Natalya Gorbanevskaya - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Natalya Yevgenyevna Gorbanevskaya is a Russian poet, translator of Polish literature

Polish literature

Polish literature is the literary tradition of Poland. Most Polish literature has been written in the Polish language, though other languages, used in Poland over the centuries, have also contributed to Polish literary traditions, including Yiddish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, German and...

and civil rights

Civil rights

Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...

activist. She is also a citizen of Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

Life

Gorbanevskaya graduated from Leningrad University in 1964 and became a technical editor

Technical writer

A technical writer is a professional writer who designs, creates, and maintains technical documentation...

and translator. Only nine of her poems have been published in official journals, the remainder being privately circulated or published abroad.

Gorbanevskaya was active in what later came to be called the Soviet "dissident movement." She and Liudmila Alexeyeva began publishing the Chronicle of Current Events

Chronicle of Current Events

The information bulletin Chronicle of Current Events was one of the longest-running and best-known samizdat periodicals in the USSR dedicated to the defense of human rights...

, a samizdat

Samizdat

Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...

publication that focused on human rights in the Soviet Union. Gorbanevskaya was also one of eight protesters to demonstrate in Red Square

Red Square

Red Square is a city square in Moscow, Russia. The square separates the Kremlin, the former royal citadel and currently the official residence of the President of Russia, from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod...

on 25 August 1968 against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

(see 1968 Red Square demonstration

1968 Red Square demonstration

The 1968 Red Square demonstration took place on August 25, 1968 at Red Square, Moscow, Soviet Union, to protest the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, that occurred during the night of 20–21 August 1968, crushing the so-called Prague spring, a set of...

). Having recently given birth she was not immediately tried with the other demonstrators. She used this time to publicly follow the trial in the Chronicle of Current Events, and later published the related documents as the collection Noon (published abroad as Red Square at Noon). However, she was arrested in December, 1969 and imprisoned in a Soviet psychiatric prison

Psikhushka

In the Soviet Union, systematic political abuse of psychiatry took place. Soviet psychiatric hospitals were used by the authorities as prisons in order to isolate hundreds or thousands of political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally...

until February, 1972.

In December, 1975, Gorbanevskaya emigrated, and now lives in Paris.
Joan Baez

Joan Baez

Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....

released a song dedicated to Gorbanevskaya called "Natalia", with lyrics by Shusha Guppy, on the live album From Every Stage
From Every Stage
From Every Stage is a live double album recorded by Joan Baez on tour in the summer of 1975. The album includes live versions of songs from her then current album, Diamonds & Rust, as well as previous and original work...

(1976). Introducing the song, Baez criticized Gorbanevskaya's internment in the psychiatric hospital and said: "It is because of people like Natalya Gorbanevskaya, I am convinced, that you and I are still alive and walking around on the face of the earth."

In 2005 Gorbanevskaya participated in "They Chose Freedom

They Chose Freedom

They Chose Freedom is a four-part TV documentary on the history of political dissent in the USSR from the 1950s to the 1990s. It was produced in 2005 by Vladimir V...

", a four-part television documentary on the history of the Soviet dissident movement.

In 2008, October, Gorbanevskaya received the Award of Marie Curie.

The same year, Gorbanevskaya was scheduled for the Angelus Central European Literature Award.

She is a signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism

Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism

The Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism , which was signed on 3 June 2008, was a declaration signed by prominent European politicians, former political prisoners and historians, including past signatories of Charter 77 such as Václav Havel, which called for condemnation of and...

Books and other publications

Gorbanevskaya, Natalya, Poems, Carcanet Press, 1972, ISBN 0-85635-002-8

Life

Books and other publications

See also

Links in English

Links in Russian