Issue 28 Published by Amnesty International

December 21, 1970
Moscow

"A. Amalrik refused to take part in the trial, submitting the following note addressed to the chairman of the court: 

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An answer to the question whether I plead guilty. 

The charges brought against me concern the dissemination by me, verbally and in print, of views which are here  called false and slanderous. I do not consider either the interview given by me or my articles and books to be slanderous.

I also think that the truth or falseness of publicly- expressed views can be ascertained by free and open discussion, but not by a judicial investigation. No criminal court has the moral right to try anyone for the views he has expressed. To oppose ideas—irrespective of whether they are true or false with a judicial criminal penalty seems to me to be a crime in itself. 

This point of view is not only natural for everyone who  has his Own Opinions and who needs creative freedom; it  also finds legal expression both in the Constitution of the  USSR (article 125) and in the Universal Declaration of  Human Rights, which all the signatory-nations have  promised to put into effect."

39: Prints A's final address-details in his memoir how it was smuggled out

"...I wish only to answer the assertion that several of my statement are directed against my people and my country. It seems to me that my country's principal task at present is to throw off the burden of its hard past, for which, above all, it needs criticism and not eulogies I think I am a better patriot than those who loudly hold forth about love for their country, meaning by that- -love for their own privleges [sic]" (Issue 28, 40)

Also includes: 

The trial of Amalrik and Ubozhko. Andrei Amalrik's final  address. The trial of Valentin Moroz. Solzhenitsyn's letter to the Nobel Foundation.The Committee for Human Rights in the USSR.  Public statements regarding the trial  of Pimenov, Vail and Zinoveva. The Leningrad trial of the "hi-jackers". Trials of recent years: the case of the UNF  [Ukrainian National Front]. Persecution of Jews wishing  to emigrate to Israel. Rigerman. American citizenship and the Soviet police. The fate of Fritz Mender. Political  prisoners in the Mordovian camps. News in brief. Samizdat  news. [index.] 

News in brief- 10 pages of who got arrested, what's going on in prisons, etc