Thesis: By examining the creation, dissemination
and content of "The Chronicle of Current Events" we see the
embodiment of two of the core dissident values-glasnost and legality.
The Re-Freeze: With Every Thaw in Russia
Comes a Re-Freeze
·
Under
Khrushchev, there was a “thaw.”
o In his 1955 “Secret Speech,” Khrushchev
denounced the “Cult of Personality” surrounding Stalin. He unveiled the
atrocities of the Stalinist era and vowed to usher in a new stage.
o Political prisoners were released.
o Less censorship and more flexibility in
art. This culminated in the publication of One
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
·
Under
Brezhnev, came the re-freeze
o Brezhnev declared an era of “real,
existing socialism”
o Partial re-habilitation of Stalin
o Huge gulf between what was acceptable
under Brezhnev and Khrushchev
o Shatz: "Signs of 're-Stalinization' had been appearing since the
removal of Khrushchev from power in the autumn of 1964. Public references to
the Stalin era were beginning to play down the negative sides-the purges, the
executions, the camps-and to stress he more favorable aspects, such as the
heroic efforts of the first Five Years Plans and the war years. Stalin's role
as war leader, which Khrushchev had criticized with particularly harshness was
partially refurbished and articles extolling the victims of Stalin's purges
began to disappear from the press. Finally, early in 1966, Pravda printed
a statement ruling out further use of 'period of the cult of
personality.'"
o Kenez: In this
respect the Brezhnev era was substantially different. There continued to be
periods of relaxation and periods of more intense repression, but by and large
the regime became more predictable. The authorities wanted to end the
de-Stalinization process initiated by Khrushchev, which seemed too dangerous to
them. (227)
o Dissident Andrei Amalrik writes: After each crisis resulting in more
power for Brezhnev, I was arrested. I was taken in after he became First
Secretary in late 1964, after he prevailed in the crisis of 1970, and after he
triumphed over his opponents in 1972-1973 in the matter of detente. Of course,
there were many other involved besides me; it's just that each of my arrests
was a symptom of increased repression. (97)"
o The re-freeze culminated in political show trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel
Sinyavsky and Daniel
·
Two
Soviet writer arrested for publishing anti-Soviet texts abroad.
·
It
was considered the return of the show trials as the two faced majorly trumped
up charges and were given excessive sentences.
·
It
demonstrated the illegality of the Soviet system.
·
Reddaway:
“Symptoms of the new conditions were that serious
criticism of Stalin was now forbidden, that two secret police generals were
appointed to sit on the Supreme Court, and that in 1966 Sinyavsky and Daniel
recieved savage sentences of seven and five years' hard labour.”
·
Hopkins on what it
represented: “What was happening, then, as trials picked up in the Soviet
Union of the late 1960s and as dissidents met and talked was a growing
awareness of a pattern of events. That some of this information was obtained by
Western correspondents and that some of it was broadcast back to the Soviet
Union in Russian served to document and enlarge the dissidents' picture of
their society. For they suffered from a sense of isolation and ignorance of
daily events in the Soviet Union, where authorities ensure that the mass media
present a narrow and particular portrait of the country. In the late 1960s,
Soviet dissidents only graduating assembled facts to convince them that the
post-Khrushchev leadership was undertaking a deliberate policy of repression.”
(9)
Constitution Day Protest
·
December
5, 1965-considered the “birthday” of the dissident movement
·
Dissidents
publicly gathered and called for “glasnost” (openness) for the trial of
Sinyavsky and Daniel.
Publication of the White Book
·
Alexander
Ginzburg compiled and published court documents relating to the trial of
Sinyavsky and Daniel.
·
He
gave a copy to the KGB.
·
Ginzburg
insisted that his publication was legal is it did not slander the Soviet State.
It told the truth.
·
Ginzburg
was subsequently arrested for slandering the state.
From these events (the crack-down, the
trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel, the Constitution Day Protest, and Publication of
the White Book) came the Chronicle of the Current Events, a dissident newspaper.
The Chronicle sought to force the
spotlight on the Party’s violations of it’s own laws. It demonstrated actual
openness in discussing public affairs.
What the Chronicle Was
·
An
underground newspaper
·
It
reported on searches of apartments, arrests, conditions in labor camps and
psychiatric prison.
·
It
very carefully refrained from any commentary. Following the model laid out by
Ginzburg, the Chronicle felt that if it described events as they happened,
without commentary, they were acting within the law.
