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32-592: The documentary tells the story of the Soviet dissident movement from its emergence in the late 1950s with the weekly public Mayakovsky Square poetry readings in Moscow. The development of samizdat , opposition demonstrations held in Moscow such as the 1965 Glasnost meeting and 1968 Red Square demonstration , and the harsh repressions unleashed by Soviet authorities against dissenters including forced psychiatric "treatment" , prison camps and deportations, are all part of

64-553: A psychiatric hospital . Following his release, Galanskov formed a friendship with Alexander Ginzburg, and together the two publishers made arrangements to have their work published in the West. Georgy Shchedrovitsky , who had taught Galanskov at school, signed a letter in support of Galanskov and Ginzburg during their show trial in February 1968. During the years of Nikita Khrushchev ’s leadership, frustrations had been mounting in

96-494: A gathering place for unofficial poetry readings, and subsequently for expressing cultural and political dissent in the post- Stalin era. On July 29, 1958, a monument to Vladimir Mayakovsky was unveiled in Moscow's Mayakovsky Square . At the official opening ceremony, a number of official Soviet poets read their poems. When the ceremony was over, volunteers from the crowd started reading poetry as well. The atmosphere of relatively free speech attracted many, and public readings at

128-586: A holiday to celebrate Yuri Gagarin 's space flight, and the square was filled with bystanders, many of whom joined the crowd around Mayakovsky's statue out of curiosity. The meeting was broken up. Many of those involved in the readings were arrested in the summer of 1961. Vladimir Osipov, Eduard Kuznetsov and Ilya Bokshteyn were soon after convicted under article 70 “ anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda ” for allegedly attempting to create an underground organization. Osipov and Kuznetsov received seven years in labor camps, and Bokshetyn five years. Vladimir Bukovsky

160-504: A labor camp and was sent to a facility next to Ozyorny in the Republic of Mordovia . During his years in prison, Galanskov advocated the rights of prisoners. In collaboration with Ginzburg, he wrote a letter describing the poor conditions and cruel guards of the labor camp. The letter was smuggled out of Russia and published in the West. According to accounts that reached the West at that time, Galanskov who suffered from bleeding ulcers,

192-441: A small circle of university friends, but gathered momentum quickly and were soon taking place regularly. The Square and statue became known to some as "Mayak" (lighthouse). Usually several hundred people gathered each occasion in the square. The participants in the 1960-61 readings included the "veterans" of two years before, as well as a new layer of young people. Poetry by Nikolay Gumilev , Boris Pasternak and Osip Mandelstam

224-421: Is narrated primarily through the interviews of dissidents themselves. The film's participants are Vladimir Bukovsky , Elena Bonner , Sergei Kovalev , Alexander Yessenin-Volpin , Anatoly Sharansky , Yuri Fyodorovich Orlov , Alexander Podrabinek , Eduard Kuznetsov , Pavel Litvinov , Naum Korzhavin , Natalya Gorbanevskaya , Viktor Fainberg and Vladimir Dremlyuga. According to director Vladimir Kara-Murza,

256-785: The 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in October of the same year, the readings were officially banned. In 1965, the gatherings in Mayakovsky Square were briefly revived again by a new youth group called SMOG . The acronym could be deciphered as the Russian words "boldness, thought, image and depth," or "the youngest society of geniuses". The SMOGists expressed a trend of 1964-65 toward greater organization among literary dissidents, as compared to

288-609: The Kremlin over the difficulty of suppressing the Samizdat literary movement. In 1965, the Soviets arrested Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky , two prominent samizdat writers. The trial was made a media spectacle, with Pravda issuing passionate condemnations of the defendants. The trial did not, however, discourage the underground literary movement. Instead, it provoked the first spontaneous political demonstration to occur in

320-410: The Soviet Union and representing a spirit of youthful protest. They were alternately reproached and disciplined, but tolerated. The spontaneous gatherings, however, were soon stopped by the authorities. Выйду на площадь и городу в ухо Втисну отчаянья крик! ... Это - я, призывающий к правде и бунту, не желающий больше служить, рву ваши черные путы, сотканные из лжи! I'll go out on

