Kenez Vol. 5 Sinyavsky and Daniel, Birth of the Chronicle

"From the point of view of the regime, however, this judicial persecution badly backfired, and the authorities never committed this mistake again. The news of the trial brought ill repute and and even ridicule to the regime abroad, and even some Western communists found it necessary to distance themselves from the Soviet regime. More importantly, instead of frightening potential dissidents into silence, it gave them a platform to organize. It was only from this time forward that once can talk about a self-conscious movement of courageous and mutually supportive individuals. Dissidents compiled a record of the trial, spread it among themselves, and even sent it to the authorities. By undermining the monopoly of the regime in spreading information, and by acting openly, the dissenters attacked the regime at a vulnerable point. When the organizers were arrested, that action spawned further protests (K, 226) ."

"The principles and tactics of the dissenters grew out of the situation in which they found themselves. First, they decided to act as openly as was possible under Soviet circumstances. Second, they made the point repeatedly: the regime was not observing its own announced principles. The dissenters were willing to accept a great risk by maintaining connects with foreign journalists and letting them know about what was happening. Their protests, and Soviet responses, were published in Western newspapers and more importantly broadcast over Western radio stations, and this way penetrated into the Soviet Union itself."

"The crowning achievement of the dissenters was the publication of the purposely modestly titled Chronicle of Current Events. THis samizdat publication, beginning in 1968, went from hand to hand typed and retyped with so many carbons that at times it was hardly legible. It simply described arrests and searches of apartments for compromising materials, wisely refraining from comments. In most instances comments were unnecessary, for the regime was self-evidently hypocritical. The always anonymous editors were periodically arrested, but others took their place. That this publication could survived with-- shorter or longer gaps--for approximately a decade, showed how much the Soviet Union had changed. However faintly, one could see in the dissident movement the emergenxe of public opinion, the gradual opening of the public sphere (K,227)."

"The regime fought back. Although the difference between Stalin and Brezhnev eras was vast, the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s remained a repressive society. Dissenters were called in the offices of the KGB, where agents tried to reason with them and persuade them to mend their ways. THe agents let them know that the Soviet state possessed powerful instruments to enforce its will (K, 227)"- mentally ill