Natalya Gorbanevskaya

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Natalya Gorbanevskaya (Наталья Евгеньевна Горбаневская) (born 1936) is a Russian poet and civil rights activist.

She graduated from Leningrad University in 1964 and became a technical editor and translator. Only nine of her poems have been published in official journals, the remainder being privately circulated or published abroad.

Gorbanyevskaya was one of seven protesters to demonstrate in Red Square on 5 August 1968 against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Having recently given birth she was not tried with the other demonstrators, instead continuing to protest on their behalf. She wrote an account of the trial, Noon, published abroad as Red Square at Noon.

She was arrested in December 1969 and the following April was declared to be suffering from "schizophrenia" and placed in a psychiatric prison hospital. Gorbanyevskaya was released in February 1972.

In 2005 Gorbanevskaya participated in "They Chose Freedom", a four-part television documentary on the history of the Soviet dissident movement.