Alla Yaroshinskaya

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Alla Yaroshinskaya, born February 14, 1953, in Zhytomyr Oblast, Ukraine, is a Ukrainian politician, journalist and writer. She served in the Soviet Parliament from 1989 to 1991, was Deputy to the Minister of Press and Information until 1993, and later advised Russian President Boris Yeltsin and sat on the Russian Presidential Council. She has been a prominent advocate of perestroika and of better aid and information after the Chernobyl disaster.

She led the Ecological Charity Fund and co-chaired the Russian Ecological Congress. She fought for freedom of speech, human rights, and nuclear safety, and wrote more than 20 books and over 700 articles.

In 1992 she received the Right Livelihood Award for revealing, against opposition, how badly Chernobyl affected local people. She was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 as part of the 1000 PeaceWomen project, and won the Ukrainian Golden Feather award.

As a student at Kyiv University, she opposed party corruption and faced intimidation from the KGB. She worked as a newspaper journalist for 13 years, helped start reform groups, and published samizdat to resist the Soviet regime. In 1986 she investigated the Chernobyl evacuation, traveling to contaminated areas and finding that evacuees were moved to spots with similar or worse contamination and inadequate living conditions.

In 1989 she was elected to Gorbachev’s Parliament with strong public support. On the Ecology and Glasnost Committee, she pressed for full disclosure about Chernobyl, obtained secret documents, and publicly shared them. Her actions led to threats and assassination attempts, but she kept speaking out.

After the USSR collapsed, she continued her political and international work, focusing on nuclear non-proliferation and environmental issues. She participated in United Nations preparations and conferences, and helped found The Nuclear Encyclopedia to aid anti-nuclear groups across the former Soviet states. She also supports establishing a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly to reform global governance.

Her work has often put her at odds with powerful interests, and she and her family faced persecution and pressure to leave Ukraine. She remains active in international security and environmental advocacy.