Valeria Novodvorskaya. The dangerous legacy of Novodvorskaya Valeria Novodvorskaya father Burshtyn Ilya Borukhovich

At the beginning of April this year, 2015, a friend, New York poetess Irina Aks, called me:

- Rachel! Do you know that Valeria Novodvorskaya’s own father lives in America? He never gave an interview to anyone about his daughter. After her death, he withdrew into himself... A very interesting person, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, an active participant in our poetry evenings. And he is ready to meet with you, wants to talk about Valeria Ilyinichna.

It was difficult to refuse such an unexpected but tempting offer. Fortunately, friends from the original song club “Blue Trolleybus” kindly took me to visit Ilya Borisovich Burshtyn and his wife Lydia Nikolaevna, who live in the neighboring state of New Jersey. Burshtyn is real name father of Valeria Ilyinichna Novodvorskaya.

He greeted me warmly, showed me the books donated by his daughter, and led me into a cozy, bright kitchen-dining room. And we talked with him very cordially for two hours, which thanks interesting interlocutor flew by completely unnoticed for me.

- Ilya Borisovich, how did you meet Valeria’s mother?

Nina Feodorovna's father - a hereditary nobleman, a very nice man Fyodor Novodvorsky - lived in Moscow. Nina came to him from Belarus, where she lived with her mother, and entered the First Medical Institute, where my friend studied. After demobilization in 1947, I entered the radiophysics department of the Moscow Energy Institute. This is how we met Nina Fedorovna and got married in Moscow. And to give birth, Nina went to her mother in Baranovichi, while pregnant - she was almost taken off the train, but she got home and a few hours later gave birth to a daughter.

It was May 17, 1950. My wife and I were expecting a son, but a girl was born - okay, healthy - and that’s good. Soon I passed the summer exams and also came to Belarus to visit my family and held my daughter in my arms for the first time. At the end of August, my wife and I left Lera with my grandmother and went to Moscow. I continued to study, and Nina went to work. She was a pediatrician and later worked at the Moscow Health Department.

We visited our daughter twice a year. Lera’s grandmother loved her very much and devoted a lot of effort to her upbringing. Her name was Marya Vladimirovna, she was strict, but she was disposed towards me, she trusted me to walk with Lera, to take my daughter sledding in the winter. After Nina Fedorovna and I divorced in 1967, Marya Vladimirovna moved to Moscow and lived with her daughter and granddaughter. I visited them and we talked for a long time. She lived a long, honorable life and died when I was already living in America.

- Why did Valeria Ilyinichna bear her mother’s surname?

Such is the time... Jewish surnames were unpopular. The Case of the Doctors-Poisoners was already gaining momentum, which in the investigation materials bore a frank title: “The Case of the Zionist Conspiracy in the MGB.” The flywheel of the “Case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee” was spinning up, especially after the murder of Mikhoels on the orders of Stalin in 1948. Relations between the USSR and the newly formed state of Israel were very cool - the reaction of Soviet Jews to Golda Meer's visit to Moscow was too enthusiastic. Stalin made his tricky plans for the resettlement of all Jews of the USSR to the Far East.

- Is Burshtyn a Jewish surname? More likely Polish...

That's right. My parents - Sonya and Borukh - were from Poland; they came to Moscow from Warsaw in 1918. Then they wanted to return, but the Poles organized their own independent state and the parents stayed in Soviet Russia. My older sister and brother were born in Warsaw, and this “questionnaire” fact really bothered them later, although at the time of their birth Poland was part of Russian Empire. I didn’t know my grandparents - they died in the Warsaw ghetto. I only remember how I went to the post office with my father before the war, sent them parcels - already in the ghetto...

I have never hidden my Jewishness. The documents always stated: Ilya Borisovich Burshtyn. And it’s the same on the military ID. As a child, I didn’t know what my last name meant. Already working, I went on a business trip to Vilnius (there were many Poles there then) and heard a phrase that surprised me:

- How much is this burshtyn of yours?

It turned out that in translation from Polish “burshtyn” means “amber”.

- "Gift of the Sun"?

I prefer the name “tears of the sea”...

- Ilya Borisovich, how did you get to the front?

In July 1941 he joined the army as a volunteer. He was a signalman, that’s why he survived. Now I’m reading about the misadventures of the infantry during that war, and I’m even somehow ashamed to highlight my military merits. The infantry, of course, had it a hundred times harder.

-Where did you end the war?

He fought on the Third Belorussian Front, ended the war in Köninsberg (Ilya Borisovich modestly keeps silent about his participation in the storming of the city and being awarded a military order).

- Were you wounded?

No. There were no injuries, and he was not taken prisoner. The Lord protected me. I don’t know - Jewish or Russian, but He kept me.

“Ilya Borisovich, we all have one God, he has no nationality,” I smile.

Do you really think so, Rachel? - my interlocutor is surprised

Of course, Ilya Borisovich. I understand why you're asking me this, but for now let's get back to military theme. After the war, did you immediately demobilize?

If only... Almost two years after the end of hostilities he served in Rzhev. I was an ordinary signalman, but already at the division headquarters, demobilized in the fall of 1947. My education allowed me to enter the newly organized Institute of International Relations. I saw an advertisement for recruitment at MGIMO and went to the chief of staff with a request to send me to study. He answered sharply: “You are not eligible for enrollment in this institute.” I hadn’t heard much about national quotas for those entering college, and I didn’t understand why, what was the matter? I realized it later - while processing orders at headquarters, I came across a “neat” phrase: “send to special-purpose units only persons whose nationality corresponds to the republics of the USSR.” Alas, Birobidzhan was only the capital of the Jewish Autonomous Region. Therefore, after demobilization, I immediately entered the Moscow Power Engineering Institute - Jews were accepted there. After graduation, he worked as an engineer.

(Author’s note. Here Ilya Borisovich again, out of modesty, supports the official version set out on Wikipedia. In fact, he headed the electronics department at a large Moscow research institute that worked for the defense industry - he participated in the development Russian systems air defense. And in response to my request to be photographed in a jacket with order bars, Ilya Borisovich only winced: “Why? Just to show off? Is the price of Soviet orders and medals high now? Moreover, the State Duma of Russia plans to deprive the right to veteran’s service earned in battles with Nazi Germany.” the pension of those participants in the Great Patriotic War who emigrated from Russia. I don’t know whether this is true or idle speculation...)