How the Chronicle Reported
·
The
Chronicle made use of an informal network of “reporters,” other members of the
dissident movement.
·
Hopkins:
"The information network among the dissidents themselves operated on the
basis of personal knowledge and trust and sometimes out of sheer chance. It
happened like this: Larisa Bogoraz, wife of Yuly Daniel, was on the train
traveling to see her imprisoned husband. She met the wife of Valery Ronkin, who
also, it turned out, was on a trip to visit her husband in the same Siberian
labor camp. Ronkin was an unfamiliar name to Moscow dissidents. A Leningrader,
Ronkin had been arrested in 1965 for antistate activities after the KGB broke
up a clandestine and preached a truly workers' state. It was called the Union
of Communards and preached a truly workers' state. In the conspiratorial
fashion of earlier illegal Russian Marxist circles, the group met in secret. It
published a samizdat journal called The Bell on a clandestine printing
press...Even after the KGB penetrated the Union of communards and imprisoned Ronkin,
not many in the Soviet Union, let alone the outside world, knew about him or
his group, such was the compartmental quality of of Soviet life, especially
concerning dissident political and police matters. The Moscow dissidents thus
learned of the Ronkin case only when two wives met to share common information
about their imprisoned husbands. (8-9)"
·
Chronicle
printed in issue 5: To send them info, tell the person who gave you the paper,
they will tell the person who gave it to them, it’s a chain letter.
How it was published
·
Hopkins:
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 particular samizdat item were made
could not be said, the work being done privately and separately.
Samizdat
·
Samizdat,
not just the Chronicle but all sorts of underground texts, were integral to the
dissident movement.
·
It was an “Ideocracy.”-All
ideas were controlled by the government. Anything written and published needed
state approval
o Beginnings of it: " Sometime in
the mid-1950s, poet Nikolai Glazkov decided to act as his own publisher.
Glazkov, a fine poet and a bear of a man who made a living in menial
jobs, folded blank sheets of paper and typed his verse on all four sides. Then
he took a needle and thread and sewed the pages together at the crease. The
result was something like a book.
On the bottom of the first sheet, Glazkov typed
"samsebyaizdat" which was both an acronym for "I
published myself" and a parody of "gospolitizdat," the
name of an official publishing house. Later "samsebyaizdat"
lost the reflexive sebya and was shortened to samizdat,
"self-publishing."
Samizdat sprung up on its own, arising naturally from kompanii. It
could not have existed without them. My friends and I helped each other fill
the enormous void of information, and soon the izdat, publishing,
part of samizdat became a kompaniya ritual: if you liked a
manuscript, you borrowed it overnight and copied it on your typewriter.
Generally, I made five copies. Three went to friends, the fourth went to the
person who let me borrow the poem, and the fifth remained in my possession." (Alexeyeva
and Goldberg, 97)
·
Samizdat
began with literature.
o Poetry was easy to memorize and thus
passed around.
o Then moved into longer novels.
o Novels, such as The Master and Margarita served as a way for people to criticize
the government while under the guise of writing fiction.
·
Samizdat
came to be viewed as the only “truthful” form of written media.
o Meerson-Aksenov: In the last five year an anecdote about samizdat has made the rounds: a
father of a family type out Lev Tolstoi's War and Peace--a classic
Russian work that may be bought cheaply in any book store. When he is asked why
he is doing this he answers: ''My son is in school where they are studying War
and Peace. He must read it for the course but he refuses to read anything
that is not in samizdat.' This anecdote, by the way, demonstrates a growing
lack of faith in the printed word in the USSR as such, no matter what is
printed." (38)
·
It also became
integral to the dissident movement.
o Evidenced by emphasis placed on typewriter-Bukovsky wants to “build a
monument”
o Meerson-Aksenov: The dissident movement and samizdat are two sides of the
very same process which may be called the awakening of the consciousness of
Soviet society.
§
Brought
groups together post-Stalin. No longer scared of hiding. (Alexeyevna and
Goldberg, 97)
·
Most importantly: Samizdat was a way
for dissidents to reclaim the written word. It was a way of working around
government censorship. It offered dissidents a direct voice to each other and
to the broader world.
o Samizdat
was not the only way to do this.
Dissidents also worked to have their
work included in Western newspapers and foreign radio.
Western Media
·
Newspapers
o At this time, Moscow correspondent was
considered a prestigious gig at a national newspaper
o The Chronicle always gave an issue to a
western correspondent.
