On 25 August 1968, seven people unfurled banners in Red Square against the invasion of Czechoslovakia; she was one of them. Released because she had just given birth, arrested the following year and confined to a psychiatric hospital, she had co-founded the first underground journal documenting rights violations in the USSR.
The story
On 25 August 1968, seven people demonstrated on Red Square in Moscow against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. They were carried off within minutes. Natalia Gorbanevskaya, who had just given birth, was released; she was arrested in December 1969, tried, and committed to the special psychiatric hospital at Kazan — a method then commonly used against Soviet dissidents. She did not come out until February 1972.
Born in Moscow on 26 May 1936, she had co-founded the Chronicle of Current Events, a clandestine review and the first systematic attempt to document rights violations in the USSR. In December 1975, stripped of her Soviet nationality, she left the USSR and settled in Paris.
A translator of Polish literature, stateless for thirty years before obtaining Polish citizenship in 2005, she was deputy editor-in-chief of the review Kontinent and a journalist on the paper Russkaya Mysl from the early 1980s to 2003. She died in Paris on 29 November 2013.
The stone in Division 80 carries two names, hers and that of Natalya Dioujeva, each given twice — in Latin characters, then in Cyrillic. Neither Red Square, nor the hospital, nor the reviews: only the names, in both alphabets.
The grave
A bilingual inscription, where each name is given twice — in Latin letters, then in Cyrillic: “NATALYA DIOUJEVA 1949-1990 Ната́лья Дюжева. NATALYA GORBANEVSKAYA 1936-2013 Ната́лья Горбане́вская.” Two Russian women, one of whom died in exile twenty-three years after the other. Nothing of Red Square, nothing of the psychiatric hospital, nothing of the underground journals: only the names, in both alphabets.
On site, do not miss
A bilingual inscription: each name in Latin letters, then in Cyrillic — “Ната́лья Горбане́вская”. The name of Natalya Dioujeva precedes hers.
Visitors' questions
Where is Natalya Gorbanevskaya's grave?
In Division 80, avenue Circulaire, second row. The inscription is bilingual: every name appears in Latin letters and then in Cyrillic — “Ната́лья Горбане́вская”. She died in Paris on 29 November 2013, thirty-eight years after finding asylum there.
Henri CurielWhat happened on 25 August 1968?
Seven dissidents demonstrated on Red Square in Moscow against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. She was one of them, there with her baby in a pram and a banner: “For your freedom and for ours”. Arrested in 1969, she was confined in the special psychiatric hospital at Kazan until 1972.
Nestor MakhnoWhat was the Chronicle of Current Events?
The underground journal she co-founded in 1968 and first edited: typed on a typewriter and copied through carbon paper, it was the first systematic attempt to document violations of rights in the USSR. It ran until 1982 — seven years after its founder left, granted political asylum in France in December 1975.
Adolfo KaminskyWho rests with her?
Natalya Dioujeva (1949-1990), a journalist and deputy editor of the Paris Russian weekly La Pensée russe, whose name precedes hers on the stone, in Latin letters and then in Cyrillic. Gorbanevskaya wrote for the paper from the early 1980s to 2003, after serving as deputy editor of Kontinent. She had taken Polish citizenship in 2005.
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