Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick, also known under her pen name and

virtual worlds A virtual world (also called a virtual space) is a computer-simulated environment which may be populated by many users who can create a personal avatar, and simultaneously and independently explore the virtual world, participate in its activities ...

pseudonym "Prokofy Neva", is a former

human rights activist A human rights defender or human rights activist is a person who, individually or with others, acts to promote or protect human rights. They can be journalists, environmentalists, whistleblowers, trade unionists, lawyers, teachers, housing cam ...

, Russian–English translator, former journalist, and a blogger and commentator. She has worked for several human rights NGOs, and is a former research director at

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...

, the former editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's radio magazine "(Un)Civil Societies," and the former Executive Director and Chief Representative to the United Nations of the

International League for Human Rights The International League for Human Rights (ILHR) is a human rights organization with headquarters in New York City. Claiming to be the oldest human rights organization in the United States, the ILHR defines its mission as "defending human right ...

. She has written on psychiatric abuse in the Soviet Union. She has translated 30 Russian books by authors such as

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...

Boris Yeltsin Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin ( rus, Борис Николаевич Ельцин, p=bɐˈrʲis nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈjelʲtsɨn, a=Ru-Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.ogg; 1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician wh ...

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...

, and several Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, USSR Politburo members.

Education

She studied Slavic studies at St. Michael's College, Toronto, St. Michael's College, University of Toronto from 1974 to 1978, and area studies at Leningrad State University from 1978 to 1979.

Professional career

She has worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, where she was the editor of the weekly radio magazine "(Un)Civil Societies" from 2003 She has been the Executive Director of the

, the program director for the former Soviet countries, as well as the UN representative of the International League for Human Rights. She was research director for Helsinki Watch/

' European and Central Asian Division from 1981 to 1990. She was a member of the advisory board of Civil Society International. Fitzpatrick is currently a blogger and translator specializing in human rights issues in the former Soviet Union.

Involvement in Second Life

Catherine Fitzpatrick has also been involved with virtual worlds for several years. She was a resident of the city of Alphaville in The Sims Online, under the avatar name "Dyerbrook". Since 2004, she has been a resident of Second Life, under the avatar name "Prokofy Neva". Her endeavours in Second Life have been mentioned in ''The New York Times'' and ''Wired (magazine), Wired''.

Criticism of Mitt Romney's digital campaign team

Following President Barack Obama's reelection in November 2012, Fitzpatrick penned an entry on her own blog in which she alleged that Republican challenger Mitt Romney's Mitt Romney presidential campaign, 2012, campaign's ORCA (computer system), "ORCA" digital operation had failed because Targeted Victory, the company responsible for much of its online and digital strategy had employed African-American developers who she alleged to have favored the Obama campaign and whose politics was deliberately reflected as bugs left in their work—a hypothesis she based in part on the fact that the developers belonged to ethnic minorities statistically more likely to support Obama, and that one of them had previously been a developer for Al Gore. She later updated her blog to note that the developers in question had not worked on the ORCA project, but on other digital media-related areas of the campaign. Fitzpatrick is a registered member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party.

Selected publications

*Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, ''Moscow's independent peace movement'', U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, 1982 *Mary Jane Camejo & Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, ''Violations of the Helsinki accords, Yugoslavia'', Helsinki Watch report, Human Rights Watch, 1986, , *Ludmila Alekseeva & Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, ''Nyeformaly: Civil society in the USSR'', Helsinki Watch report, 1990, , *Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, ''USSR: human rights under glasnost'', Human Rights Watch, 1989 *Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, ''Psychiatric Abuse in the Soviet Union'', Human Rights Watch, 1990, ,

Selected translations

* Tatiana Mamonova (ed.), ''Women and Russia : feminist writings from the Soviet Union'', Beacon Press, 1984, trans. by Rebecca Park and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, , *Leo Timofeyev, ''Russia's Secret Rulers'', Alfred A. Knopf, 1992, trans. by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick *Alexander Yakovlev (Russian politician), Alexander Yakovlev, translated by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, ''The Fate of Marxism in Russia'', Yale University Press (1993), hardcover, ; trade paperback, Lightning Source, UK, Ltd. (17 November 2004) *Yevgenia Albats, ''The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia—Past, Present, and Future'', Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1994, trans. by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick *

, ''The Struggle for Russia'', Random House, 1994, trans. by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick *Michael Scammell (ed.), ''The Solzhenitsyn Files'', IL Edition Q, 1995, trans. by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick *Vladimir Solovyov and Elena Klepikova
''Zhirinovsky: The Paradoxes of Russian Fascism''
London : Viking, 1995, *Yegor Ligachyov, Yegor Ligachev, ''Inside Gorbachev's Kremlin: The Memoirs of Yegor Ligachev'', trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, Michele A. Berdy, Dobrochna Dyrcz-Freeman, and Marian Schwartz (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996) *''The unknown Lenin'', Yale University Press, 1996, trans. by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, , *''First person: an astonishingly frank self-portrait by Russia's president'', PublicAffairs, 2000, trans. by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, ,

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fitzpatrick, Catherine Russian–English translators American human rights activists Women human rights activists Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty people American expatriates in the Soviet Union American expatriates in Russia Saint Petersburg State University alumni 1956 births Living people University of Toronto alumni 20th-century American translators 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women