Walker, Western Journalists

Walker, Barbara. "Moscow Human Rights Defenders Look West: Attitudes toward U.S. Journalists in the 1960s and 1970s." Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 9, no 4 (2008): 905-927. 

"Key to the attitudes of Moscow human rights defenders toward the U.S.  journalists who reported on their activities was the profound isolation of  Soviet citizens from the West, indeed from the rest of the world, that was a major component of Stalinism and post-Stalinism." (905)

isolation-906

No longer was Russia ruled by a dynasty with strong royal Western ties. Instead, it was ruled by a revolutionary group that seemed to pose a considerable threat to Western governments and therefore invited their hostility, including invasion by several Western powers during the Civil War.The Bolshevik response was a kind of drawing in, a voluntary isolation on the part of the state that became involuntary isolation for Soviet citizens. Soon after the Bolshevik coup in 1917, it became increasingly difficult for most Soviet citizens to travel abroad freely. By the same token, the entry of foreigners into the Soviet Union was increasingly controlled, as were relations between Soviets and foreigners who were in the country. This simple fact of physical separation had an impact all its own. (906)

Insider and outsiders and the purges

Stalin’s purges in the later 1930s further deepened the question of insiders and outsiders, of who was a loyal Soviet citizen and who a traitor.The repeated and highly publicized searches for saboteurs, for “enemies of the people,” helped create a vast new category of supposedly deceptive outsiders who looked like insiders. The question of insiders and outsiders grew even more dangerous before, during, and after World War II, as Stalin’s deep anxiety about a fifth column among any of the many ethnic groups with (or without) cause to resent his power led him brutally to transport across the Eurasian continent whole national categories of people such as the Balts, the Volga Germans, and the Crimean Tatars." (907)

The state-supported “anti-cosmopolitan” movement following the war heightened the tension for a Soviet ethnic group that was to provide a large corps of participants to the dissent movement, as well as the refusenik movement, in later years: Soviet Jews.  (907)

Yet these painful questions about what it meant to be loyal Soviets did 

not lead to an embrace of the Western world among emerging human rights 

defenders. Due perhaps in part precisely to the isolation of the Soviet Union 

from Westerners and Western ideas, the early Moscow human rights move- 

ment was distinctly indigenous and inward-looking in nature. 

50s dissidents:

The movement arose without notable Western involvement among the kompanii, the liberal intelligentsia networks and circles of the 1950s.8 The kompaniia phenomenon, which began to take shape in the years following Stalin’s death in 1953, led to increasing social and national self-examination among its paticipants, beginning with readings not of Western human rights documents such as, say, the works of John Locke but rather of internally more pertinent materials such as the works of Lenin and Marx by some, and 19th-century 

Russian literature and philosophy by others.9 Growing discontent, fed by Khrushchev’s Secret Speech in 1956, led to the emergence of the samizdat movement of underground publication, which made accessible to a certain range of urban intellectuals much written material that could not be published officially. Here too the early focus was more on materials that were internally pertinent—such as memoirs and poetry of the Stalin era, opposttional political documents, and Soviet literature that could not be published 

due to censorship—than on Western materials on human rights." 908

The dissident Pavel Litvinov began to encounter and think about Westerners for the first time in college, at Moscow University. “When I was at the university I knew some foreigners. I was about 18, I could always tell them apart,” he said in an interview in 2005. This sense of apartness led directly to the question of exactly how they were so different—which led in turn to the question of what kind of people exactly the Russians themselves were. How were foreigners in fact different? “A kind of style, a naturalness and freedom. They talked louder than we did; they weren’t embarrassed by certain things. I remember there was one well- known American and he came barefoot out of his room and walked barefoot down the corridor. Nobody did that in a Moscow University dormitory—but 

he just walked out freely.” 910

This was because Western foreigners also represented to many Soviets who met them a kind of freedom of generosity that stemmed from their access to the outside world and to greater wealth. They offered information about the outside world, for one thing: “[F]oreigners became for us more than anything sources of information,” as they offered much-desired glimpses of an unknown and much speculated upon outside world.  (911)inteview /w Tatiana Starostina

