"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, te executions, the camps-and to stress he more favorabl e 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.'" (Shatz, 118)
"The embarrassing problem facing the prosecution was the two writers had not in fact committed an illegal act. There was no law on the Soviet statute books prohibiting an author from sending manuscripts abroad for publication." (Shatz, 119)
"Complaints came from many quarters that legality had not been observed in the treatment of Siniavskay and Daniel: the charge against them was false; the standards of evidence and trial procedure had been deplorable; the trial was not truly open to the public as required by law; and the reports in the press had been scanty and grossly biased against the defendents.")120
"In making this demand, the critics and protestors were calling for the redemption of one of the promises Khrushchev had made in his 1956 speech. Agter detailing the arrrests and executions of the STalin period, Khrushchev had assured his audience that 'socialist legality' woudl be restored and violations of it no longer tolerated.'" 120
"The Soviet legal system is under considerable pressure to apply Party policy, that is, to respond to political considerations, in the determination of individual cases."
"Complaints came from many quarters that legality had not been observed in the treatment of Siniavskay and Daniel: the charge against them was false; the standards of evidence and trial procedure had been deplorable; the trial was not truly open to the public as required by law; and the reports in the press had been scanty and grossly biased against the defendents.")120
"In making this demand, the critics and protestors were calling for the redemption of one of the promises Khrushchev had made in his 1956 speech. Agter detailing the arrrests and executions of the STalin period, Khrushchev had assured his audience that 'socialist legality' woudl be restored and violations of it no longer tolerated.'" 120
"The Soviet legal system is under considerable pressure to apply Party policy, that is, to respond to political considerations, in the determination of individual cases."
Article 70
"They were accused of slandering the Soviet government and people, of slandering Lenin and of enabling some WEstern commentators to use their works for anti-Soviet purposes-hardly the 'especially dangerous crimes against the state' referred to in the law code." (Shatz, 119)-airing dirty laundry
"By putting the writers on trial, the authorities tacitly confirmed the political significance of literature and validated the role of the writer as a social critic. LIterature is recognized by the Soviet government as such a powerful force that it insists on monopolizing it for its own purposes punishing any use of it for unauthorized sentiments-writers, after all, are 'engineers of human souls.'" (Shatz, 120)
"The management of the trial reflected the government's general policy toward the issue of Stalinism in the wake of Khrushchev's departure from office. On the one hand, it wished to impose greater restrictions on criticism of the Stalinist past, with its inescapable implication of criticism of the post-Stalin present; on the other hand, it showed no desire to revert to the outright terrorism of the previous era. Therefore it sought to manipulate the courts and the legal system, giving a veneer of legality to the curtailment of political self-expression. The result was a glaring infringement of legal due process; it shocked many Soviet citizens who felt they had been assured by the Party that such travesties of justice were a thing of the Stalinist past and would not be permitted to recur. This was the main issue on which the various currents of dissent now concentrated." (Shatz, 121)
"The wave of indignation elicited by the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial advanced two major themes. First, putting writers on trial for the content of their fiction struck many observers as an absurd and shocking violation of the sanctity of literature." (Shatz, 121-122)
"The second major theme which gave Soviet dissent a new dimension, was a demand for dure process of law....Many of those who voiced such complaints stated that they disagreed with the writers' views or with the methods they had used to publish them. Nevertheless, they felt compelled to protest against the abitrariness and unfairness with which teh case had been handled. There were no public complaints about te laws themselves, or about the judicial process or the legal system in general; it was assumed that the law was just but had not been properly applied. The critics therefore demanded that the trial be reviewed and the writers acquitted (because they had obviously not violated the laws under which they have been tried) or at least that their very hard sentsences be reduced" (Shatz, 122)
-first it was petitions
then (Again younger generation)
"At the same time, some younger individuals decided to adopt bolder though still technically legal, forms of protest. Even before the trial itseld, on December 6, 1965, Soviet Constitution Day, some 200 students from the Gorky Institute of World Literature, where Siniavsky worked, had staged a rally in Moscow's Pushkin Square to demand a fair and open trial for the two writers. (This began something of an annual tradition: silent demonstrations in behalf of dissidents hae been held at the same spot on the same day in subsequent years.) THe rally was he first public protest Moscow had seen since the 1920s. (Shatz, 123)
124: trial documents, you're working against us (Socialist realism?)
