They Chose Freedom - : The Awakening

They Chose Freedom, a four-part documentary film written and produced by Russian historian and television journalist Vladimir V. Kara-Murza, tells the story of the dissident movement in the USSR from its emergence in the 1950s until the collapse of the Soviet dictatorship in 1991. Public readings of banned poetry in Mayakovsky Square, the development of samizdat (underground publications), the 1965 and 1968 opposition demonstrations in Moscow, and the harsh repressions unleashed against dissenters by the Communist regime—including forced psychiatric “treatment,” prison camps, and exile—are chronicled in this documentary. The film is narrated primarily through interviews with prominent Russian dissidents: Elena Bonner, Vladimir Bukovsky, Vladimir Dremlyuga, Viktor Fainberg, Natalia Gorbanevskaya, Sergei Kovalev, Naum Korzhavin, Eduard Kuznetsov, Pavel Litvinov, Yuri Orlov, Alexander Podrabinek, Anatoly (Natan) Sharansky, and Alexander Yesenin-Volpin. In the final episode, they offer their thoughts on th