Some Westerners became sources of material goods unavailable to common Soviet citizens as well, not just of the odd bottle of alcohol from the beriozka (state-run shop selling Western consumer products for Western currency) but of books, clothing (especially jeans, of course), and technology. Some of these gifts were mailed or brought for personal use, but some were donated for the purpose of sale in the Soviet unofficial economy to support impoverished Soviets, usually intellectuals who were having trouble the gift of Western glossy coffee table books on art, design, and so on, which with the state and therefore with employment. One fascinating example was could be purchased in Western Europe, could be shipped relatively cheaply and safely, and could easily be sold on the Soviet black market. (911-912)

Way for Westerners to show their inside status

Yet another path to perceived insider status for some Westerners that would become especially important to human rights activity throughout the late 1960s was aid in overcoming the barriers to discourse and other interaction with the outside world. 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.” (912)

Domestic sphere as bonding: The domestic localities of these encounters also contributed to a sense, whether real or imaginary, of communality between certain Westerners and certain members of the Moscow liberal elite.  (913)

Westerners have an obligation: 

Through their supportive activities such Westerners perhaps created a sense of entitlement on the Soviet side. Given Westerners’ freedom, wealth, and access to the outside world, to some inside the Soviet Union they appeared actually to owe a degree of personal 

partisan commitment. Intensifying that feeling among some in the dissent milieu was the internal transformation in the human rights movement itself with the emergence and strengthening of the ethos of (samo)zhertvovanie that is described above. In their free generosity some Westerners appeared to commit themselves to that ethos of self-giving or self-sacrifice in the pursuit of Soviet human rights as indeed some most wholeheartedly did.(913)

913: Starts with Sinyavsky and Daniel

 It was the trial itself that first led to extensive contact with Western reporters. While Western reporters had been at an earlier demonstration at Pushkin Square in support of the two authors, events had transpired too quickly there for dissidents and U.S. journalists to make contact. But at the trial, into which no witnesses were allowed other than family members along with “select” members of the Soviet citizenry to pack the remaining benches, a few kompaniia members began to stand vigil outside the courthouse. Nearby stood an array of Western journalists covering the trial.  (913-914)

Although at first the two groups merely eyed each other, kompaniia members evidently liked what they saw in part because the journalists gave a strong impression of commitment to the cause of covering, or publicizing, dissent. As Alexeyeva described it in a 2005 interview: “The first time I saw Western journalists was at the trial of Daniel and Siniavskii, and I have to say that they made a good impression on me. First of all because it was very cold; we came wrapped up just like cabbages, while they were in light coats 

and the kind of little shoes that you should wear in the fall and not in the winter. And they were downright blue with cold, but there they stood; they came in the morning just like us and left at the end of the day.” The Russians soon took action in response to this indication of commitment, and therefore potential support: “We asked them to come to a pel´meni shop for some food.” (914)

This encounter contributed to a type of dissident–journalist relationship of increasing importance to the Moscow human rights movement as well as to the emerging Soviet dissent movement as a whole. As dissenters gradually established contacts and relationships among growing numbers of like-minded citizens across the Soviet empire in the next few years, Moscow lay nevertheless at the heart of the movement. This was because as the capital of the vast country, it was the primary area to which the Soviet state permitted Western reporters to be posted. These journalists had considerable importance in conveying the ideas and dreams of the dissidents to the outside world, thereby awakening Western interest in the dissident movement that would prove essential not only to publicizing the dissenters’ cause but indeed to the physical survival of many of the group’s members. Their cause was publicized not only in the outside world; through such media organs as Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, the BBC, and the Deutsche Welle,materials offered to and published by Western correspondents could be further publicized within hours, thus becoming available to vast segments of the Soviet population who had no other means of learning about the dissent movement. (914)

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. (914-915)

