Valeriya Novodvorskaya

Valeriya Novodvorskaya
1st Chairman of the Democratic Union
In office 8 May 1988 – 12 July 2014
Preceded by	Position created
Personal details
Born	Valeriya Ilyinichna Novodvorskaya (1950-05-17)17 May 1950 Baranovichi, Byelorussian SSR, Soviet Union
Died	Moscow, Russia
Nationality	Russian
Political party	Democratic Union
Alma mater	Moscow Region State University
Occupation	Journalist
Religion	Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church

Valeriya Ilyinichna Novodvorskaya (Russian: Вале́рия Ильи́нична Новодво́рская, 17 May 1950, Baranovichi, Byelorussian SSR – 12 July 2014, Moscow) was a liberal Russian politician, Soviet dissident, the founder and the chairwoman of the "Democratic Union" party, and a member of the editorial board of The New Times.

Early years

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 (see Prague Spring). The leaflets included her poetry: "Thank you, the Communist Party for our bitterness and despair, for our shameful silence, thank you the Party!" Novodvorskaya was only 19 at this time. She was arrested and imprisoned at Soviet psychiatric hospital and, like many other Soviet dissidents, diagnosed with "sluggish schizophrenia". In the early 1990s, psychiatrists of the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia proved that the claim of her mental illness was bogus. She described her experience in psikhushka in her book Beyond Despair.

Russia

Political career

Novodvorskaya stood as a candidate for the radical liberal party Democratic Union in the 1993 Russian legislative election in a single-mandate district as part of the Russia's Choice bloc, and she also contested the 1995 Russian legislative election on the list of the Party of Economic Freedom. She was not elected in either election, and never held public office.

Political activism

Novodvorskaya self-identified primarily as a liberal politician. She also sometimes called herself and her allies successors to the Russian White movement tradition. She had been openly critical of Russian government policies, including Chechen Wars, domestic policies of Vladimir Putin, and the alleged rebirth of Soviet propaganda in Russia

In an interview with the Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy, in which she was discussing the 2008 South Ossetia War, Novodvorskaya said that Shamil Basayev was a democrat, given his support of Boris Yeltsin during the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt and his participation in the government of Aslan Maskhadov in 1997, who had appointed Basayev Deputy Premier of the Ichkerian government. According to her, it was Russian governmental policies in Chechnya that turned Basayev into a terrorist. In response, Alexey Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of the radio station, pulled the recording and transcripts of the program from the Ekho Moskvy website. She later accused Venediktov of censorship and slander and suggested that the decision to remove the interview may have been due to Gazprom, a state-owned company, being a controlling shareholder in Ekho Moskvy. Venediktov asserted this to be his own decision and confirmed that Novodvorskaya was banned from the station until the end of 2008.

Valeria Novodvorskaya alleged that the inclusion of the scenario of the blowing up of Lech Kaczyński's aircraft in a March 2010 mockumentary shown on Georgian television is evidence of complicity of the Russian State in the death of the Polish President in a plane crash on 10 April 2010 in Smolensk Oblast.

Personal life

Throughout her life, Novodvorskaya remained a celibate virgin. When asked about it, she stated that she was not interested in sex. She added that she had never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all. In another interview, Novodvorskaya admitted that she had fallen in love a couple of times but never acted on her feelings after discovering disappointing traits in the people she became interested in. Novodvorskaya later said she did not marry or have a family because the KGB had deprived her of such an opportunity in 1969: "Mother is in one prison camp, father in another. What should a child do in this situation? To my mind, a full irresponsibility."

Throughout her life, Novodvorskaya lived in a flat with her mother Nina Fyodorovna (Нина Федоровна Новодворская, born in 1928), a pediatrician, and cat Stasik. During summer they rented a dacha in Kratovo. She was fond of swimming, science fiction, theater and cats.

Death

On 12 July 2014, Novodvorskaya died of toxic shock syndrome which arose from phlegmon of the left foot.

Awards

Novodvorskaya received the Starovoytova award "for contribution to the defense of human rights and strengthening democracy in Russia". She said at the ceremony that "we are not in opposition to, but in confrontation with, the present regime".

Bibliography

• Valeriya Novodvorskaya published five books that are supplemented with the publications from the Novy Vzglyad newspaper (ISBN 978-5-8159-0893-2)
• Beyond Despair (Novosti, 1993) (Russian)
• Карфаген обязан быть разрушен (Russian)
• Валерия Новодворская. Над пропастью во лжи (Russian)
• Валерия Новодворская. Прощание славянки (Захаров, 2009 г) (Russian)
• Валерия Новодворская. Поэты и цари (Аct, Аct Москва, Харвест, 2009 г) (Russian)

External links

• Valeriya Novodvorskaya's channel on YouTube
• Valeriya Novodvorskaya on Facebook
• Website of Democratic Union
• Opinions on grani.ru (Russian)