Valeria's adolescence. Romantic rebel.

In Moscow, we lived in the VDNKh area,” Ilya Borisovich continues his fascinating story. - Our family was intelligent, but Lera went to an ordinary, proletarian school. I didn’t like it, several times I suggested that my wife transfer Lera to a good school in the center of Moscow, but Nina Fedorovna was against elitist education. I recently read the memoirs of Vertinsky’s daughter about how her parents sent her and her sister for the summer to pioneer camp. It’s an interesting thing: well-bred girls returned home with lice and learned to use obscene language,” my interlocutor, wise with worldly experience, chuckles good-naturedly.

Lera was an excellent student. Not the only one in the class: we must pay tribute, among the proletarians there were also excellent students. The daughter grew up independent and independent, mature beyond her years. We got along with her good relationship, friendly and trusting. Of course, she could not help but notice the critical remarks about the authorities and the party system that Nina Fedorovna and I allowed ourselves to express at home. I gave my daughter Solzhenitsyn’s story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” to read. Lera was not yet thirteen, but, surprisingly, she perceived everything correctly. Since childhood, she was a romantic person, a rebel, even at school she organized some kind of strikes. At one time I admired Cuba and Vietnam. She went to the district Komsomol committee and asked to be sent to the Vietnam War as a fighter. They refused her and sent her home with instructions to come back when she learned to shoot. Imagine, for a whole year she rose before dawn on Sundays and went to the shooting range. She never learned, given her nearsightedness...

Fearless, but not reckless.

Lera was seventeen years old when I told her about my decision to divorce Nina Fedorovna. The daughter’s reaction was lightning fast: “I’m leaving with you!” I had to persuade her for a long time to stay with her mother, for whom the simultaneous loss of two close people would be with a strong blow. I insisted: “Lera, we must stay.” My daughter understood me. Nina Fedorovna’s relatives did not blame me either; we continued to maintain respectful relations with them.

How did a young girl from an intelligent family plunge so decisively into the fight against Soviet power? What was it: recklessness or desperate courage?

Of course, it was desperate courage. She was not reckless, but she did not have any sober calculations either; she was an addicted person. Deciding on her first serious action, Lera understood that she was risking a lot. By that time, she had graduated from high school with a silver medal. educational school and entered the French department of a prestigious institute foreign languages them. Maurice Thorez."

(Author’s note. Ilya Milstein (famous Russian journalist - ED.) very accurately noted this quality of Lera: “Nobility coupled with fearlessness is a rarity. This physical impossibility of remaining silent, which forces a 19-year-old girl to scatter leaflets in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, ruining his career and life, dooming himself to a torture regime in psychiatric hospitals. And after his release, distribute Samizdat, organize an underground party, an underground trade union... and finally go out to a demonstration with a poster, as soon as there is a whiff of perestroika and glasnost “You can go out to the square, you dare. go to the square..." - these lines adorned Alexander Galich Democratic Union membership card- an unprecedented party in which she was a member from the first to the last day. In splendid isolation").

- Valeria Ilyinichna shared her plans with you?

Unfortunately no. I would try to stop her. But by that time I was already living in a new family; in 1967, Lydia Nikolaevna and I had a son and I began to pay less attention to my daughter. The only thing I remember from the events of the autumn of 1969: before going to the Kremlin Palace of Congresses on December 5, she read me her own poem - very angry, directed against the government, reproaching the introduction of tanks into Czechoslovakia.

Thank you party

For everything you have done and are doing,

For our current hatred

Thank you, party!

Thank you party

For everything that was betrayed and sold,

For the disgraced Motherland

Thank you, party!

Thank you party

For a slavish afternoon of double-mindedness,

For lies, betrayal and suffocation

Thank you, party!

Thank you party

For all the denunciations and informers,

For the torches on Prague square

Thank you, party!

For a paradise of factories and apartments,

Built on crimes

In the dungeons of old and today

A broken and black world...

Thank you party

For nights full of despair,

For our vile silence

Thank you, party!

Thank you party

For our bitter unbelief

Into the wreckage of lost truth

In the coming pre-dawn darkness...

Thank you party

For the weight of the acquired truth

And for the coming battles shots are fired

Thank you, party!

I liked the poem and praised it. But I really didn’t know, I couldn’t even imagine that Leroy’s sarcastically called “Thank you, party!” will become the text of a leaflet, numerous copies of which my daughter and several of her friends will boldly drop on the heads of visitors to the premises in which the most important socio-political events of the state were held.

First arrest

Lera and her friends were instantly arrested in the hall of the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, and accused of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda (Article 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR), - the voice of 92-year-old Ilya Nikolaevich sadly, but accurately mints the name and number of the article of the criminal code. - The daughter was placed in solitary confinement pre-trial detention center in Lefortovo,” he continues. “Daniil Romanovich Lunts, a KGB colonel who headed the diagnostic department at the All-Union Research Institute of General and Forensic Psychiatry named after V.P. Serbsky, which examined Soviet dissidents, began to come to her often. Daniil Lunts, together with the director of the institute, Georgy Vasilyevich Morozov, were the most famous representatives of the criminal practice of using psychiatry for political purposes in the USSR, followers of the concept of “sluggish (asymptomatic) schizophrenia” rejected by the world psychiatric community.

The author of this concept was the co-chairman of the inpatient forensic psychiatric examination A.V. Snezhnevsky. Luntz openly and mercilessly provoked Leroux and she deservedly called him “an inquisitor, a sadist and a collaborator collaborating with the GESTAPO.” He examined not only my daughter - among his “patients” were famous dissidents Pyotr Grigorenko, Sinyavsky, Yesenin-Volpin. Fainberg, Yakhimovich, Bukovsky, Shikhanovich. And of course, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, with whom Lera became friends and together, was in the same ward on compulsory treatment in a special psychiatric hospital in Kazan. The so-called “treatment” in Kazan was cruel and inhumane, and of course, seriously undermined my daughter’s health.

