Malva Noyivna Landa was born in Odesa, in what was then the Ukrainian State, amidst World War I and the Russian Civil War. Landa's family was Jewish. Her mother was a high school teacher, and her father was a professor of animal husbandry at a veterinary institute. In the autumn of 1932, her father was imprisoned and tortured in the jail of Stalingrad, and in 1938, he was executed.[3] From 1940 to 1945, she studied at the Moscow Geological Prospecting Sergo Ordzhonikidze Institute (now the Russian State Geological Prospecting University).[4] In the 1950s, she worked as a head of geological surveying party Karatau Expedition MGRI.
Dissident activities
Landa was a founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, which campaigned for the Soviet Unions to abide by its human rights commitments under the 1975 Helsinki Accords. She made the statement that the Soviet socialist system may not respect human rights and, accordingly, was not in compliance with the provisions of the Helsinki Accords. She joined the Helsinki Group to more effectively expose the situation of human rights in the Soviet Union. The group was mainly involved in the issue of political prisoners.[5]
On 26 March 1980, Landa was sentenced to five years exile under article 190-1 of the Russian SFSR criminal code, which banned the dissemination of false fabrications defaming the Soviet state and social system. She served time in the village of Dzhezdy, Dzhezkazgan Region in Kazakhstan. She remained in the Helsinki Group and returned from exile in 1984.[1]
