They Chose Freedom - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

They Chose Freedom is a four-part TV documentary on the history of political dissent

Dissent

Dissent is a sentiment or philosophy of non-agreement or opposition to a prevailing idea or an entity...

in the USSR from the 1950s to the 1990s. It was produced in 2005 by Vladimir V. Kara-Murza

Vladimir V. Kara-Murza

Vladimir V. Kara-Murza is a Russian journalist, historian and politician. He studied in Great Britain at the John Lyon School in Harrow, London, and graduated with an B.A. and M.A. in History from Cambridge University...

.

The documentary tells the story of the Soviet dissident movement from its emergence in the late 1950s with the weekly public readings of banned poetry on Mayakovsky Square in Moscow. The development of 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...

, opposition demonstrations held in Moscow in 1965 and 1968, and the harsh repressions unleashed by Soviet authorities against dissenters (including forced psychiatric "treatment", prison camps and deportations), are all part of the film's narrative.

The third episode deals with events leading to the collapse of Soviet dictatorship and the democratic revolution of August 1991. The final episode is dedicated to the period after 1991; in it former dissidents discuss why the emergence of democracy in Russia proved to be short-lived, and how it was possible that a former KGB

KGB

The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

officer, Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...

, was elected to the Russian presidency.

"They Chose Freedom" is narrated primarily through the interviews of dissidents themselves. The film's participants are Vladimir Bukovsky

Vladimir Bukovsky

Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky is a leading member of the dissident movement of the 1960s and 1970s, writer, neurophysiologist, and political activist....

, Elena Bonner

Yelena Bonner

Yelena Bonner was a human rights activist in the former Soviet Union and wife of the noted physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov. During her decades as a dissident, Bonner was noted for her characteristic blunt honesty and courage.-Youth:...

, Sergei Kovalev

Sergei Kovalev

Sergei Kovalev is a Russian human rights activist and politician and a former Soviet dissident and political prisoner.- Early career and arrest :...

, Alexander Yessenin-Volpin

Alexander Esenin-Volpin

Alexander Sergeyevich Esenin-Volpin is a prominent Russian-American poet and mathematician.Born on May 12, 1924 in the former Soviet Union, he was a notable dissident, political prisoner, poet, and mathematician...

, Anatoly Sharansky

Natan Sharansky

Natan Sharansky was born in Stalino, Soviet Union on 20 January 1948 to a Jewish family. He graduated with a degree in applied mathematics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. As a child, he was a chess prodigy. He performed in simultaneous and blindfold displays, usually against...

, Yuri Feodorovich Orlov, Alexander Podrabinek, Eduard Kuznetsov

Eduard Kuznetsov

Eduard Kuznetsov is a Soviet dissident, human rights activist, and writer.In 1961, Kuznetsov was arrested for the first time and served seven years in Soviet prisons for making overtly political speeches in poetry readings at Mayakovsky Square in the centre of Moscow and for publishing samizdat...

, Pavel Litvinov

Pavel Litvinov

Pavel Litvinov is a Russian physicist, writer, human rights activist and former Soviet-era dissident. He is the grandson of Maxim Litvinov, Joseph Stalin's foreign minister during the 1930s, and as such was born and raised amongst the Soviet elite...

, Naum Korzhavin

Naum Korzhavin

Nahum Moiseyevich Korzhavin is a Russian poet of Jewish descent, a dissident and emigrant living in Boston.Korzhavin was given the Big Book National Award-2006 for his contribution into literature...

, Natalya Gorbanevskaya

Natalya Gorbanevskaya

Natalya Yevgenyevna Gorbanevskaya is a Russian poet, translator of Polish literature and civil rights activist. She is also a citizen of Poland.- Life :Gorbanevskaya graduated from Leningrad University in 1964 and became a technical editor and translator...

, Viktor Fainberg

Viktor Fainberg

Viktor Isaakovich Fainberg is a philologist, prominent figure of the dissident movement in the Soviet Union, participant of the 1968 Red Square demonstration, and fighter against punitive psychiatry....

and Vladimir Dremlyuga.

According to Vladimir Kara-Murza, the principal goal of his documentary was to show that even a small group of citizens that is prepared to defend dignity and freedom is eventually able to prevail over a totalitarian dictatorship.

"They Chose Freedom" was premiered on RTVi

RTVi

RTVi is an international Russian-language private television network, with studios based in Moscow, New York and Tel-Aviv, as well as bureaus in Washington DC, Berlin and Kiev, which broadcasts by satellite and cable in Europe, North America, Israel and CIS countries...

network in October 2005. The Russian premiere of the film was held at the Andrei Sakharov

Andrei Sakharov

Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was a Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. He earned renown as the designer of the Soviet Union's Third Idea, a codename for Soviet development of thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the...

Museum in Moscow in December 2005. In June 2006 the screening of "They Chose Freedom" was held at the Cinema House in Ekaterinburg.

In February 2007 "They Chose Freedom" was presented at a human rights seminar in Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

External links

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