Friday, October 28, 2011

Hopkins- Vol. 2 "The Spark"

21: Baptist newspaper since '64

"From the start, then, the Chronicle was set apart from other and plentiful samizdat literature, political tracrs, petitions, statements and reports...Soviet and foreign journalists could get this type of information in Moscow in the late 1960s only on a sporadic basis and only if they were involved in samizdat and dissident circles. Even then, sometimes incomplete. If one were outside established dissident circles, the most one knew about official actions besides rumors was contained in cryptic Soviet reports. They told virtually nothing except that something had happened. (H, 22)"

-alternative to official information

"The style of the Chronicle was heavy on facts--names, ages, dates, places, specific events. It was light on both judgements and speculation or opinion (H,22)"

NG: "Basically there was an attempt in all the letters to be very exact, to lay out the facts, to describe the violations of rights, to quote articles of law. Nothing was exaggerated. The love for objectivity was in the air. (H, 23)"

"The first issue drew heavily on actions against the Chronicle group and its friends and acquaintances. Besides the Galanskov-Ginzburg proceeding with  which some of the Chronicle people were closely connected, protest statements reproduced in that first issue revealed a pattern of signatures. Many of those who encouraged founding of the Chronicle turned up as co-authors of grievances...This is to sat that Gorbanevskaya used what was available, and most of that information came from or was collected by one relatively small Moscow group. (H,25)"

"Production of the Chronicle came from the very first was along the lines of a "chain letter." Gorbanevskaya typed the first seven copies. One went to a Western correspondent, another was saved in order to produce more copies, and the remaining five copies were given out. In the already established form for distributing samizdat, recipients were expected to reproduce further copies. Commonly these were typed, but homemade photocopying of samizdat was increasingly popular. How many copies of a particul samizdat item were made could not be said, the work being done privately and separately. (H, 26)

-expected it to be short

-28: -end of '68, assert legality
-how to submit info

29: ""The price for that system, however, was a secrecy and confidentiality that amounted to an underground publication (H,29). "

"If the Chronicle was legal, why be secret? If the Chronicle was secret could it be legal? (H,29)"

"Not only the now standard arrests and interrogations were reported; political documents and statements, internal disputes involving Soviet policy, and protests and grievances from among an increasingly broad spectrum of the Soviet population were reported as well. The information, moreover, was assembled in one readable source, in direct and unambiguous Russian. There was no need to read between the lines as Soviets routinely did when the official Soviet press reported some specially sensitive issue." (H, 30)

31:  samizdat news

"The information flow to and from the Chronicle developed in important ways under Gorbanevskaya. First the volume of facts increased as friends and readers caught on to what the Chronicle wanted and was willing to publish. Also, a sort of "beat" system of reporting emerged. It was not planned but developed simply because of personal interests and contacts. (H, 33)."

Ei: Tartars- Grigorkenko
Jews Takir
Ukraine-Alexeyeva

34: Amalrik, Litinov, Yakir

"Through this connection, the contents of the Chronicle moved through an already established information network of Moscow correspondents, Western news agencies and newspaper, radio, and television reports to editorial offices and media abroad. Abroad, foreign shortwave broadcasters picked up Chronicle information, and individual news reports based on Chronicle items or contents of whole issues found their way back to the Soviet Union in Russian-language broadcasts of the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and Voice of America. Radio Liberty broadcast readings of entire issues of the Chronicle. (H, 34)

"Although foreign radio signals were heavily hammed from the summer of 1968 to the fall of 1973, broadcasts could still be generally served the Chronicle well, as audiences numbering in the tens of millions in the Soviet Union heard the news from the Chronicle. (H, 34)"

36: implications of Red Square

"In the aftermath of the invasion, in the three years leading up to the twenty-fourth Communist party congress in 1971, at which General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev renewed a policy of coexistence and cooperation with the West, important debates were held over the implications of this policy. On the one side, the benefits of detente in terms of Western trade and financial assistance for the lagging Soviet economy were attractive to a number of groups in the Soviet Union. But there also was the argument, frequently made in the Soviet press, that in times of closer relations with the West, greater vigilance was required within the country. This was an old problem for Soviet leaders-... Not great on the re-freeze"(H, 37)

41-42: Gorbanevskaya trial


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