352-404: The Soviet Union in 30 years, which Galanskov helped organize. Yuri Galanskov and Alexander Ginzburg also compiled detailed notes of the trial and released their observations in a four-hundred page report known as The White Book . This work was widely circulated among the dissident writers and was eventually smuggled out to the West. Shortly after the release of The White Book , Galanskov released

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384-568: The Square and into the city's ear I'll hammer a cry of despair! ... This is me calling to truth and revolt willing no more to serve I break your black tethers woven of lies! Manifesto of Man by Yuri Galanskov , 1960 The gatherings at Mayakovsky's statue were revived in September 1960, again as poetry readings, but this time with a more openly political character. They were organized by biology student Vladimir Bukovsky with

416-635: The anniversary of Mayakovsky’s death. They used the symbolism of the occasion to make a series of demands. Among their demands were the official recognition of SMOG by the Writers' Union. Despite the introduction of new articles in the Criminal Code in the wake of the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial , directed against "group actions which violate public order", a last SMOGist demonstration took place on September 28. The participants were beaten, and

448-404: The end of the sixties and the first half of the seventies, who would hot have appeared at that time [in the early sixties] on Mayakovsky Square, who did not spend his youth there." The atmosphere was tense in the extreme and plainclothesmen were ready to pounce at any moment. At last, when [Anatoly] Shchukin started reading, they let out a howl and made a dash through the crowd in the direction of

480-494: The film's narrative. The third episode deals with events leading to the collapse of Soviet dictatorship and the democratic revolution of August 1991. The final episode is dedicated to the period after 1991; in it former dissidents discuss why the emergence of democracy in Russia proved to be short-lived, and how it was possible that a former KGB officer, Vladimir Putin , was elected to the Russian presidency. "They Chose Freedom"

512-399: The gatherings. Poet Andrei Voznesensky is seen reciting his poem Antiworlds on the square. Yuri Galanskov Yuri Timofeyevich Galanskov ( Russian : Ю́рий Тимофе́евич Галанско́в ; 19 June 1939 – 4 November 1972) was a Russian poet , historian , human rights activist and dissident . For his political activities, such as founding and editing samizdat almanac Phoenix , he

544-500: The leader of dissident publishing in the Soviet Union . Galanskov’s first publication, Phoenix came in 1961, and contained direct criticism of the Soviet government, partly in the form of poetry. Phoenix published works by Boris Pasternak , Natalya Gorbanevskaya , Ivan Kharabarov , and Galanskov himself. As a punishment for publishing Phoenix , the Soviet authorities convicted Galanskov and sentenced him to several months in

576-475: The magazine, Vera Lashkova with assisting the typing of the manuscript, and Alexander Ginzburg with collaborating with Galanskov on The White Book . Lashkova was sentenced to a year in prison. Dobrovolsky was sentenced to two years at hard labour, while Ginzburg received five years at hard labour. Galanskov was sentenced to seven years at a labor camp in Mordovia . In 1968 Galanskov was sentenced to 7 years in

608-524: The members of SMOG decided to stop the meetings. On 25 September 2022, 33-year-old poet Artyom Kamardin recited a poem opposed to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in what was now called Triumfalnaya Square for which in the following year he, attendee Yegor Shtovba and another participant, Nikolai Dayneko, were given severe prison sentences. The film Moscow Does not Believe in Tears from 1979 references

640-408: The monument soon became regular. Young people, mainly students, assembled almost every evening to read the poems of forgotten or repressed writers. Some also read their own work, and discussed art and literature. Among the young poets who read their own work to huge crowds in Mayakovsky Square were Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky , who walked a thin line between being able to publish in

672-467: The more unstructured and spontaneous readings of the early sixties. For them, concerns for literary freedom were mixed with a political interest in the Russian revolutionary tradition from the Decembrists to Lenin , and in other leaders who had opposed Stalin, such as Trotsky and Bukharin . On April 14, 1965, SMOGists organized what they described as a "literary-political" meeting to commemorate

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704-413: The peace and using obscene language”... This episode alone indicates what an extraordinary time it was. Vladimir Bukovsky on the 1961 Mayakovsky commemoration On April 14, 1961, the Mayakovsky Square group organized a reading specifically to commemorate the anniversary of Mayakovsky's suicide. The commemoration turned out to be the largest and most eventful gathering in the square. It coincided with

