Web-site: http://www.mhg.ru/english

Lyudmila Alexeyeva was born on July 20, 1927, in Yevpatoria, Crimea.

Education: History, Moscow State University, 1950. Moscow Institute for Economics and Statistics, 1956.

1952: Joined the Communist Party

1956: Alexeyeva's apartment became a meeting place for intellectuals and purveyors of illegal, "samizdat" texts

1959-1968: Editor in the archeology and ethnography department of the "Nauka" ("Science") publishing house

1966: Protested the arrest and imprisonment of the writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuly Daniel for publishing "anti-Soviet" materials abroad. Alexeyeva helped support their families.

1967-1968: Campaigned against the arrest of journalist Alexander Ginzburg, dissident Yury Galanskov and others

1968: Expelled from the Communist Party and fired

1968-1972: Helped produce the Soviet Union's first human rights bulletin, "The Chronicle of Current Events"

1970-1977: Worked in the Institute of Social Science Information within the Soviet Academy of Sciences

1976: Became a founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, which was formed in dissident Andrei Sakharov's apartment to expose the Soviet Union's gross human rights violations of the 1975 Helsinki Accord.

1977-1993: Lived in exile in the United States after being forced to emigrate from the Soviet Union. In the United States, she hosted radio programs on human rights on Radio Liberty and Voice of America, published articles in Russian emigre journals, and wrote books and pamphlets.

1993: Returned to Russia

1996-present: Chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group. When she became chairwoman, Alexeyeva cited the rights of women, refugees and support for the labor movement as top priorities for the movement, which many believed had lost its footing after the Soviet Union's breakup.

1998-2004: President of the International Helsinki Federation

2002-present: Member of the government's Human Rights Commission (renamed the Civil Society and Human Rights Development Council in 2004).

2004: Became a member of the Moscow City Commission on Human Rights

2004: Co-founded and co-chaired, with Garry Kasparov and Georgy Satarov, the All-Russian Civic Congress. Alexeyeva and Satarov left due to disagreements with Kasparov in January 2008. Alexeyeva subsequently co-founded the All-Russia Civic Network with Satarov.

2009-present: Alexeyeva has been an active participant in Strategy 31 — regular protest rallies held in defense of the 31st Article (On the Freedom of Assembly) of the Russian Constitution.