Gorbanevskaya Natalia: "So that it would not be ashamed before the children"

Natalia Gorbanevskaya died suddenly - on 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: the biography of the national heroine

In December 1969 Natalia Gorbanevskaya, born in 1936, was arrested. Talented poet Natalia Gorbanevskaya in 1963 graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Leningrad State University. She participated in a sit-down demonstration on Red Square on August 25, 1968, against the introduction of troops into Czechoslovakia, the author of the book "Noon", where the truth about this action is told. 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, a mother of two.

Abandoned poetry

She was 17 years old, when in March 1956 Stalin died. Even after the XX Congress of the Communist Party, on which the cult of Joseph Vissarionovich was debunked, Natalia 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 would change. Some of the lines that Natalia Gorbanevskaya wrote, poems dedicated to Hungary, were not published anywhere:

Chizhi is singing the dawn.

But why do owls fly, as in the dark,

Spreading the grayness of the wings?

Ah, that pathetic light from fluorescent lighting!

And someone hid the sun.

It all started with samizdat

In 1955 the company of Natalia Gorbanevskaya consisted of poets Leonid Chertnov, Stanislav Krasovitsky and Valentin Khromov. With them it was possible to conduct open and free dialogues. And Natalia got into a poetic environment when she began to write herself and multiply samizdat. The typewriters were then in units, so everything was written by hand. Natalia got her typewriter from her mother so she could write a diploma.

Having once visited Anna Annaevna Akhmatova, Gorbanevskaya Natalia handwritten a poem "Requiem" (in the archive of the "Memorial" society the original of the edition of the poem in samizdat printed by N. Gorbanevskaya is kept), then someone reprinted it in several copies and distributed it People. I distributed with the request to return not only her copy. But also attach one more. And distributed more than a hundred copies ....

"Noon"

In August 1968, a request was made from the Czechoslovak Republic for urgent assistance, including assistance to the army, because of the threat to the existing socialist system within the country.

The most decisive actions directed against the aggression of Czechoslovakia were a speech by Natalia Gorbanevskaya. It was a sit-down demonstration with banners and flags. On that day Natalia was at the demonstration with her 3-month-old son, Joseph.

At home under Gorbanevskaya Natalia, samizdat lay under the bed. The first search in her apartment was carried out immediately after the demonstration, having withdrawn 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. The people who searched Natalia rightly believed that she would be lucky with the friends gained by samizdat during this time. From the memoirs of Natalia herself: "I had a big backpack and a bag. And almost all the samizdat I put in my bag, and in the backpack fit a little. And when they came to search me, they searched the backpack first, and then they decided to inspect the sofa. The bag was put on the floor. The couch did not find anything, so they moved to the big room where my mother and children lived. Luba Alekseeva, who was in my apartment, put the bag back on the sofa and threw a dress on her. And thanks to her all this bag with samizdat survived. "

On December 25, 1969 Natalia Gorbanevskaya was arrested. The main points of the accusation were "a written book" Noon "and" systematic introduction of changes to the issues of "The Chronicle of Current Events". Received the status of "insane" and was sent to compulsory treatment.

In 1972, emigration to the USSR is in full swing, but Natalia's Natalia Gorbanevskaya decides not to leave the USSR. "I did not intend to go anywhere. I was going to live quietly, calmly and absolutely secretly doing something that I can. "

In 1974 there was an arrest, and then the expulsion of A. Solzhenitsyn. Natalia Gorbanevskaya: "After my arrest, I was in Solzhenitsyn's apartment, just like Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov. The apartment had a large number of people. Then Andrei Dmitrievich rang the phone and said some text, and we all who were there in a circle, as if this text were signed. This is how I made my first public appearance. Then she later signed a letter in defense of Leonid Ivy, who was at a special treatment in Dnepropetrovsk. I could not but sign such a letter, because he was treated much harder than me in Kazan. Then came the realization that if I sign something else, I will not get out any more. "

"That there was no shame in front of their children ..."

In late 1975, Natalia Gorbanevskaya, along with her two sons, left the USSR and emigrated to France.

During interrogations, the investigator once asked Natalya why she participated in the demonstration, and received in response: "That the children were not ashamed. I'm not saying that everyone should have done this, but with this shame, I could do it just this way. "