- Ilya Borisovich, did you personally visit your daughter in Kazan? If so, what did you see there?

Nina Fedorovna and I took turns going on “dates” to Kazan. Leroux was constantly reproached for his friendship with more experienced dissidents. In particular, in friendship with Gorbanevskaya; I often saw Natalya when I came to this “special hospital”. The meetings took place in a large room with a wide and long table, on both sides of which the convicts sat opposite visiting relatives. About 20 convicts were brought into the room at the same time. There was an overseer standing near the table - food transfers were allowed once a month. It was impossible to pass a note or take someone’s hand, although there was no glass partition like in a prison cell.

Lera was very strong, a resilient person, she rarely allowed herself to complain even to her closest people. But in Kazan, such cruel methods of “treatment” were used on her that I could not help but go to the head physician - I no longer remember the name of this medical service officer, many years have passed. He asked her to stop using electric shock and savage injections on her daughter - after all, Lera was healthy, she was simply not pleasing to the authorities. A very young girl... And if you try really hard, you can find a clue for a psychiatric diagnosis in any of us.

He directly told me: “Yes, you are right - in every person, if you look closely, you can find some kind of psychiatric abnormalities. You just need to not look closely.”

The moral of his statement is simple: you can’t stand out from the crowd. This was the goal of punitive psychiatry. I recently talked with the famous poet, dissident and hereditary psychiatrist Boris Khersonsky. He told me about tragic fate Ukrainian dissident Ganna Mikhailenko, author of the book "KGB Diagnosis - Schizophrenia." And he confirmed that the diagnosis invented by Snezhnevsky is no longer included in the official classifications of mental illness (DSM-5). ICD - 10.

“If we talk about the “system” and about today, it is impossible not to note: although in the early 90s, in the wake of revelations of punitive psychiatry that finally reached the Soviet and Russian press, the situation has largely changed for the better, however, the Serbsky Institute, in the past the stronghold of this system of psychiatric persecution, again decisively turned to the past... and further: refusal to face the past, to reckon with it, is a dangerous thing both for the mental health of an individual - as a patient or potential patient, and for the psychiatrist himself, and for the mental health of society."

During the Great Patriotic War he was a signalman, fought on the Third Belorussian Front and reached Königsberg. After the war, he headed the electronics department at the Moscow Research Institute and participated in the creation of air defense systems.

Mother - Nina Fedorovna Novodvorskaya (March 29, 1928 - July 20, 2017) - a pediatrician, was in charge of clinics, and then held a management position in the Moscow Department of Health.

Maternal grandfather - Fyodor Novodvorsky was a pillar nobleman, a descendant of the Usatin merchants.

According to Valeria Novodvorskaya, her ancestor, Mikhail Novodvorsky, was a governor in Dorpat in the 16th century. According to her, when he learned that Prince Andrei Kurbsky had taken his army to Lithuania so that the Lithuanians could defeat him, Mikhail Novodvorsky wanted to dissuade him from treason, but Kurbsky did not listen to him. Then Mikhail challenged him to a duel, in which he died. Publicist Elena Chudinova this version is questioned .

Another of the ancestors, according to Valeria Novodvorskaya, was a Knight of Malta and served Poland. He came with an embassy from King Sigismund III to the Russian Kingdom during the Time of Troubles to ask for a crown for Prince Vladislav IV.

The parents of Valeria Novodvorskaya's father, Boris (Borukh) Moiseevich Burshtyn (1889-1973) and Sofya (Sonya) Yakovlevna Burshtyn (1888-1960), moved to Soviet Russia from Warsaw in 1918.

When her parents divorced in 1967, Valeria Novodvorskaya was 17 years old; at the insistence of her father, she remained to live with her mother, but maintained good relations with her father.

She bore her mother’s surname because, as Burshtyn noted, due to the “case of the poisoning doctors” and the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, “Jewish surnames were unpopular.” Novodvorskaya considered herself Russian.

She was born on May 17, 1950 in the city of Baranovichi, Belarusian SSR, when, according to Novodvorskaya, her parents were on vacation with her grandparents.

Valeria Novodvorskaya, according to her, was raised by her grandmother in an “individualistic spirit.”

Then she studied at the (French department) with a degree in translator and teacher.

In 1969, she organized an underground student group (consisting of about 10 people), which discussed the need to overthrow the communist regime through an armed uprising.

At a young age, she learned about the existence of the Gulag, the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel and the entry of Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia, which developed in her a rejection of Soviet power.

On December 5, 1969, at a festive evening dedicated to the Constitution Day of the USSR in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, before the premiere of the opera “October,” Novodvorskaya scattered handwritten leaflets with an anti-Soviet poem of her own composition.

March 16, 1970
Novodvorskaya V. I. (born in 1950, Jewish, member of the Komsomol, secondary education, student at the Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages, Moscow)

Since 1969, she wrote poetry and prose with anti-Soviet content and showed them to her friends; “in the poem “Freedom,” which Novodvorskaya dedicated to the man who shot at the car with astronauts, she expressed solidarity and her readiness to repeat such crimes.” In December 1969, in the Kremlin performance hall, she scattered large number leaflets.
F. 8131. Op. 36. D. 3711

She was placed in solitary confinement in Lefortovo Prison. When the head of the diagnostic department, KGB Colonel Daniil Lunts, visited her there, she told him that he was “an inquisitor, a sadist and a collaborator collaborating with the Gestapo.”

Subsequently, Novodvorskaya herself wrote: “then I learned that if not for my behavior at Lubyanka, the case would have been transferred to the Komsomol institute organization.”

In the summer of 1970, Novodvorskaya was transferred to Kazan. From June 1970 to February 1972, she was subject to compulsory treatment in a special psychiatric hospital in Kazan with a diagnosis of “sluggish schizophrenia, paranoid personality development.” Novodvorskaya was released in February 1972 and immediately began printing and distributing samizdat. From 1973 to 1975 she worked as a teacher in a children's sanatorium, as well as a teacher kindergarten and a librarian.

From 1975 to 1990 - translator medical literature.