Perhaps the most significant figure in developing this vibrant principle of the hu- man rights movement was, as many writing about the movement have reported, Alexander Esenin-Vol´pin—mathematician, long-time dissenter (he had been imprisoned in the 1940s), and lively participant in the doings of the 1960s generation. More than anyone else, according to such memoirists as Vladimir Bukovsky and Ludmilla Alekseyeva, Esenin-Vol´pin expounded repeatedly and forcefully on the radical idea that the Soviet Constitution of 1936 guaranteed Soviet citizens certain rights, including freedom of speech and association.24 Furthermore, he argued for what he called, long before Mikhail Gorbachev used the word, glasnost´, or transparency and openness in the Soviet state. Arguments for this principle of openness were developed in a variety of ways—from Sakharov, for whom it was the path to successful and peaceful internal and foreign relations, to Boris Shragin, for whom it was an essential expression of human dignity and conscience.25 In Eastern Europe, these principles were articulated by Vaclav Havel, who argued for an escape from the ritualistic and hypocritical ideology of the Soviet bloc through “living in truth.”26 For many Soviet dissenters, their relations with Western journalists were in a sense an extension of that principle of openness. (916)

During the interview cited above there was an emotional intensity to Alexeyeva’s descriptions of her relations with U.S. journalists that is not uncommon. Several interviews revealed this sort of enthusiasm, often with reference to specific Western correspondents.30 It is hard to know exactly how to interpret this: Is it simple nostalgia? A tendency toward hagiography and glorification of past associations that is not unknown to the Russian intelligentsia?31 No doubt there is something of this in their responses. The former and contemporary human rights defenders are not much praised in the Russian press even today, and there is a tendency among some of them to glorify the past and past associations. But it is also possible that the positive impressions of U.S. and other Western journalists expressed by several dissenters interviewed stem at least in part from what some dissidents interpreted (not necessarily in error) as individual partisanship and commitment to the dissident cause and community. (917)

WHy W. cared?-GENERATIONAL

The very list of journalists posted to Moscow gives a sense of the prestige and professional potential of the position of Moscow correspondent: Walter Cronkite, Hedrick Smith, Peter Osnos, Strobe Talbott, Kevin Close, Robert Kaiser, and many others who went on to build powerful careers following their Soviet experience. In part this was because of the status of the Soviet Union as superpower and predominant challenger to U.S. might. But it also had something to do with the increasing journalistic fascination during this period with more personal, social coverage of the Soviet Union. There was a notable interest among both journalists and U.S. readers in penetrating that seemingly impermeable Iron Curtain for glimpses of real life. There was also a strong interest in the dissent movement in and for itself. That U.S. journalists were also coming from a national context in which dissent had been raised in status through the civil rights movement, the emergence of the baby boomer generation, and protest against the Vietnam War, was also significant. It was very exciting for many reporters to have contact with brave people challenging an authoritarian regime that was the enemy of the 

United States. 

More than just reporting:

Like other visiting Westerners, U.S. journalists also engaged in some of the activities that could blur the lines between insider and outsider status as perceived in the dissent community, not only through such professional actions as that of Anatole Shub, who aided a political prisoner in dangerously ill health by publicizing her situation, but also through non-journalistic forms of aid including gift-giving and letter-carrying in which many other Westerners engaged. For example, the U.S. journalist Hedrick Smith, although his ties were not to the dissent movement alone, did a great deal to help out his Soviet associates with a variety of gifts such as food and medicine.32 Peter Osnos and his wife, the Human Rights Watch worker Susan Osnos, also contributed substantially.33 Equally significant was the growing social in- volvement of some U.S. journalists in intelligentsia and dissident networks. Paying social calls and inviting Moscow intellectuals to enter the elite homes of Westerners in Moscow also became comparatively common. The U.S. journalist Anne Garrels, for example, was well-known among Soviet dissenters and other intellectuals for her contribution to the warm and intimate sphere of Moscow intelligentsia social life, holding parties at her home and thereby introducing some Soviets to a wider range of Western goods, ideas, and personal ties.34 Other journalists did much the same, though perhaps to a lesser degree. (918)

