Tuesday, Aug 25, 2020 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Location:
Globus Books YouTube channel

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On the anniversary of Red Square 1968 protest, Globus Books is honored to interview Pavel Litvinov, one of the organizers of this protest. On the night of 20–21 August 1968, Soviet tanks rolled into Prague, suppressing reforms known as the Prague Spring. On August 25, 1968, eight men and women--one with a newborn baby in a stroller--stepped out to the Red Square in Moscow and sat down with posters “For your freedom and ours," "Hands of free Czechoslovakia" and the national flag of Czechoslovakia. The protest lasted a few minutes: seven participants ended up beaten up, arrested and put on trial. They were sentenced to three to five years in prison, exile and psychiatric prisons. Litvinov was sentenced to five years of exile and forced to work as an electrician in the mines in Siberia. Prior to this demonstration, he published banned books ("samizdat") documenting the violation of the human rights in the USSR, and continued publsihing "samizdat" in the US where he emigrated in 1975. Litvinov will talk about the role of literature and books in society, the nature of protest and tamizdat/samizdat. There will be a Q&A part at the Zoom conference. This program is in Enlgish.