A year after the death of the Russian poetess and human rights activist Natalya Gorbanevskaya, a book of memoirs dedicated to her was published. The idea of the book, composed of fragments of interviews and memoirs, belongs to Natalya Gorbanevskaya’s friend, the winner of many literary awards, Lyudmila Ulitskaya.
Psychologies: Who was Natalya Gorbanevskaya for you?
Ludmila Ulitskaya: Natasha has been my close friend since my early youth. I always knew that she was a person of a very large scale, original, complex, sometimes with childish reactions. I loved her — and love always distorts the picture. In my eyes, she was and will remain a good poet and a person with a pure heart.
In your preface, you write that Gorbanevskaya’s feat is not limited to the fact that she went to Red Square in August 1968, protesting against the introduction of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia. What else in her life do you feel as a feat?
Well, she herself considered the Chronicle of Current Events (a samizdat human rights bulletin edited by Gorbanevskaya. — Ed.) to be her main feat. Natasha accomplished a feat in private life — to gather a family in circumstances where no one but her could do this.
Why is “gathering a family” a feat? What is heroic about this?
Natasha’s case is one of the important examples for me of organizing a family in the case when there are children, but no marriage. She raised children without fathers, refused help, and this is her right. And when illegitimate children were born to her sons, she «great» them. She loved these children no less than those grandchildren who were born later, already married, and it was (and is) a wonderful family, and it was a great holiday for everyone when all the grandchildren managed to get together. And Natasha’s great victory over universal prejudices.