Former Soviet dissident Valeriya Novodvarskaya dies in Moscow, aged 64

Former Soviet dissident and Russian opposition figure Valeriya Novodvorskaya has died in Moscow at the age of 64, Ekho Moskvy cites Deputy Mayor of Moscow Leonid Pechatnikov as saying.

Valeriya Novodvorskaya was the founder and the chairwoman of the "Democratic Union" party, and a member of the editorial board of The New Times independent magazine.

Novodvorskaya has been active in the Soviet dissident movement since her youth, and first imprisoned by the Soviet authorities in 1969 for distributing leaflets that criticized the Soviet invasion in Czechoslovakia.

Novodvorskaya stood as a candidate for the radical liberal party Democratic Union in the 1993 Russian legislative election in a single-mandate district as part of the Russia's Choice bloc, and she also contested the 1995 Russian legislative election on the list of the Party of Economic Freedom. She was not elected in either election, and hasn't yet held public office.

Novodvorskaya self-identified as a democratic and liberal politician. She also sometimes called herself and her allies successors to the Russian White movement tradition. She had been openly critical of Russian government policies, including the Chechen Wars, the domestic policies of Vladimir Putin and the alleged rebirth of Soviet propaganda in Russia.