Farewell Natalia Gorbanevskaya, someone I came to know at the Prague Writers’ Festival. One of 8 to stare down Soviet tanks in Red Square, upon the invasion of the Czech Republic. She paid with forced psychiatric incarceration and injections.

Czech News Story Here.

Her work, poems and features here at PWF.

[excerpt from] ‘Spring Edits, Velvet Living: Atwood, Kral and Gorbanevskya’ ONE Magazine, Scotland

That evening, Natalia Gorbanevskaya had been given the Spiros Vergos Prize for Freedom of Expression. Gorbanevskaya’s story made me sit up, and take note: on 25 August 1968, she and seven fellow Moscovites went to Red Square to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Gorbanevskaya and compatriots sat peacefully in Lobnoye Mesto with a Czech flag and signs which read “We Lost Our Best Friends”, “Hands Off the CSSR” and “For Your Freedom and Ours”. In turn they were accosted [Read more…]