ABSTRACT
The Soviet Human Rights Movement was unprepared for the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev. By 1984, the authorities’ campaign to suppress the movement was largely successful. Kovalyov’s friends, Andrei Sakharov, Aleksander Lavut and Tatyana Velikanova, were still in exile, isolated in towns across the Soviet Union. His son, Ivan and his daughter in law, Tanya Osipova, were still imprisoned. When Gorbachev became General Secretary on March 11, 1985, this legacy of political repression cast a long historical shadow over his future policies of perestroika and glasnost.
