Natalya Gorbanevskaya

Natalya Yevgenyevna Gorbanevskaya
Gorbanevskaya at the balcony of the library "Russian abroad" (Русское Зарубежье), Moscow, 19 September 2005
Native name	Наталья Евгеньевна Горбаневская
Born	(1936-05-26)May 26, 1936 Moscow, Russia
Died	November 29, 2013(2013-11-29) (aged 77) Paris, France
Nationality	Russian
Citizenship	Soviet Union,  Poland
Alma mater	Leningrad University
Occupation	Russian poet, translator of Polish literature, civil rights activist
Known for	her participation in Soviet dissident movement, the 1968 Red Square demonstration, the editing of A Chronicle of Current Events and struggle against political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union
Movement	the dissident movement in the Soviet Union

Natalya Yevgenyevna Gorbanevskaya (Russian: Ната́лья Евге́ньевна Горбане́вская; IPA: [nɐˈtalʲjə jɪvˈɡʲenʲjɪvnə ɡərbɐˈnʲɛfskəjə]; 26 May 1936, Moscow – 29 November 2013, Paris) was a Russian poet, a translator of Polish literature and a civil rights activist. She was one of the founders and the first editor of A Chronicle of Current Events (1968–1982). On 25 August 1968, with seven others, she took part in the 1968 Red Square demonstration against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1970 a Soviet court sentenced Gorbanevskaya to incarceration in a psychiatric hospital. She was released from the Kazan Special Psychiatric Hospital in 1972, and emigrated from the USSR in 1975, settling in France. In 2005, she became a citizen of Poland.

Gorbanevskaya was born in Moscow. She graduated from Leningrad University in 1964 and became a technical editor and translator. Only nine of her poems had been published in official journals by the time she quit the USSR in 1975; the rest circulated privately (samizdat) or were published abroad (tamizdat).

From 1968 onwards Gorbanevskaya was active in what was later called the Soviet "dissident movement."

She was founder and first editor of A Chronicle of Current Events, a samizdat publication that focused on the violation of basic human rights in the Soviet Union. Her contribution was to compile and edit the reports, and then type the first six carbon copies of the issue, the "zero-generation" copy, for further replication and distribution.

Gorbanevskaya was also one of eight protesters in the 25 August 1968 Red Square demonstration against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Having recently given birth, she was not immediately tried with the other demonstrators. She used this time to follow the trial in the Chronicle of Current Events, and published the accumulated documentation abroad in French and Russian (Polden). The book appeared in English in 1972 as Red Square at Noon.