Gorbanevskaya Natalia passed away suddenly - November 30, 2013. Her funeral in Paris gathered a huge number of people, including representatives of several European countries. Only the Russian government was not represented by anyone.
Natalia Gorbanevskaya: biography of the national heroine
In December 1969, Natalia Gorbanevskaya, born in 1936, was arrested. The talented poet Natalia Gorbanevskaya in 1963 graduated from the philological faculty of Leningrad State University. She is a participant in a sit-down demonstration on Red Square on August 25, 1968 against the entry of troops into Czechoslovakia, the author of the book “Noon”, which tells the truth about this action. Natalia is a member of the initiative group for the protection of civil rights in the USSR. She is one of the initiators of the creation and the first editor of the Chronicle of Current Events, the mother of two children.
Discarded poetry
She was 17 years old when Stalin died in March 1956. Already after the 20th Communist Party Congress, at which the cult of Joseph Vissarionovich was debunked, Natalya expected changes. But they did not follow, only a large number of prisoners were released. And then there was the suppression of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 and it became clear that nothing will change. Some of the lines written by Natalia Gorbanevskaya, poems dedicated to Hungary, were not published anywhere:
Siskins sing the dawn.
But why do owls fly like in the dark
Throwing gray wings?
Ah, that miserable light from fluorescent lamps!
Someone hid the sun.
It all started with samizdat
In 1955, Natalia Gorbanevskaya’s company consisted of poets Leonid Chertnov, Stanislav Krasovitsky and Valentin Khromov. With them it was possible to conduct open and free dialogues. But Natalia fell into a poetic environment when she began to write herself and propagate samizdat. Typewriters were then at the units, so everything corresponded by hand. Natalia got her typewriter from her mother so she could write a diploma.
Having once visited Anna Andreevna Akhmatova, Natalia Gorbanevskaya copied the poem Requiem by hand (the original of the poem published in the samizdat, printed by N. Gorbanevskaya, is stored in the Memorial archive), then it was reprinted by someone in several copies and handed out to people. I handed out with a request to return not only its copy. But also attach one more. And distributed over a hundred copies ....
"Noon"
In August 1968, a request was made from the Czechoslovak Republic for emergency assistance, including army assistance, in view of the threat to the existing socialist system within the country.
The most decisive action against the aggression of Czechoslovakia was a speech by Natalia Gorbanevskaya. It was a sitting demonstration with banners and flags. That day, Natalya was with her 3-month-old son Joseph at the demonstration.
At the house of Gorbanevskaya Natalia, samizdat was lying under the bed. The first search in her apartment was carried out immediately after the demonstration, having seized the entire stock of samizdat. And the second search was carried out on the day of her departure to Pavel Litvinov in Usugli and Larisa Bogoraz in Chuny. People who searched Natalya rightly believed that she would be lucky for her friends to collect the samizdat accumulated during this time. From the memoirs of Natalia herself: “I had a large backpack and bag. And I put almost the whole samizdat in a bag, and a little fit in my backpack. And when they came to search me, they first searched the backpack, and then decided to inspect the sofa. The bag was put on the floor. They didn’t find anything in the sofa, so they moved to the large room where my mother and children lived. Lyuba Alekseeva, who was in my search, put the bag back on the sofa and threw some dress on it. And thanks to her, this whole bag with samizdat survived. ”
On December 25, 1969, Natalia Gorbanevskaya was arrested. The main points of accusation were “the written book“ Midday ”and“ the systematic introduction of changes to the issues of the “Chronicle of Current Events”. Received the status of "insane" and was sent for compulsory treatment.
In 1972, emigration to the USSR was in full swing, but Natalya Gorbanevskaya, who left, decided not to leave the USSR anywhere. “I was not going to go anywhere. I was going to live quietly, calmly and completely secretly to do something that I can. "
In 1974, there was an arrest, and then the deportation of A. Solzhenitsyn. Natalia Gorbanevskaya: “After the arrest, I was in Solzhenitsyn’s apartment, as was Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov. The apartment had a large number of people. Then Andrei Dmitrievich phoned and said some text, and we all who were there in a circle, as if signed this text. So the first time I spoke in public. Then she later signed a letter in defense of Leonid Plyushch, who was on special treatment in Dnepropetrovsk. I could not help but sign such a letter, because it was treated much harder than me in Kazan. Then the realization came that if I still sign something third, I won’t get out of it anymore. ”
“So that you don’t be ashamed in front of your children ...”
At the end of 1975, Gorbanevskaya Natalya left her USSR with her two sons and emigrated to France.
During interrogations, the investigator once asked Natalya why she had participated in the demonstration, and received the answer: “So that the children would not be ashamed. I’m not saying that everyone should have done so, but I could only cope with this shame. ”