Happy birthday, dear Pavel!
Pavel Litvinov, a living legend of the Soviet dissident movement, turned 85 on July 6th.
On August 25, 1968, Pavel was one of eight brave souls who held a public protest on Moscow’s Red Square, unfurling a famous banner, “For your freedom and ours.” They protested against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and all of them paid a high price for their defiance, receiving prison terms, internal exile and forced psychiatric treatment. The organiser of the demonstration was Pavel Litvinov, whose grandfather Maxim Litvinov had been Stalin’s foreign minister in the 1930s.
In 1974, having served his punishment in exile in Siberia, Litvinov was forced to emigrate to New York, where he continued to take part in human rights projects.
Pavel Litvinov’s remarkable biography can be viewed here.