Life
Gorbanevskaya graduated from Leningrad University in 1964 and became a technical editor 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, a samizdat publication that focused on human rights in the Soviet Union. Gorbanevskaya was also one of eight protesters to demonstrate in Red Square on 25 August 1968 against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (see 1968 Red Square demonstration). 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 until February, 1972.
In December, 1975, Gorbanevskaya emigrated, and now lives in Paris. She was stateless for three decades until Poland granted her Polish citizenship in 2005.
Joan Baez released a song dedicated to Gorbanevskaya called "Natalia", with lyrics by Shusha Guppy, on the live album From Every Stage (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." Shusha Guppy herself also recorded it; it was included in her 1974 album "Shusha."
In 2005 Gorbanevskaya participated in "They Chose Freedom", 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.
Read more about this topic: Natalya Gorbanevskaya
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