Russia: The Soviet dissident philologist Viktor Feinberg has died

He died at the age of 91 Soviet dissident philologist Viktor Feinberg, who participated in a protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in Red Square in August 1968.

Victor Feinberg was born in Kharkiv. He studied philology at Leningrad University. In the winter of 1968 he joined the Soviet dissident movement.

On August 25, 1968, together with his like-minded friends Konstantin Babitsky, Tatyana Bayeva, Larisa Bogoraz, Natalya Gorbanievkskaya, Vadim Derlone, Vladimir Dremlyuga and Pavel Litvinov, he participated in the demonstration against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in Red Square. The demonstration lasted about five minutes, after which the protesters were arrested by KGB officers who were on duty in Red Square.

During his detention, his front teeth were broken and then he was put in a car and taken for questioning. He was accused, as reported by APE-MPE, under the article on “deliberate dissemination of false opinions that discredit the Soviet state and social system”. Later the forensic examination center to which he was transferred, ruled that Feinberg is insane. Feinberg spent four years in a mental institutionwhere he underwent compulsory treatment.

Feinberg and his friend Boris Petrov went on two hunger strikes at the hospital in protest. Physicist and human rights activist Andrei Zakharov also supported them. The information about the hunger strike that started was spread by the foreign media, so the hospital authorities were forced to cancel the injections and ease the conditions of detention.

Feinberg emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1974 after his release from prison. Since 1978 he lived in Paris. In June 2018, Pavel Litvinov, Viktor Feinberg and Tatiana Bayeva (participants in the Red Square demonstration in 1968) were awarded the Gratias Agit award of the Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs for spreading the good name of the Czech Republic abroad.