15 Facts About Natalya Gorbanevskaya

Natalya Gorbanevskaya was one of the founders and the first editor of A Chronicle of Current Events.

Natalya Gorbanevskaya was released from the Kazan Special Psychiatric Hospital in 1972, and emigrated from the USSR in 1975, settling in France.

Natalya Gorbanevskaya graduated from Leningrad University in 1964 and became a technical editor and translator.

Natalya Gorbanevskaya 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.

Natalya Gorbanevskaya's 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.

Natalya Gorbanevskaya was one of eight protesters in the 25 August 1968 Red Square demonstration against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Natalya Gorbanevskaya used this time to follow the trial in the Chronicle of Current Events, and published the accumulated documentation abroad in French and Russian.

Natalya Gorbanevskaya was sentenced to indefinite confinement in a psychiatric hospital where she would be treated for "sluggish schizophrenia", a diagnosis commonly applied to dissidents.

Natalya Gorbanevskaya was released from the Kazan Special Psychiatric Hospital in February 1972.

For thirty years Natalya Gorbanevskaya was stateless until Poland granted her citizenship in 2005.

In 2005 Natalya Gorbanevskaya took part in They Chose Freedom, a four-part television documentary on the history of the Soviet dissident movement directed by Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr.

Natalya Gorbanevskaya returned there with nine other demonstrators to commemorate the protest.

On 29 November 2013, Natalya Gorbanevskaya died in her house in Paris.

On 22 October 2013 Natalya Gorbanevskaya received an honorary medal from Charles University in Prague for her lifelong commitment to the struggle for democracy, freedom and human rights.

On 27 October 2014 Natalya Gorbanevskaya was awarded posthumously the highest Slovak award, the Order of the White Double Cross, for her lifelong efforts to defend democracy and human rights.