§
Western
journalists viewed it as one of the few ways to get reliable, truthful
information about.
o Walker: “The
dissident connection with Western journalists also had an ideological and
intellectual logic, arising directly from a central tenet of the
human rights movement: the right to openness, to freedom of discourse.”
§
Journalists
did more than report about the dissident movement. They often tried to help.
·
Anatole
Shub got Larisa Bogoraz better health care while she was in prison camp.
·
Such
support included carrying letters and manuscripts across the Soviet border
to the West, as well as money and information that might be politically
touchy. This could be dangerous for Westerners and the willingness of some
of them, especially those in the diplomatic corps, to risk jobs and physical
safety and emotional peace of mind made a deep impression on some
dissenters.19
As generous expressions of Western freedom, such supportive activities
helped create a sense of what might be described as a kind of communality
between some Westerners and some dissenters. As the human rights activist Aleksandr
Podrabinek put it in an interview: “those mutual goals, that general
atmosphere, it’s very hard to convey in words… . [I]t was an astonishing
atmosphere that Western people fell into. People with responsive [otzyvchivye]
hearts, they were drawn into it, they became a part of that atmosphere,
part of that dissident culture, they were even participants, to a greater
or lesser degree.”
·
Radio
o Stories that appeared in western newspapers were
frequently read on radio and broadcast into the Soviet Union. Eventually, whole
issues of The Chronicle were read and broadcast.
o Radio Liberty hosted an entire show devoted to reading
samizdat over the air.
o Making use of foreign radio offered the dissidents a
direct way to communicate with the Soviet people.
§
Roth-Ey
on it’s importance: “Yet
arguably it was the very fact of foreign broadcasting inside the USSR, and not
the informational content of its programs, that spoke loudest of all. By
breaking the Soviet regime's media monopoly, foreign broadcasting shattered the
regime's hold on the modes and meanings of cultural consumption in Soviet
everyday life.” (133-134)
§
Hopkins
estimates “millions” heard radio broadcasts of The Chronicle
o This was particularly effective because
radio, as a medium, was already important to Russians.
o Foreign radio was a much more attractive
option that Soviet radio, it was more entertaining.
§
Roth-Ey:
A 1968 survey by radio
and TV's reseach bureau founf that 47 percent of people identified themselves
as listeners to foreign radio (openly, the researchers notes); just under 10
percent described themselves as "regular listeners," while another 15
percent said they did not tune in themselves but heard about foreign radio
broadcasts secondhand. (172-173)
o Brezhnev re-started the practice of radio jamming in 1968,
following the invasion of Czechoslavakia.
§
This
demonstrates just how powerful and wide of reach foreign radio had.
o Example of Ginzburg’s trial: “"Although it was against the law, the witnesses were
taken out of the courtroom after terrifying, even Galanskov's sister was removed.
Such things made the atmosphere very tense. On the fourth day, near the
courthouse, Larisa Bogoraz and Pavel Litinov handed out to correspondents their
statement: "To the World Public." That declaration was drafted in
strong language. It demanded ‘condemnation of this shameful trial,’ ‘release of
the dependents from armed custody’ and ‘stripping the judge of his judicial
powers.’
In one leap we had overcome a
difficult barrier. We had addressed ourselves to public opinion rather than to
the regime; and we had spoken up in the language of free persons, not in that
of loyal subjexts, thereby overcoming a centuries-old complex: the idea that no
Russian--and least of all, a Soviet-Russian should address apeals to
foreigners. ("We are we, and they are they." "Don't wash your
dirty linen in public." "It's better to get a blow from your master's
club than a piece of bread from a stranger.") That same evening, on the
BBC, we heard the statement translated back into Russian. Esenin-Volpin,
sitting with the text in his hands, kept repeating: 'Right! That's it!
Exactly!' Huddled around the radio, we resembled a painting we had been
familiar with since our youth: Behind the Fascist Lines, Members of the
Young Guard Listen to Radio Moscow.
Amalrik’s words demonstrate what was so
revolutionary about dissident media, be it the Chronicle, their work with
Western journalists, or appearance on radio. The dissidents were “airing their
dirty linen” in public, something Khrushchev has specifically warned against.
