Kronid Lyubarsky

Kronid Arkadyevich Lyubarsky (Russian: Крони́д Арка́дьевич Люба́рский; 4 April 1934, Pskov, Soviet Union – 23 May 1996, Bali, Indonesia) was a Russian journalist, dissident, human rights activist and political prisoner.

Early career

Born in the city of Pskov, USSR, on April 4, 1934, Lyubarsky graduated from the Moscow State University in 1956 and worked as an astrophysicist at the All-Union Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of the USSR Academy of Sciences. His academic work included studies on meteors and space biology. He was also working in the Soviet program of interplanetary exploration of Mars. He authored several books on astrobiology and translated scientific works into Russian, including books by Fred Hoyle.

Dissident activity

In the mid-1960s, Lyubarsky became active in the civil rights movement and became a contributing editor of various samizdat publications. These included the Chronicle of Current Events which circulated between April 1968 and July 1982, documenting extrajudicial persecution, arrests, court proceedings, incarceration in psychiatric hospitals and other forms of harassment in the Soviet Union.