From 1977 to 1978, she made attempts to create an underground political party to fight the CPSU. On October 28, 1978, she became one of the founders of "" (SMOT). She was subjected to repeated and systematic persecution by the authorities: she was placed in psychiatric hospitals (psychiatric hospital No. 15, Moscow), systematically summoned for interrogation on the affairs of members of the SMOT, and her apartment was searched.

In 1978, 1985, 1986, Novodvorskaya was tried for dissident activities.

From 1984 to 1986, she was close to members of the pacifist group Trust.

From 1987 to May 1991, she organized anti-Soviet rallies and demonstrations in Moscow that were not authorized by the authorities, for which she was detained by the police and subjected to administrative arrests a total of 17 times.

On May 8, 1988, she became one of the participants in the creation of the first opposition party in the USSR "Democratic Union". Since 1988, she regularly spoke in the illegal newspaper of the Moscow organization DS “Free Word”; in 1990, the newspaper publishing house of the same name published a collection of her articles.

In September 1990, after the publication in the party newspaper Svobodnoe Slovo of an article entitled “Heil, Gorbachev!” and speaking at rallies, where she tore up portraits of Mikhail Gorbachev, was accused of publicly insulting the honor and dignity of the President of the USSR and insulting the national flag.

In May 1991, January and August 1995, criminal cases were initiated against Novodvorskaya, but were dismissed for lack of evidence [ ] .

At the end of 1992, Novodvorskaya and some members of the DS created the organization “Democratic Union of Russia” (DUR).

In 1992, Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia granted Novodvorskaya Georgian citizenship (at the same time appointing her as his human rights adviser).

In September 1993, after the decree of President Boris Yeltsin was issued, she was one of the first to support this decree. Organized rallies in support of the president. After the storming of the Supreme Soviet building by troops loyal to Yeltsin, Novodvorskaya, in honor of his victory over the Congress and Parliament, drank champagne and treated passers-by on the street.

In October 1993, she participated in the founding congress of the “Choice of Russia” bloc. I was going to run in Ivanovo, but was unable to collect the required number of signatures.

On March 19, 1994, the Krasnopresnenskaya prosecutor’s office began checking the activities of Novodvorskaya under Articles 71 and 74 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (propaganda of civil war and incitement of ethnic hatred) due to a number of articles published in the newspaper “New Look”.

On January 27, 1995, because of them, the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case.

On August 8, 1995, the prosecutor's office of the Central District of Moscow dismissed the case due to the lack of corpus delicti in her actions [ ] .

In June 1994, she participated in the founding congress of the Democratic Choice of Russia party.

On March 11, 1996, the Moscow City Prosecutor's Office overturned the decision of the Prosecutor's Office of the Central District of Moscow dated August 8, 1995 to terminate the case (No. 229120) against Novodvorskaya. The case was sent for re-investigation to the prosecutor's office of the North-Eastern District of Moscow [ ] .

On April 10, 1996, Valeria Novodvorskaya was charged again under Article 74, Part 1 (deliberate actions aimed at inciting national hatred). Before the presidential elections in the Russian Federation, she supported the candidacy of Grigory Yavlinsky. After the first round of elections, together with the “Democratic Union” of Russia, she invited the leader of “Yabloko” to “immediately and without any conditions give the votes of his supporters to Boris Yeltsin.”

On October 22, 1996, the Moscow City Court sent case No. 229120 against Valeria Novodvorskaya for further investigation.

In March 2001, she took part in a rally in defense of the NTV television channel. On February 23, 2005, she took part in a rally dedicated to the 61st anniversary of the deportation of Chechens and Ingush, which took place at the Solovetsky Stone on Lubyanka Square.

On February 16, 2008, for defending the interests of Lithuania, she was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas.

At the end of August 2008, she was temporarily excommunicated from the radio station “Echo of Moscow” for words about Shamil Basayev, which editor-in-chief Alexey Venediktov considered the radio station a justification for terrorism. When, a little later, Valeria Novodvorskaya called Basayev a “non-human” in her blog, the problem was settled.

In March 2010, she signed the appeal of the Russian opposition “Putin must leave.” In May of the same year, Novodvorskaya, together with Borov, visited Estonia, where she met with the President of Estonia Toomas Ilves, the Estonian dissident and member of the Tartu City Assembly Enn Tarto, the former political prisoner and member of the Estonian Parliament Mart Niklus, the former Minister of the Interior of Estonia Lagle Parekh and the director of the Museum of Occupations in Tallinn by Heiki Ahonen. Novodvorskaya gave several lectures in Estonia.

On October 9, 2010, she spoke at the first rally of the coalition “For Russia without arbitrariness and corruption.”

Since 2011, together with Borov, she has produced videos with comments on the current political situation.

On February 4, 2012, Novodvorskaya and Borovoy held a rally “For fair elections and democracy.” The main demands of the protest action were: the release of political prisoners, the cancellation of the results of the State Duma elections and the cancellation of the presidential elections. The rally was organized in opposition to the rally “For Fair Elections” that took place on the same day on Bolotnaya Square. Novodvorskaya stated that she was not going to unite with fascists and communists. In 2013, together with Konstantin Borov, she began creating the Western Choice party.

On July 12, 2014, she was hospitalized in the intensive care unit of the purulent surgery department of Moscow City Clinical Hospital No. 13, where, as a number of media reported, she died from phlegmon of the left foot, complicated by sepsis. As her relatives said, she received an injury on her left leg six months earlier and tried to cure it on her own. Death was reportedly caused by infectious toxic shock.

On July 16, thousands of people came to say goodbye to Novodvorskaya in the Sakharov center of Moscow. Yuri Ryzhov, Boris Nemtsov, Yuliy Rybakov, Marietta Chudakova, Zoya Svetova, Evgenia Albats, Alexey Venediktov and others gave funeral speeches. At the request of those gathered, Putin’s telegram was not read out. The coffin with Novodvorskaya’s body was escorted with chants of “Heroes do not die” and “Russia will be free.” Then a funeral service took place at the Nikolo-Arkhangelsk Crematorium, which was conducted by Gleb Yakunin, Roman Yuzhakov and Roman Zaitsev from the non-canonical Apostolic Orthodox Church, as well as Yakov Krotov from the non-canonical one. The ashes of Valeria Novodvorskaya were buried at the Donskoye Cemetery. On the same day in Kharkov on Poetry Square, about 40 people honored the memory of Novodvorskaya, and a memorial service also took place in Kyiv.

