Yuliy Rybakov

Non-conformist artist, human rights activist, dissident, public and political figure Yuliy Rybakov was born in 1946 in Mariinsk, Kemorovo Oblast, and attended the Repin Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Leningrad without completing the study course there. He currently lives and works in St. Petersburg.

Since 1968, Rybakov changed jobs as handyman, stoker, art restorer at the Russian Museum and State Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR, designer at the Scientific Research Institute of Industrial Design, and props man at the Kirov State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet. Following the incident involving the antigovernment inscription on the wall of the Peter and Paul Fortress in 1976, Yuliy was convicted under article 70 of the Soviet Criminal Code (Anti-Soviet Campaigning and Propaganda) and sentenced to six-year imprisonment. After returning to Leningrad in 1982, Rybakov devoted his energies to political activism, initiating the founding of the first Soviet Human Rights Commission and serving many years as the Russian State Duma deputy.