Khrushchev’s Secret Speech
·
Given
at the 20th party Congress in 1955
·
Khrushchev
denounced the “Cult of Personality” surrounding Stalin and argued that it was
necessary to unveil the truth about the Stalinist years.
o He went into details about the purge of
the party, describing murders orchestrated by Stalin
o However, conspicuously, Khruschev failed
to mention the labor camps. He also carefully blamed Stalin, and not the system
for the purges.
o The crux of the argument: “We should, in
all seriousness, consider the question of the cult of the individual. We cannot
let this matter get out of the party, especially not to the press. It is for
this reason that we are considering it here at a closed congress session. We should know the limits; we should not
give ammunition to the enemy; we should not wash our dirty linen before their
eyes.
·
Khrushchev was essentially arguing for
honesty and openness, but not too much honesty or openness.
o This is seen in his treatment of artists.
§
Soviet
literature had long served as the “conscious” of Russia
§
Was
a realm of dissident political conversation
§
By
analyzing how Khrushchev treated writers and literature, we can get an idea of
how tolerant he actually was of truthfulness
o Khrushchev continued the policy of
socialist realism. Writers were responsible for promoting socialism in all of
their works.
o He also told artists that if they played
with fire, their fingers would be burned.
o Khrushchev was nothing but inconsistent
when it came to art.
§
Kenez:
. From the point of view
of creative artists, the difficulty was that the line between what was
permissible and what was not constantly changed. In one year a writer could
achieve success for discussing an issue openly, but next year, a
different writer saying more or less the same thing could get into serious
trouble. Indeed the singly best indicator the liberalism of the moment was
current state of the so-called "Stalin problem." When writers wer
allowed to publish works about their past sufferings in the camps, that implied
openness, reform , and liveralism' by contrast when Stalin was at least
partially rehabilitated and his "historic achievements" stressted,
that suffested a turn to conservatism and increased repression
o He did however personally approve the
publication of Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in
the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
§
This is considered the high-water of the de-Stalinization
movement.
Solzhenitsyn and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
·
Solzhenitsyn
became one of the leaders and the dissident movement.
·
Most
importantly he came to symbolize of the two key dissident goals: glasnost or openness
o This is first seen in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
·
One
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
o The novella follows Ivan Denisovich, a
political prisoner in a labor camp, through an average day.
o It’s very existence embodied the idea of
glasnost as it demonstrated the full terror of the Stalinist years. It went a
step further than Khrushchev’s speech by even acknowledging the existence of
the camps.
o Solzhenitsyn’s rejects the notions of
socialist realism. He argues that art is not supposed to promote socialism, but
to tell the truth.
§
In
the novel’s seminal scene one character exclaims “A genius doesn’t adapt his work
to the taste of tyrants.”
§
A writer’s purpose, and the purpose of
the novella, is to expose the truth.-It was an obligation.
·
This
idea of glasnost runs through Solzhenitsyn’s works.
o In “Participation and the Lie,” he argues
that the only way to undermine the Soviet system is to tell the truth about it.
o Therefore, dissidents needed to tell the
truth.
This ideology of openness and truth-telling
became an integral part of the dissident movement.
·
Shatz:
One of the themes the dissidents
voice most frequently when asked to explain their actions is a strong sense of
personal guilt over the repressions of the Stalin era, and a determination to
redeem that guilt by combating injustice in the present. Even when they
themselves in no way participated in the repressions, the silent acquiescence,
the passivity, and the unquestioned faith in the authorities that Soviet
society displayed under Stalin torment them and compel them to speak out. (150)
·
Larisa
Bogoraz: “I was faced by the choice of
protesting or staying silent. Staying silent would have meant for me sharing in
the general approbal of actions which I did not approve. STaying silent would
have meant lying." (Shatz, 129)
The obsession with truth is reflected in
the very existence of the Chronicle and the dissidents’ willingness to work
with Western journalists.
·
These
forms of media were all about exposing the actions of Soviet government to both
the USSR and the world at large.
·
They
were also about demonstrating to the world the violations of human rights
committed by the Communist Party.
·
Reddaway:
Samizdat had a dual right to figure
in the Chronicle: first, in so far as a part of expressly devoted to the
question of human rights; secondly, the whole of samizdat is an example of
freedom of speech and the press of creative freedom and freedom of conscience,
put into practice. (Reddaway, 55)
In this way, dissident media reflected
another goal of the movement: legality. The dissidents sought to force the
Soviet government to obey its own laws. This is reflected in the contents of The Chronicle and other samizdat
publications.
Reddaway: “Samizdat has a dual right to
figure in the Chronicle: first, human
rights; secondly, the whole of samizdat is an example of human rights;
secondly, the whole of samizdat is an example of freedom of speech and the
press, of creative freedom and freedom of conscience, put into practice.” (Reddaway.
