Henrikh Altunian was born on 24 November 1933 in
Tbilisi,
Georgian SSR, to an
Armenian family. His father was a military serviceman. In 1944 the family moved to
Kharkiv, where Henrikh entered the local aviation engineering high school in 1951. After graduating in 1956, Altunian spent four years serving as a military engineer at an
army base in
Uzyn, before returning to work as a teacher in Kharkiv. Altunian's dissident activities started in 1964, when he voiced his distrust in the new
Communist Party leadership at a meeting of his
chair's party cell. Due to his connections to members of the dissident movement, as well as his participation in publicizing of an address to state authorities by
Andrei Sakharov, in 1968 Altunian got demoted from the rank of
major, was relieved from his military position and lost his membership in the Communist Party. During the following months he worked as an engineer in Kharkiv. In 1969 Altunian entered the
Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR. As member of the group, he signed several petitions in defense of
Crimean Tatars and co-authored an address to the
United Nations. After signing a letter against the
forced psychiatric treatment of general
Petro Hryhorenko, in 1969 he was arrested and imprisoned for 3 years at a
labour camp in
Krasnoyarsk Krai. After his release, he worked as a
locksmith in Kharkiv. In 1980 Altunian was arrested for a second time, with prohibited literature, including a copy of
Alexander Solzhenitsyn's
Gulag Archipelago, being discovered in his residence. In 1981 Kharkiv Regional Court sentenced him to 7 years of labour camps and 5 years of exile. He spent the following years in
Kuchino Camp in
Perm Oblast, being later transferred to
Chistopol Prison in
Tatar ASSR and Barashevo in
Mordovian ASSR. Under pressure from the international community, in 1987 authorities were forced to release and
pardon Altunian, despite him never acknowledging any guilt. Following his release, Altunian returned to his job as a locksmith. In 1990 he was officially rehabilitated, and during the same year was appointed head of Kharkiv City People's Control Committee. In March 1990 Altunian was
elected member of the
Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as an
independent politician. In parliament he joined the
People's Council and headed the Kharkiv regional organization of the
People's Movement of Ukraine. Altunian was also a co-founder of the Kharkiv branch of
Memorial and headed the Kharkiv Banking Congress. As a deputy, he worked on the adoption of the law "On Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Repression". Altunian was a candidate during the
1994 Ukrainian parliamentary election, but failed to get reelected. During the
Orange Revolution in 2004 Altunian became a member of the National Salvation Committee and organized demonstrations in support of
Viktor Yushchenko in Kharkiv. ==Personal life and death==