![]() Source: HRO.org (info) Natalya Evgenievna Gorbanevskaya (1936-2013) has departed this world. She was a Russian poet, translator, human rights defender, participant in the dissident movement in the USSR, and first editor of the uncensored bulletin of the human rights movement Chronicle of Current Events. Until the last days of her life Natalya Evgenievna fought for the liberation of today’s Russian political prisoners. The memory of this wonderful person will always be with us. Song by Joan Baez about Natalya Gorbanevskaya Photos by HRO.org, dedicated to Natalya Evgenievna Gorbanevskaya To see the photos online, click HERE
![]() In 1964 Natalya Gorbanevskaya graduated from Leningrad University, specializing in ‘philology, teaching Russian language and literature’. She worked in Moscow as a librarian, a bibliographer, and a translator of scientific texts. She was initiator, author, editor and typist of the first issue of the samizdat bulletin Chronicle of Current Events. Natalya Gorbanevskaya took part in the famous demonstration on Red Square in Moscow on 25 August 1968 against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet forces. She was arrested on 24 December 1969. In April 1970 the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry gave her a diagnosis of ‘chronic schizophrenia’ without mention in the clinical protocol by the psychiatric experts any psychopathologies that would have been grounds for hospitalisation. She was sent for forced treatment in a prison-type psychiatric hospital, where she remained until 22 February 1972. In 1973 Shusha Guppy dedicated her song Natalia to her. The song was later made popular by Joan Baez and was included in the album, From every stage (1976). In 1971 Gorbanevskaya published an article Free Medical Assistance about the abuse of psychiatry in the USSR written in March 1968 for the book Punished by Madness. ![]() In 2005 Natalya Gorbanevskaya became a citizen of Poland. She is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, and published translations from Polish, Czech, Slovak and French. On 23 October 2008 Natalya Gorbanevskaya was given an honorary doctorate by the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. The poetry of Natalya Gorbanevskaya has been translated into English by Gerald Smtih and Daniel Weissbort, into Polish by Wiktor Woroszylski, Stanisław Barańczak, Adam Pomorski, into German by Kai Borovsky, into French by Véronique Schiltz, Georges Nivat, and Christine Zeytounian-Belous, into Czech by Milan Dvořák, and into Ukrainian by Valeria Boguslavskaya. * * * For another broadcast interview with Natalia Gorbanevskaya see HERE. |
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