The Protest
The protest began at noon as eight protesters (Larisa Bogoraz, Konstantin Babitsky, Vadim Delaunay, Vladimir Dremliuga, Pavel Litvinov, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Viktor Fainberg, and Tatiana Baeva) sat at the Lobnoye Mesto and held a small Czechoslovak flag and banners with various slogans, including:
- "We are losing our best friends" («мы теряем лучших друзей»),
- "Ať žije svobodné a nezávislé Československo!" (Long live free and independent Czechoslovakia),
- "Shame to the occupiers" («Позор оккупантам!»),
- "Hands off the ČSSR" («Руки прочь от ЧССР!»),
- "For your freedom and ours" («За вашу и нашу свободу!»),
- "Freedom for Dubchek" («Свободу Дубчеку!»).
Within a few minutes, seven protesters were assaulted and loaded into cars by KGB operatives. The Czechoslovak flag was broken, and the banners were confiscated. Since Natalya Gorbanevskaya had recently given birth, she was not made to stand trial. The other protesters convinced 21-year old Tatiana Baeva to declare that she had been at the scene by accident, and she was released soon after.
The KGB failed to find out which protester was holding which banner; therefore, all the banners were attributed to each protester, except for Tatiana Baeva, who was released. The banners were branded by the KGB as "anti-Soviet".
Read more about this topic: 1968 Red Square Demonstration
Famous quotes containing the word protest:
“The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behoves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c’est l’homme, what is likely to happen if l’homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?”
—Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944)
“[University students] hated the hypocrisy of adult society, the rigidity of its political institutions, the impersonality of its bureaucracies. They sought to create a society that places human values before materialistic ones, that has a little less head and a little more heart, that is dominated by self-interest and loves its neighbor more. And they were persuaded that group protest of a militant nature would advance those goals.”
—Muriel Beadle (b. 1915)