"THe trials of 1967 and 1968, like the Siniavsky-Daniel trial, generated a series of petitions and open letters to the authorities protesting these new violations of due process and calling for review of the conviction and sentences." (Shatz, 126)
Ginzburg protest-126
"The most conspicuous effort in behalf of freedom of expression-and in retrospect, the highwater mark of the tide of dissent in the late sixties, at least in terms of public assertiveness-was the demonstration in Moscow's Red Square on August 25, 1968...The word 'demonstration' somewhat magnifies what actually occured: seven individuals gathered at noon at the ancient Execution Place in Red Square and unfurled a few hand-letered banners protesting the invasion." (shatz, 127)
"What was so unique about this event was that , for the first time in the history of Soviet dissent, the demonstrators were not protesting a specific case of injustice in the Soviet Union or even an issue that directly concerned them (although in the crushing of the Czech experiment in 'democratic socialism' they percieved a real threat to their aspirations for their own country). The demonstrations in Red Square was purely an act of civic duty and inficidual conscience. This is amply confirmed by the statements of the defendants at their subsequent trial."
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." - just like Lie essay (Shatz, 129)
128-this trial is how the W. discovers samizdat
Birth of the Chronicle
"Some kind of permanent cohesive organization was essential in order to mount a sustained campaign for civil liberties instead of merely responding to the government's acts of repression; it was also essential if such a campaign were to survive the arrest of individual dissidents by the police. With an organizational base, the scattered and highly vulnerable individuals and circles that had emerged in the late sixties might be able to transform their expression of criticism and protest into a real "movement" on behalf of civil liberties." (Shaztz, 131)
"One of the first, and most successful, of these organizing efforts was A Chronicle of Current Events....A number of other underground journals have made their appearance in the last two decades, some of a literary nature and others devoted to political and social themes. Like the intelligentsia's 'thick journals' of the nineteenth century, they have served as behicles for the expression of a variety of nonconformist ideas, though most of these publications have been of brief duration. The Chronicle was the first one devoted exclusively to dissent itself." (Shatz, 131)
"More broadly, the rise of autonomous public associations represents a new stage of political consciousness on the part of at least some Soviet dissidents. Post-Stalin dissent in its initial phas was limited to moral appeals to the authorities for more humane treatment, and in its seconde phase to peitions and protests against violations of Soviet law and judicial procedure. It did not challenge the authorities' right to rule, nor did it question their legitimacy or demand that they be held accountable for their actions except in a moral sense. But the attempt to create citizens' organizations independent of the Party and state represents a significant break with the paternalistic principle of authority comparable to that achieved by the early intelligentsia at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century." (Shatz, 135)
"By putting the writers on trial, the authorities tacitly confirmed the political significance of literature and validated the role of the writer as a social critic. LIterature is recognized by the Soviet government as such a powerful force that it insists on monopolizing it for its own purposes punishing any use of it for unauthorized sentiments-writers, after all, are 'engineers of human souls.'" (Shatz, 120)
"The management of the trial reflected the government's general policy toward the issue of Stalinism in the wake of Khrushchev's departure from office. On the one hand, it wished to impose greater restrictions on criticism of the Stalinist past, with its inescapable implication of criticism of the post-Stalin present; on the other hand, it showed no desire to revert to the outright terrorism of the previous era. Therefore it sought to manipulate the courts and the legal system, giving a veneer of legality to the curtailment of political self-expression. The result was a glaring infringement of legal due process; it shocked many Soviet citizens who felt they had been assured by the Party that such travesties of justice were a thing of the Stalinist past and would not be permitted to recur. This was the main issue on which the various currents of dissent now concentrated." (Shatz, 121)
"The wave of indignation elicited by the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial advanced two major themes. First, putting writers on trial for the content of their fiction struck many observers as an absurd and shocking violation of the sanctity of literature." (Shatz, 121-122)
