citizenship.

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

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. The team came to conclusion that they could find no evidence of mental disease in Grigorenko and his history consistent with mental disease in the past.

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). In 1982, the book was translated into English under the title Memoirs.

Only 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. The 1992 psychiatric examination of Grigorenko was described by the Nezavisimiy Psikhiatricheskiy Zhurnal in its numbers 1–4 of 1992.

Name spelling versions
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 Cemetery of St. Andrew in South Bound Brook, NJ, USA. The same spelling also retained by his surviving American descendants: son Andrew and granddaughters Tatiana and Olga.

Books

 * Petro Grigorenko Memoirs: Pietro G. Grigorenko W W Norton & Co Inc; 1st ed edition (1984) ISBN 0-393-01570-X
 * Pyotr Grigorenko The Grigorenko Papers: Writings by General P.G. Grigorenko and Documents on his Case Westview Press; Colorado. 1976 ISBN 0-89158-603-2
 * (The Russian text of the book in full is available online on the website of the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center by click)
 * (The Russian text of the book in full is available online on the website of the Online Library of Alexander Belousenko by click)