Novodvorskaya lived in the same apartment with her mother and cat Stasik. We rented a dacha in Kratovo.

Novodvorskaya did not get married or start a family, because, according to her, “the KGB deprived her of such an opportunity back in 1969.” “A person who condemns himself to fight the KGB cannot be responsible for children, cannot vouch for their fate. He makes them hostages... Mother in one camp, father in another. What should the child do in this situation? In my opinion, complete irresponsibility."

Hobbies: swimming, science fiction, theater, cats. She was fluent in English and French, as well as ancient Greek and Latin. I read German, Italian, and understood Belarusian.

Novodvorskaya adhered to liberal views all her life. She was a consistent opponent of communism and fascism. WITH young age was convinced that as soon as the CPSU stops “raping” the people, then “they will immediately, with joy, with delight, begin to enjoy freedoms and rights and begin to build capitalism.” Additionally, she advocated for a boycott of the 2008 Summer Olympics in communist China, explaining that democratic states have no right to support a totalitarian country. In many ways, her views were close to libertarian ones, although she called the program of the libertarian party frivolous and, if someone tries to implement it seriously, even dangerous.

Novodvorskaya advocated granting independence to Chechnya, opposed the entry into Chechnya Russian army during Chechen wars. During the armed conflict in South Ossetia in 2008, Novodvorskaya acted on the side of Georgia.

She condemned journalists working for Russian government media, but was sorry if they died. In June 2014, when asked to comment on the death of Russian journalists in Ukraine, Novodvorskaya said the following:

“No one tried to kill them on purpose. They didn’t shoot at journalists, they shot at enemies, at “Colorados.” They stood among them, they did not shout: “Don’t shoot, we are journalists!”<…>Anyone reporting from the front must be prepared for such an ending. No one dances on their grave.<…>Nobody wanted to kill them. I won't pretend to shed tears for them. They were very bad people. But this does not mean that they had to be killed. It's a shame they died."

On March 15, 2014, she took part in the “Peace March” in Moscow against armed intervention Russian authorities into the internal affairs of Ukraine. Novodvorskaya came out with a poster “Putin’s gang - go to Nuremberg!”

On March 17, 2014, she released a video message addressed to the leader of the Right Sector, Dmitry Yarosh, in which she supported the use of weapons against employees law enforcement agencies during Euromaidan.

On March 18, 2014, in a statement by the Central Congress “Democratic Union”, Novodvorskaya sharply criticized Russia for its foreign policy towards Ukraine. The DS did not recognize the referendum taking place in Crimea and the subsequent annexation of the peninsula to Russia. According to Novodvorskaya, the Crimeans committed treason against Ukraine. V. Novodvorskaya also announced the beginning of a war between Russia and Ukraine, and in this confrontation she took the side of Ukraine.

In April 2014, Novodvorskaya announced that she had taken the military oath of allegiance to Ukraine. I considered it incorrect to use the concept of “Bandera” in relation to the socio-political situation in Ukraine.

In May 2011, in her video message, Novodvorskaya stated that the commander-in-chief of the Russian Liberation Army, Andrei Vlasov, was hanged for no reason, and the West should have stood up for him.

Regarding her attitude towards democrats and democracy, Novodvorskaya wrote:

I want to talk about democracy, about democracy, which does not exist anywhere, and, perhaps, will never exist, and most likely, there is no need for it to exist. About democracy, which no one needs except poets, artists, insurgents and snake charmers... For me, there is no democracy either in Congress, or in the Senate, or in the supermarket, but it lives on Broadway, in the 1968 Parisian student riot, in hippies, punks, rockers, gay and lesbian parties.

It makes no sense to call our camp democratic. We have not only democrats there, who put the will of the people and the right of the majority, as well as the Constitution and procedure, at the forefront. Gleb Yakunin is a democrat. And Viktor Mironov? What about me? What about the Cossacks? Are they Democrats too? Our camp is the white camp.<…>but now the white camp has almost recovered from traditionalism and is consciously rushing to the West, as if to an unattainable Christmas tree star... That’s why we were called democrats, although I personally, for example, am a liberal and do not agree to put world issues to a universal vote.<…>

In 1993, Novodvorskaya stated that she never believed in the need to fight for human rights:

Over the past 7 years, humanity has lost, with our help, such a golden standard as the fundamental criterion of “human rights”.<…>I personally have never indulged myself with such a rattle. I'm an adult. I always knew that decent people should have rights, but indecent people (like Kryuchkov, Khomeini or Kim Il Sung) should not. Law is an elitist concept. So, either you are a trembling creature, or you have the right. One of two.<…>I personally have eaten my fill of human rights. Once upon a time, we, the CIA, and the United States used this idea as a battering ram to destroy the communist regime and the collapse of the USSR. This idea has served its purpose, and stop lying about human rights and human rights activists. Otherwise, how not to cut down the branch on which we are all sitting...

Capitalism gives rights very selectively, and not all of them. The right to socialism is not for sale. After my experience in defending the rights of communists and GKAC members, who successfully sat on our heads, I have nothing against the ban on communist propaganda and commissions to investigate Soviet activities.

Very often, Russian speakers and publicists quote Novodvorskaya “ Russians in Estonia and Latvia have proven with their whining, their linguistic mediocrity, their desire to return to the USSR, their addiction to red flags that they cannot be allowed into European civilization with rights. They were placed near the bucket and they did it right. And when Narva demands autonomy for itself, for me this is tantamount to the demand of the camp “roosters” to give them self-government.” as an illustration, although this is a quote from the same article “We will not give up our right to the left!” in the newspaper " New look» No. 33 of August 28, 1993, Vladimir Ryzhkov described V. Novodvorskaya as a disinterested person, a person who had courage, courage, tenderness and gullibility. Svanidze said that she was uncompromising in matters of honor. recalled: “In the winter of 1998, Chechen television invited Shamil to a round table in Moscow, organized by the weekly New Time. He asked me to replace him and I agreed, believing that it would be interesting experience, giving someone who was once a political scientist the opportunity to brush up on his skills. It was an interesting event where I met Valeria Novodvorskaya, a famous dissident and opposition intellectual. Chechen-Russian relations were a hot topic and there were lively discussions. After I spoke, Novodvorskaya ran up to me, hugged me tightly and said that she was glad to finally hear the speech of a real Chechen.”

