Hopkins, Vol. 3 Case 24

1970-1972: KGB focuses in dissidents

"The very harassment and persecution of Soviet political reformists, of religious dissenters and of outspoken nationalists by the KGB were the Chronicle's editorial fare. THe KGB could not delve into internal dissent without coming into contact with the Chronicle. It was thus inevitable that one target of the directorate was the Chronicle itself. (H, 48)"

"The pattern of arrests and imprisonment suggested KGB concentration on those publicized dissidents who associated with Western correspondents-hence, the Amalrik trial and conviction in November 1970 in remote Sverdlovsk after the publication in the West of hist book." (H,50)

"It was also clear to foreign observers, not to mention the better informed Soviet leadership, that the Chronicle of Current Events had become the most consistent, reliable, and reknowned source of what the Kremlin regarded as hostile and politically dangerously information. (H,50)"

"The final issues of the Chronicle edited by Gorbanevskaya in late 1969 had included summaries of a samizdat publication called Crime and Punishment that intended to expose former NKVD during Stalin's dictatorship. Under Anatoly Yakobson, the style, persisting in detailed reports of trials and labor camp conditions and enriching its reportage with new insights in Soviet political life. Issue no. 17, dated December 1970, carried a report of KGB supression of a previously unpublicized Ukranian nationalist group that had put out 15 issues of its own underground journal between 1964 and 1966 promoting Ukranian independence. Issue no. 19, in April 1971, listed 16 films produced in the Soviet Union that either had been censored before showing or whose distribution had been restricted. Issue no. 21, dated dated typewritten underground journal that contained authoritative private political information, including a transcript of the closed Communist party meeting that ousted Nikita Khruschev in October 1964l The Chronicle, numbering on the average about 40 typewritten pages, was by now something more than recitation of a small Mowscow group. Appearing regularly every two months, it had developed a solid network of informants that routinely funneled more and more news through Chronicle channels to the final editor. (H, 51)"

59-lots of cases... "These cases suggest the breadth  of the KGB investigation into the Chronicle. And they underscore that, by 1972, the Chronicle reached samizdat readers far beyond Moscow. A loosely woven network had been created to pass information between the Chronicle group in Moscow and supporters in most part of the country. The last issue of of the Chronicle before it was forced into silence, no. 27, carried news reports from 35 locations in the Soveit Union. KGB investigations and trials also documented that the Chronicle was also being reproduced in weidely separated regions of the country. (H,59)"