55)
·
A
significant portion of The Chronicle’s articles
simply documented illegal searches of apartments.
·
More
importantly, it focused in on the violations of Soviet law on full display
during trials of dissidents.
o Trial transcripts were frequently
published in full in samizdat and in The
Chronicle.
o Issue 1 of The Chronicle makes this point explicit. It opens by declaring that
1968 was United Nations Human Rights Year, and juxtaposes it with Ginzburg’s
trial for publishing the White Book.
o Issue 5:
“Here
is an example, as it happens from Leningrad. It has come to the attention of
the Chronicle, because it does in
fact have political overtones. But even if there were no such overtones, even
if the criminal prosecution were justified, it would be no less striking an
example.
On
June 1st 1969, Efim Slavinsky, a translator and graduate of
Leningrad University, was arrested by organs of the MVD. He was charged under
two articles of the Criminal Code-‘drug-trafficking’ and ‘maintaining an
establishment for the smoking of drugs,’ and a search was made on these grounds.
Slavinsky himself was taken away soon after the search began and his wife,
upset and frightened, signed a record after the search without making any
protest. Meanwhile, apart from taking away old medicine bottles and boxes, and
a small quantity of powder which they named ‘anasha.’ The investigators removed
65 books without making an inventory, stampled them and threw them into a sack,
and took also a number of papers, notebooks, and in a diary—also without an
inventory—and put them in a similar sack. Who knows what might disappear from
these sack, and—more importantly what might ‘appear’ in them? But this is a
violation of the law with which readers of the Chronicle are already familiar. In Slavinsky’s case there was an
even more flagrant violation.
On
June 5th, four days after his arrest, the newspaper Evening Leningrad carried a short report
of the arrest, entitled: ‘He will surely pay.’ The editors and the author had
both trampled on one of the basic human rights—the presumption of innocence. It
was hardly surprising: ‘He will surely pay.’ The editors and the author had
both trampled on one of the basic human rights—the presumption of innocence.
·
Much
of the criticism was about Articles 70 and 190, which outlawed slandering the
Soviet State.
o Sinyavsky and Daniel were charged under
Article 70.
o Andrei Amalrik was charged under Article
70 for giving interviews to foreign journalists.
·
The Chronicle insisted, almost from its inception, that
it was an entirely legal publication.
o Issue 5: “The Chronicle is in no sense an illegal publication, and the
difficult conditions in which it is produced are created by the peculiar
notions about law and freedom of information which, in the course of long
years, have become established in certain Soviet organizations. For this reason
the Chronicle cannot, like any other
journal, give its postal address on the last page. The Chronicle has to admit that Soviet legal practice, for example is
given very narrow coverage in its pages—only those arrests, searches and legal
proceedings which clearly represent acts of political repression, irrespective
of which article of the Criminal Code is involved. But what is the record of juridicial
practice in ‘purely criminal’ cases? No one has yet systematically gathered
information on the numerous violations of the Human Rights and guaranteed by
Soviet law.” (Reddaway, 54-55)
o The Chronicle insisted that because it
refrained from commentating on the news, and simply reported events as they
happened, it was not slandering the state.
o It was telling the truth.
Here we see that the ideas of truth and
legality were inherently tied for the dissident movement.
·
As
established, by examining Solzhenitsyn’s works the dissident movement felt they
had an obligation to expose the truth, not only for political, but also for
moral reasons.
·
However,
this push for the truth made the dissidents vulnerable to prosecution under
Articles 70 and 150.
·
The
dissidents made a radical argument: seen in The Chronicle’s insistence of its
own legality. Truth is legal.
·
This is on display in Andrei Amalrik’s
statement at his trial for violating Article 70 by giving foreign interviews.
o He told the KGB: "In my opinion there was nothing either anti-Soviet
or libelous in my writings, and that I would give no testimony during the
investigation.”
o In his final statement: 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]
§
There
was nothing libelous about telling the truth.
·
Dissident
media was above all a reflection of the values of the dissidents. It demonstrated
their concern for glasnost and legality.
·
This
is seen by the catalyst for the ’68 wave of the movement-calling for glasnost
and legality in the trial for Sinyavsky and Daniel.
·
It’s
also seen in The Chronicle’s existence
and dissident work with western journalists.
o They dedicated to exposing the party’s
violations of it’s own laws to the USSR and the world.
·
They
sought to show that truth was not illegal, but necessary in order to save the
Russian state.
No comments:
Post a Comment