Another was Sergei Kovalev, who was deeply aware of Western correspondents’ importance in conveying information from the underground prisoner-information leaflet Chronicle of Current Events to the West, either through reporting or through direct transport of copies of the Chronicle to the West, often through the U.S. Embassy and its diplomatic pouches.40 Vladimir Bukovsky expresses a similar neutral instrumentality in describing his efforts to bring the plight of those dissenters placed in the Soviet system of psychiatric hospitals to the attention of the West through engagment with U.S. journalists, though he does call CBS correspondent William Cole “our friend.”41 Other dissenters to have a more instrumental view of Western correspondents included the more prominent Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, both of whom relied heavily on the foreign press to publicize their human rights messages. Given that inaccurate representation of their communications could be discomfiting or even physically dangerous to them, both men could be deeply frustrated by their inability to control those portrayals in the Western press as they would have wished." (920) 

Criticism:

Sakharov writes in his memoirs, and, “I don’t understand the Western media’s love affair with Soviet citizens who defect while abroad, jeopardizing efforts to establish a firm legal footing for the right to move freely.”42 What he viewed as gratuitous Western commentary on dissident affairs particularly infuriated him. For example he expressed dismay when his wife Elena Bonner’s observations on human rights at a press conference were watered down by an unfounded journalist’s comment that Bonner was believed to wish to leave the Soviet Union.43 A report on Voice of America during Sakharov’s and Bonner’s hunger strike that Sakharov was ill was also disturbing to him: “We were infuriated; we felt fine and we feared the backlash that such exaggeration could provoke.”44 (920)

Solzhenitsyn quote: In Russia, despite Soviet oppression, there has long been a field tugging us in the direction of generosity and self-sacrifice, and it is this force that is communicated to certain Westerners and takes hold of them—perhaps not for all time but at least while they are among us (922) 

These words, along with a comment to the effect that Western journalists and others educated in the West were willing to “leave their mercenary habits behind and risk their necks” upon encountering the dissent movement, reveal a harsh critique of and hostility toward the West and its representatives, including foreign correspondents.48 Solzhenitsyn is describing them as fundamentally selfish, apparently capable of giving up that negative quality only through contact with (Russian) Soviet dissenters. These could be dismissed as the words of a self-righteous or merely cranky individual. Yet they make a great deal more sense if placed into the cultural context of the dissident struggle with insider vs. outsider identity for themselves and for foreign correspondents, as well as the narrative of (samo)zhertvovanie. Solzhenitsyn’s words may reflect at least as much an effort to assert internal dissenter community identity and the relations of such outsiders as Western journalists to that identity, and at least as much confusion about how to evaluate the behavior of those Westerners with insufficient contextual data, as it does simple hostility. (922) 

Amalrik-923

Meerson-Aksenov "The Dissident Movement and Samizdat"

Meerson-Aksenov, Michael. "The Dissident Movement and Samizdat." In The Political, Social and Religious Thought of Russian 'Samizdat'- An Anthology.  Edited by Michael Meerson-Aksenov and Boris Shagrin. Translated by Nicolas Lupinin. 19-46. Massachusetts: Nordland Publishing Company, 1977.

"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." (M-A, 19)

"Literally ideocracy means the supremacy of an idea-in our age of totalitarian societies, it means the supreme rule of a government ideology. The later is possible only in the absence of competing ideas. Ideology predominates only in full isolation, for there is a great difference between ideology in the singular and the plural. In free press societies competing ideologies exist with political groupings behind them. Any kind of party membership assumes the sense in which totalitarian society knows it. (M-A, 19)

"Reality begins to demand ideological interpretation; ideology is a deformation of this reality. For example, key ideas of communism such as "proletarian revolution," "class enemies," "ideological struggle," "enemies of the people," "building communism," and others do not reflect reality." (M-A, 20)