736-533: The principal goal of his documentary was to show that even a small group of citizens that is prepared to defend dignity and freedom is eventually able to prevail over a totalitarian dictatorship. They Chose Freedom was premiered on RTVi network in October 2005. The Russian premiere of the film was held at the Sakharov Center in Moscow in December 2005. In June 2006 the screening of They Chose Freedom

768-587: The second edition of Phoenix , titled Phoenix '66 . This issue featured works by Gorbanyevskaya, Yuri Stefanov , and Vladimir Batshev . It was generally regarded as being even more daring than the first issue. The KGB arrested him and four others in January 1967. In what came to be known as The Trial of the Four , the Soviet Union brought charges against Yuri Galanskov for publishing Phoenix . The prosecutors also charged Alexander Dobrovolsky with contributing to

800-655: The shock of Khrushchev's 1956 report on Stalin's purges . For these, like Bukovsky and his colleagues, "the right of art to be independent was merely one point of opposition to the regime, and we were here precisely because art happened to be at the centre of political passions." The circle of students who had organized the Mayakovsky Square also began publishing unofficial poetry in the first samizdat ("self-published") journals. They published their own poems but also those of Nikolay Zabolotsky , Dmitri Kedrin and Marina Tsvetaeva . Poet and journalist Aleksandr Ginzburg managed to get out three issues of Sintaksis before he

832-399: The square, and sometimes the monument was cordoned off during the usual meeting times. The readings at Mayakovsky Square became the incubator not only for a new generation of poets but for a generation of dissidents . Vladimir Osipov, one of the organizers gatherings and a later dissident, stated that "it seems it is impossible to find a famous dissident from among the young, who thundered at

864-487: The statue... A gigantic fist-fight broke out. Many people had no idea who was fighting whom and joined in just for the fun of it... The police were generally unpopular anyhow and on this occasion I feared that the crowd would overturn the police car and kick it to pieces. But somehow or other the police succeeded in bundling Shchukin and Osipov into a car and extricated it from the crowd. Shchukin got fifteen days “for reading anti-Soviet verses” and Osipov ten days “for disturbing

896-452: Was arrested for the first time in 1960. In November 1960, Vladimir Osipov produced one issue of a journal called Bumerang , which was modeled on Ginzburg's work. A third samizdat journal, Feniks-61 , was produced by Yuri Galanskov in 1961. Usual punitive measures for these activities included expulsion and blacklisting from institutes. The active participants of the gatherings were regularly subject to searches. Fights were provoked in

928-922: Was held at the Cinema House in Ekaterinburg . In February 2007 They Chose Freedom was presented at a human rights seminar in Harvard University . On 11 February 2014, the Harriman Institute and Institute of Modern Russia presented the English-language version of They Chose Freedom . Mayakovsky Square poetry readings During the 1950s and 1960s, the Mayakovsky Square (now the Triumfalnaya Square ) in Moscow played an important role as

960-421: Was incarcerated in prisons, camps and forced treatment psychiatric hospitals ( Psikhushkas ) . He died in a labor camp . Yuri Galanskov began his dissident activities in 1959, as a participant in the poetry readings in Mayakovsky Square . Several of his works were published in the samizdat anthology Sintaksis . After Alexander Ginzburg was arrested in 1960 for publishing Sintaksis , Yuri Galanskov became

992-471: Was interrogated twice in spring 1961, and thrown out of university that year. By the autumn of 1961, news of the readings in Mayakovsky Square had begun to filter out to the foreign press, and an open campaign began to crush them. The KGB brought snowplows to the Square and circled them around the Mayakovsky statue to prevent the readings from taking place. After a final gathering on the opening day of

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1024-486: Was read. Soviet Nonconformist Art and works by formalists were also circulated. Among the participants were both those interested in pure art, and those inspired by dissident politics of various stripes. Many of those gathering in the square insisted on the right of art to remain "free of politics". Others were drawn to the readings because of their social implications. This included an oppositionist student movement which had already begun to develop immediately out of

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