Former American journalist and human rights activist Katherine Anne Fitzpatrick (English) recalled that her “only real arrest in the USSR happened in Lera’s apartment, where she was conducting seminars on democracy and human rights,” when in 1989 Fitzpatrick arrived on instructions from the OSCE with a group of non-governmental organizations in the USSR in order to find out “whether it was possible to hold big conference." Fitzpatrick believes that because Novodvorskaya was a representative of the left wing of the liberal movement and was the most “outspoken” dissident compared to other dissidents, “she was kept on the sidelines”, considered a black sheep. Fitzpatrick refers to Novodvorskaya as “a dissident among dissidents.” Fitzpatrick highly appreciated Novodvorskaya’s performances in the video blog and even suggested her daughter as teaching aid to study the Russian language, because he believes that “this is an example of a pure, intelligent, smart Russian language, not to mention its political and moral content.” Fitzpatrick noted that in the West, Novodvorskaya was considered a “very inconvenient” figure: “Of course, she was not on any “black list,” but it was very inconvenient to communicate with her - she told the truth to everyone’s face, without regard to ranks and positions. She made diplomats blush with her criticism of their weak position in defending the principles of freedom in other countries. Of course she was uncomfortable."

Senior Policy Analyst, US Commission on International Religious Freedom (English) Katherine Kosman, not a close acquaintance of Novodvorskaya, having first met her in 1969, recalled: “She was a passionary, deeply devoted to her principles, in particular, human rights and the right of nations to self-determination - and she was consistent in her beliefs from the age of 19, when she led demonstrations against Soviet invasion to Czechoslovakia, until the last days, when she opposed the annexation of Crimea and intervention in Ukraine. Almost all her life, Novodvorskaya’s views represented the complete opposite of the views of those who ruled the country; she was the most important and effective part of political progress in Russia.”

Head of the committee State Duma on labor and social policy Andrei Isaev believes that Novodvorskaya “adhered to a consistent anti-Russian policy both during the period of socialism and in the current period.”

Today there is a lot of debate about how to perpetuate the memory of Novodvorskaya. Yes, it’s very simple - to ensure that the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation publishes “Poets and Tsars” as an excellent guide for people entering literary universities. Moreover, this book has already been tested in practice. The daughter of one of my friends entered the Faculty of Philology. There was a conversation about textbooks. I advised: “Let him read “Poets and Tsars” by Valeria Novodvorskaya.” Turned out to be right. The child passed the exam brilliantly and entered.

Novodvorskaya's father: During forced "treatment" in a psychiatric hospital, Lera was forever deprived of the opportunity to become a mother

The father of Russian oppositionist Valeria Novodvorskaya, who died on July 12, 2014, 92-year-old Ilya Burshtyn lives in the United States. Journalist Rahel Gedrich talked with Ilya Borisovich for the Krugozor publication about the childhood years of the future dissident, her first political action, the horrors of punitive psychiatry to which Novodvorskaya was subjected to by the USSR authorities, and her relationship with her daughter after his departure to the USA.

At the beginning of April this year, 2015, a friend, New York poetess Irina Aks, called me:

It was difficult to refuse such an unexpected but tempting offer. Luckily, my friends from the Blue Trolleybus art song club kindly agreed to take me to visit Ilya Borisovich Burshtyn and his wife Lidia Nikolaevna, who live in the neighboring state of New Jersey. Burshtyn is the real name of Valeria Ilyinichna Novodvorskaya’s father.

He greeted me warmly, showed me the books donated by his daughter, and led me into a cozy, bright kitchen-dining room. And we talked very soulfully for two hours, which, thanks to the interesting interlocutor, flew by completely unnoticed for me.

- Ilya Borisovich, how did you meet Valeria’s mother?

Nina Fedorovna's father, a hereditary nobleman, a very nice man, Fyodor Novodvorsky, lived in Moscow. Nina came to him from Belarus, where she lived with her mother, and entered the First Medical Institute, where my friend studied. After demobilization in 1947, I entered the radiophysics department of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute. This is how we met Nina Fedorovna and got married in Moscow. And to give birth, Nina went to her mother in Baranovichi, while pregnant - she was almost taken off the train, but she got home and a few hours later gave birth to a daughter.

We visited our daughter twice a year. Lera's grandmother loved her very much and devoted a lot of effort to her upbringing. Her name was Marya Vladimirovna, she was strict, but she was disposed towards me, she trusted me to walk with Lera, to take my daughter sledding in the winter. After Nina Fedorovna and I divorced in 1967, Marya Vladimirovna moved to Moscow and lived with her daughter and granddaughter. I visited them and we talked for a long time. She lived a long, honorable life and died when I was already living in America.

- Why did Valeria Ilyinichna bear her mother’s surname?

Such is the time... Jewish surnames were unpopular. The case of the poisoning doctors was already gaining momentum, which in the investigation materials bore a frank title: “The case of the Zionist conspiracy in the MGB.” The flywheel of the “Case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee” was spinning up, especially after the murder of Mikhoels on the orders of Stalin in 1948. Relations between the USSR and the newly formed state of Israel were very cool - the reaction of Soviet Jews to Golda Meir's visit to Moscow was too enthusiastic. Stalin made his tricky plans for the resettlement of all Jews of the USSR to the Far East.

- Is Burshtyn a Jewish surname? More likely Polish...

That's right. My parents - Sonya and Borukh - were from Poland; they came to Moscow from Warsaw in 1918. Then they wanted to return, but the Poles organized their own independent state and the parents remained in Soviet Russia. My older sister and brother were born in Warsaw, and this “questionnaire” fact really bothered them later, although at the time of their birth Poland was part of the Russian Empire. I didn’t know my grandparents - they died in the Warsaw ghetto. I only remember how I went to the post office with my father before the war, sent them parcels - already in the ghetto...