"The second major theme which gave Soviet dissent a new dimension, was a demand for dure process of law....Many of those who voiced such complaints stated that they disagreed with the writers' views or with the methods they had used to publish them. Nevertheless, they felt compelled to protest against the abitrariness and unfairness with which teh case had been handled. There were no public complaints about te laws themselves, or about the judicial process or the legal system in general; it was assumed that the law was just but had not been properly applied. The critics therefore demanded that the trial be reviewed and the writers acquitted (because they had obviously not violated the laws under which they have been tried) or at least that their very hard sentsences be reduced" (Shatz, 122)
-first it was petitions
then (Again younger generation)
"At the same time, some younger individuals decided to adopt bolder though still technically legal, forms of protest. Even before the trial itseld, on December 6, 1965, Soviet Constitution Day, some 200 students from the Gorky Institute of World Literature, where Siniavsky worked, had staged a rally in Moscow's Pushkin Square to demand a fair and open trial for the two writers. (This began something of an annual tradition: silent demonstrations in behalf of dissidents hae been held at the same spot on the same day in subsequent years.) THe rally was he first public protest Moscow had seen since the 1920s. (Shatz, 123)
124: trial documents, you're working against us (Socialist realism?)
"THe trials of 1967 and 1968, like the Siniavsky-Daniel trial, generated a series of petitions and open letters to the authorities protesting these new violations of due process and calling for review of the conviction and sentences." (Shatz, 126)
Ginzburg protest-126
"The most conspicuous effort in behalf of freedom of expression-and in retrospect, the highwater mark of the tide of dissent in the late sixties, at least in terms of public assertiveness-was the demonstration in Moscow's Red Square on August 25, 1968...The word 'demonstration' somewhat magnifies what actually occured: seven individuals gathered at noon at the ancient Execution Place in Red Square and unfurled a few hand-letered banners protesting the invasion." (shatz, 127)
"What was so unique about this event was that , for the first time in the history of Soviet dissent, the demonstrators were not protesting a specific case of injustice in the Soviet Union or even an issue that directly concerned them (although in the crushing of the Czech experiment in 'democratic socialism' they percieved a real threat to their aspirations for their own country). The demonstrations in Red Square was purely an act of civic duty and inficidual conscience. This is amply confirmed by the statements of the defendants at their subsequent trial."
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." - just like Lie essay (Shatz, 129)
128-this trial is how the W. discovers samizdat
Birth of the Chronicle
"Some kind of permanent cohesive organization was essential in order to mount a sustained campaign for civil liberties instead of merely responding to the government's acts of repression; it was also essential if such a campaign were to survive the arrest of individual dissidents by the police. With an organizational base, the scattered and highly vulnerable individuals and circles that had emerged in the late sixties might be able to transform their expression of criticism and protest into a real "movement" on behalf of civil liberties." (Shaztz, 131)
"One of the first, and most successful, of these organizing efforts was A Chronicle of Current Events....A number of other underground journals have made their appearance in the last two decades, some of a literary nature and others devoted to political and social themes. Like the intelligentsia's 'thick journals' of the nineteenth century, they have served as behicles for the expression of a variety of nonconformist ideas, though most of these publications have been of brief duration. The Chronicle was the first one devoted exclusively to dissent itself." (Shatz, 131)
"More broadly, the rise of autonomous public associations represents a new stage of political consciousness on the part of at least some Soviet dissidents. Post-Stalin dissent in its initial phas was limited to moral appeals to the authorities for more humane treatment, and in its seconde phase to peitions and protests against violations of Soviet law and judicial procedure. It did not challenge the authorities' right to rule, nor did it question their legitimacy or demand that they be held accountable for their actions except in a moral sense. But the attempt to create citizens' organizations independent of the Party and state represents a significant break with the paternalistic principle of authority comparable to that achieved by the early intelligentsia at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century." (Shatz, 135)
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