Valeriya Novodvorskaya

Valeriya Novodvorskaya – a Russianliberal politician, Soviet dissident, the founder and the chairwoman of the “Democratic Union” party, and a member of the editorial board of The New Times.Novodvorskaya has been active in the Soviet dissident movement since her youth, and first imprisoned by the Soviet authorities in 1969 for distributing leaflets that criticized the Soviet invasion in Czechoslovakia. During 1970–1972 she was arrested and imprisoned at Soviet psychiatric hospital with diagnosis of sluggish schizophrenia and was forced to undergo medical treatment. In 1972 Valeria Novodvorskaya participated in the copying and distribution of underground press. From 1973 to 1975 she worked as a teacher in a health resort for children. After that, up to 1990, Novodvorskaya was a medical translator at the Second Moscow Medical Institute. During the entire period she continued her political activities.In 1977-1978 Valeria Novodvorskaya made an attempt to organize an underground political party against the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). She was also one of the founders of the Free Inter-Professional Union of Workers, which was one of the first attempts at forming an independent trade union in the USSR. She was continually persecuted by the authorities: she was put into mental hospitals, was systematically interrogated and her flat was repeatedly checked. Three times, in 1978, 1985 and 1986 Valeria Novodvorskaya was tried for her dissident activity. During 1984-1986 she was associated with the pacifist movement “Trust”.