- How much is this burshtyn of yours?

It turned out that in translation from Polish “burshtyn” means “amber”.

- "Gift of the Sun"?

I prefer the name “tears of the sea”...

- Ilya Borisovich, how did you get to the front?

In July 1941 he volunteered for the army. He was a signalman, that’s why he survived. Now I’m reading about the misadventures of the infantry during that war, and I’m even somehow ashamed to highlight my military merits. The infantry, of course, had it a hundred times harder.

-Where did you end the war?

He fought on the Third Belorussian Front and ended the war in Koenigsberg ( Ilya Borisovich modestly keeps silent about participation in the storming of the city and awarding him with a military order).

- Were you wounded?

No. There were no injuries, and he was not taken prisoner. The Lord protected me. I don’t know - Jewish or Russian, but He kept me.

“Ilya Borisovich, we all have one God, he has no nationality,” I smile.

Do you really think so, Rachel? - my interlocutor is surprised

- Of course, Ilya Borisovich. I understand why you are asking me this, but for now let’s return to the military topic. After the war, did you immediately demobilize?

If only... Almost two years after the end of hostilities he served in Rzhev. He was an ordinary signalman, but already at division headquarters; he was demobilized in the fall of 1947. My education allowed me to enter the newly organized Institute of International Relations. I saw an advertisement for recruitment at MGIMO and went to the chief of staff with a request to send me to study. He answered sharply: “You are not eligible for enrollment in this institute.” I hadn’t heard much about national quotas for those entering college, and I didn’t understand why, what was the matter? I realized it later - while processing orders at headquarters, I came across a “neat” phrase: “send to special-purpose units only persons whose nationality corresponds to the republics of the USSR.” Alas, Birobidzhan was only the capital of the Jewish Autonomous Region. Therefore, after demobilization, I immediately entered the Moscow Power Engineering Institute - Jews were accepted there. After graduation, he worked as an engineer.

(Author's note. Here Ilya Borisovich again, out of modesty, supports the official version set out on Wikipedia. In fact, he headed the electronics department at a large Moscow research institute that worked for the defense industry - he participated in the development of Russian systems air defense. And in response to my request to be photographed in a jacket with order bars, Ilya Borisovich only winced: “Why? Just to show off? Is the price of Soviet orders and medals high now? Moreover, the State Duma of Russia plans to deprive the right to a veteran’s pension deserved in battles with Nazi Germany those participants in the Great Patriotic War who emigrated from Russia. I don’t know whether this is true or idle fiction...)

Since childhood, she was a romantic person, a rebel, even at school she organized some kind of strikes

In Moscow, we lived in the VDNKh area,” Ilya Borisovich continues his fascinating story. - Our family was intelligent, but Lera went to an ordinary, proletarian school. I didn’t like it, several times I suggested that my wife transfer Lera to a good school in the center of Moscow, but Nina Fedorovna was against elitist education. I recently read the memoirs of Vertinsky’s daughter about how her parents sent her and her sister to a pioneer camp for the summer. It’s an interesting thing: well-bred girls returned home with lice, they learned to use obscene language,” my interlocutor, wise with worldly experience, chuckles good-naturedly.

Lera was an excellent student. Not the only one in the class: we must pay tribute, among the proletarians there were also excellent students. The daughter grew up independent and independent, mature beyond her years. We have developed a good relationship with her, friendly and trusting. Of course, she could not help but notice the critical remarks about the authorities and the party system that Nina Fedorovna and I allowed ourselves to express at home. I gave my daughter Solzhenitsyn’s story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” to read. Lera was not yet thirteen, but, surprisingly, she perceived everything correctly. Since childhood, she was a romantic person, a rebel, even at school she organized some kind of strikes. At one time I admired Cuba and Vietnam. She went to the district Komsomol committee and asked to be sent to the Vietnam War as a fighter. They refused her and sent her home with instructions to come back when she learned to shoot. Imagine, for a whole year she got up early on Sundays and went to the shooting range. She never learned, given her nearsightedness...

Deciding on her first serious action, Lera understood that she was risking a lot

Lera was seventeen years old when I told her about my decision to divorce Nina Fedorovna. The daughter’s reaction was lightning fast: “I’m leaving with you!” I had to persuade her for a long time to stay with her mother, for whom the simultaneous loss of two close people would be a strong blow. I insisted: “Lera, we must stay.” My daughter understood me. Nina Feodorovna’s relatives did not blame me either; we continued to maintain respectful relations with them.

- How did a young girl from an intelligent family plunge so decisively into the struggle against Soviet power? What was it: recklessness or desperate courage?

Of course, it was desperate courage. She was not reckless, but she did not have any sober calculations either; she was an addicted person. Deciding on her first serious action, Lera understood that she was risking a lot. By that time, she had graduated from high school with a silver medal and entered the French department of the prestigious Institute of Foreign Languages. Maurice Thorez."

(Author's note. Ilya Milstein (a famous Russian journalist) very accurately noted this quality of Lera: “Nobility coupled with fearlessness is a rarity. This physical impossibility of remaining silent, which forces a 19-year-old girl to scatter leaflets in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, ruining her career and life, dooming to a torture regime in psychiatric hospitals. And after liberation, distribute Samizdat, organize an underground party, an underground trade union... and finally go out with a poster to a demonstration, as soon as there is a whiff of perestroika and glasnost: “You can go to the square, you dare to go to the square...”. - these lines from Alexander Galich decorated the membership card of the Democratic Union - an unprecedented party in which she was a member from the first to the last day in splendid isolation")..

- Valeria Ilyinichna shared her plans with you?

Thank you party
For everything you have done and are doing,
For our current hatred
Thank you, party!

Thank you party
For everything that was betrayed and sold,
For the disgraced Motherland
Thank you, party!

Thank you party
For a slavish afternoon of double-mindedness,
For lies, betrayal and suffocation
Thank you, party!

Thank you party
For all the denunciations and informers,
For the torches on Prague square
Thank you, party!

For a paradise of factories and apartments,
Built on crimes
In the dungeons of old and today
A broken and black world...

