Thousands Bid Farewell To Late Russian Activist Novodvorskaya

Your browser doesn’t support HTML5

Thousands of Muscovites bid farewell on July 16 to prominent political opposition figure and Soviet-era dissident Valeria Novodvorskaya.

People came to the Andrei Sakharov Center to say their last goodbyes to the outspoken Kremlin critic and activist.

Journalists, politicians, rights defenders, and ordinary residents of Moscow were among those who paid their last respects.

Novodvorskaya, 64, died on July 12 in a Moscow clinic. She will be cremated later on July 16.

Novodvorskaya was imprisoned for her anti-Soviet views in a Soviet psychiatric hospital with a diagnosis given to many Soviet dissidents at the time -- "sluggishly progressing schizophrenia."

In recent years, she had been openly critical of Russian government policies, including the wars in Chechnya, the internal policies of President Vladimir Putin, and Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.