Soviet Dissent: Contemporary Movements for National, Religious, and Human Rights Pt. 1

Alexeyeva, Ludmilla. Soviet Dissent: Contemporary Movements for National, Religious, and Human Rights. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1987.

"Samizdat completed the data necessary for this book. The source of essential information is the Chronicle of Current Events, which the academic Sakharov has called the principal achievement of the human rights movement. The anonymous editorial board that publishes CCE is renewed approximatley every two years, generally because of the arrests of it's editors. Since 1968, sixty-four issues of Chronicle have appeared; they contain an immense amount of material about the violation of human rights throughout the USSR and about the continuing struggle against these abuses. The excellent quality of the information from Chronicle has withstood investigation. At the trials for those involved in Chronicle, usually on the charges of "slander," teams of KGB agents seeking frounds on these accusation on several occasions checked the reliability of the information of human rights activists. (Al, vii-viii)

Al 9: Birthday of the movement- Dec. 5 1965, Pushkin Square

Al 10: Historical background, Secret Speech,

Al 11: Novy Mir as signal of part of the movement, publication of One Day

Al 12: How Samizdat works

"The more successful a work, the faster and further it is distributed. Of course, samizdat is extremely inefficient in terms of the time and effort expended but it is the only possible way of overcoming the government monopoly on ideas and information (Al, 12)."

"Russian samizdat began with poetry, possibly because poetry is easier to reproduce--brief and easier to memorize. But there may be a deeper cause: spiritual emancipation begins in the area of simple human feelings (Al, 13)."

Al 13: Estimate more than 300 authors most young circulating

Al 15: Zhivago

THE HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT IS INHERENTLY TIED WITH SAMIZDAT

"It was only by virtue of samizdat that the human rights movement itself was able to rise and spread.

The chief functions of the human rights movement are gathering and disseminating information on human rights violations and defending these rights, irrespective of citizens' nationality, religion or social background. In this way contacts are established with other dissident movements. The movement's participants carry out their work with samizdat information journals, the best known of which is the Chronicle of Current Events. 


AL 41: Ukranian Chronicle spin off

AL 52: Ukranian dissidents and western journalist

Al 74: Catholic Chronicle

Al 109-114: Comparison between Chronicle and Official Coverage