Thank you party
For nights full of despair,
For our vile silence
Thank you, party!

Thank you party
For our bitter unbelief
Into the wreckage of lost truth
In the coming pre-dawn darkness...

Thank you party
For the weight of the acquired truth
And for the coming battles shots are fired
Thank you, party!

Lera and her friends were instantly arrested in the hall of the Kremlin Palace of Congresses and accused of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda (Article 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR), - the voice of 92-year-old Ilya Nikolaevich sadly, but accurately mints the name and number of the article of the Criminal Code. “The daughter was placed in solitary confinement at the pre-trial detention center in Lefortovo,” he continues. - Daniil Romanovich Lunts, a KGB colonel who headed the All-Union Research Institute of General and Forensic Psychiatry named after V.P., began to come to her often. Serbian diagnostic department, which examined Soviet dissidents. Daniil Lunts, together with the director of the institute, Georgy Vasilyevich Morozov, were the most famous representatives of the criminal practice of using psychiatry for political purposes in the USSR, followers of the concept of “sluggish (asymptomatic) schizophrenia” rejected by the world psychiatric community.

The author of this concept was the co-chairman of the inpatient forensic psychiatric examination A.V. Snezhnevsky. Luntz openly and mercilessly provoked Lera and she deservedly called him “an inquisitor, a sadist and a collaborator collaborating with the Gestapo.” He examined not only my daughter - among his “patients” were famous dissidents Pyotr Grigorenko, Sinyavsky, Yesenin-Volpin, Fainberg, Yakhimovich, Bukovsky, Shikhanovich. And, of course, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, with whom Lera became friends and together, was in the same ward for compulsory treatment in a special psychiatric hospital in Kazan. The so-called “treatment” in Kazan was cruel and inhumane, and of course, seriously undermined my daughter’s health.

He asked me to stop using electric shocks and savage injections on my daughter.— after all, Lera is healthy, she just doesn’t please the authorities

- Ilya Borisovich, did you personally visit your daughter in Kazan? If so, what did you see there?

Lera was a very strong, resilient person; she rarely allowed herself to complain even to her closest people. But in Kazan, such cruel methods of “treatment” were used on her that I could not help but go to the head physician - I no longer remember the name of this medical service officer, many years have passed. He asked her to stop using electric shock and savage injections on her daughter - after all, Lera was healthy, she was simply not pleasing to the authorities. A very young girl... And if you try really hard, you can find a clue for a psychiatric diagnosis in any of us.

He directly told me: “Yes, you are right - in every person, if you look closely, you can find some kind of psychiatric abnormalities. You just need to not look closely.”

- ...the moral of his statement is simple: you can’t stand out from the crowd. This was the goal of punitive psychiatry. I recently talked with the famous poet, dissident and hereditary psychiatrist Boris Khersonsky. He told me about the tragic fate of the Ukrainian dissident Ganna Mikhailenko, author of the book "KGB Diagnosis - Schizophrenia." And he confirmed that the diagnosis invented by Snezhnevsky is no longer included in the official classifications of mental illness (DSM-5). ICD - 10.

I completely agree with this point of view. Natalya Gorbanevskaya wrote about the same thing in her article “Shameful Legacy” - this is her review of Viktor Nekipelov’s book “The Institute of Fools”, which attracted serious attention:
“If we talk about the “system” and about today, it is impossible not to note: although in the early 90s, in the wake of revelations of punitive psychiatry that finally reached the Soviet and Russian press, the situation has largely changed for the better, however, the Serbsky Institute, in the past the stronghold of this system of psychiatric persecution, again decisively turned to the past... and further: refusal to face the past, to reckon with it, is a dangerous thing both for the mental health of an individual - as a patient or potential patient, and for the psychiatrist himself, and for the mental health of society."

The father of Russian oppositionist Valeria Novodvorskaya, who died on July 12, 2014, 92-year-old Ilya Burshtyn lives in the United States. Journalist Rahel Gedrich spoke with Ilya Borisovich for the publication"Horizon" about the childhood years of the future dissident, her first political action, the horrors of punitive psychiatry to which Novodvorskaya was subjected to by the USSR authorities, and about the relationship with his daughter after his departure to the USA.

At the beginning of April this year, 2015, a friend, New York poetess Irina Aks, called me:

- Ilya Borisovich, how did you meet Valeria’s mother?

- Why did Valeria Ilyinichna bear her mother’s surname?

- Is Burshtyn a Jewish surname? More likely Polish...

That's right. My parents - Sonya and Borukh - were from Poland; they came to Moscow from Warsaw in 1918. Then they wanted to return, but the Poles organized their own independent state and the parents remained in Soviet Russia. My older sister and brother were born in Warsaw, and this “questionnaire” fact really bothered them later, although at the time of their birth Poland was part of the Russian Empire. I didn’t know my grandparents - they died in the Warsaw ghetto. I only remember how I went to the post office with my father before the war, sent them parcels - already in the ghetto...

- How much is this burshtyn of yours?

It turned out that in translation from Polish “burshtyn” means “amber”.

- "Gift of the Sun"?

I prefer the name “tears of the sea”...

- Ilya Borisovich, how did you get to the front?

-Where did you end the war?

- Were you wounded?

No. There were no injuries, and he was not taken prisoner. The Lord protected me. I don’t know - Jewish or Russian, but He kept me.

“Ilya Borisovich, we all have one God, he has no nationality,” I smile.

Do you really think so, Rachel? - my interlocutor is surprised

- Of course, Ilya Borisovich. I understand why you are asking me this, but for now let’s return to the military topic. After the war, did you immediately demobilize?

(Author's note. Here Ilya Borisovich again, out of modesty, supports the official version set out on Wikipedia. In fact, he headed the electronics department at a large Moscow research institute that worked for the defense industry and participated in the development of Russian air defense systems. And in response to my request to be photographed in a jacket with order bars, Ilya Borisovich only winced: “Why? Just to show off? Is the price of Soviet orders and medals high now? Moreover, the State Duma of Russia plans to deprive the right to a veteran’s pension deserved in battles with Nazi Germany those participants in the Great Patriotic War who emigrated from Russia. I don’t know whether this is true or idle fiction...)