"In this way, irrespective of the private opinions of ideologues, ideology must remain true to itself. Aristing from this, at the level of principle, in the necessity of correlating it with objective information. This, in turn, leads to dual consciousness. However, this trait is particularly inherent in the layer of the Soviet intelligentsia whose function is, on the one hand, the preparation of ideological information, and, on the other, the extraction of 'pure' information to supplement ideology." (M-A, 22)

"Ideocracy needs a mentor in ideological catechism,--the intelligentsia which simultaneously turns out to be the servitor and the victim of ideology. It is the servitor because it is precisely to it, and not to the strata of administrators, party workers, manufactures and the military, that ideology is obliged for its worldly activity. At the same time it is the material foundation of its being. It is the victim because, consciously or unconsciously, it suffers from its mercenary role and the subjection of its labors to ideological goals which deprive it of its own professional values and which subsitute for professional honest. The historian, philosopher, literateur, teacher, journalist, writer, etc...are judged not by their professional qualities but by the degree of their 'ideological function.' (M-A,23)

"The ruling party apparatus, recognizing its dependence on ideology, and through it also its dependence on the intelligentsia, watches the latter with a sleepless eye. From the start it attempts to quash any tendency toward free thought or even cultural pluralism in the intelligentsia, for this would be destructive to its monolithic nature. If a significant part of the intelligentsia considers this position of "service" to be normal and even propitious insofar as it guarantees certain privileges, then it produces a moral conflict in the other sector of the intelligentsia between its professional consciousness and human virtue and that ideological role which it is forced to play. In the main this relates to the humanitarian intelligentsia whose activity is wholly drawn into the sphere of "ideological struggle." (M-A, 23)

"This Anglo-Saxon term, which initially signified a certain sectarian alienation of the minority from the ideological 'monolith' of the majority, especially in reference to the opposition movement in the USSR, is unusually good. A. Amal'rick very accurately noted that opposition first arose among the acadmic and creative intelligentsia and that the dissident movement commenced in the form of 'cultural opposition.' The intelligentsia came out for the 'separation of ideology from culture' not in the form of some kind of public announcement or an appeal to the party, but in the form of a free creativity frequently parallel to teh activity within the framework of the system's "official culture." This was the birth of samizdat an independent, subculture in the womb of of which a social consciousness began to be formed." (M-A,24)

"Furthermore, the possibility of 'ideocracy' assures an ideological hypnotization of society, its rejection whether voluntary  or forced, of consciousness. It assumes an ideological state signifies the rejection of personal values with that which is called ideology." (M-A, 25)

"In a certain sense, samizdat always existed in Russia, whether in the form of Prince Kurbskii's letters to Tsar Ivan the Terrible, the writing of archpriest Avvakum, the notebooks of the masons and later the Decembrists, the notebooks of the masons and later the Decembrists, the unpublished letters of Chaadeaev, or, finally in the Soviet period, in the from of factional party polemics in the '20s and various works in the '30s that could not be published." (M-A, 25)

"Despite Stalinist terror, samizdat in this form was bever crushed. Even in the fiercest year, 1936-1938, there were small groups of intellectuals that passed around within the group typed literature which was forbidden or not publishable." (M-A, 25)"

"It was transformed from an incidental use of forbidden information to a form expressing social consciousness, when it began to grow into an independent area of culture that saw itself not as a corrective or a supplement to official Soviet culture but as a self-contained and singularly original sphere for the realization of society's spiritual and intellectual life." (M-A, 26)

27: Pasternak as catalyst- "With its full weight it fell upon the writer. It showed all the intellifentia what an improper interpretation of "freedom," "liberalization," and "Creative collaboration" could lead to." (M-A, 27)

"Historical foresight has chosen as the creator of samizdat as a phenomenon which arouses man's social being toward independence-a quite unexpected social champion, one quite distant from this role, a writer taken up with the inner life of the spirit, deaf to political history and a social in the whole tone of his works. Spirit stands at the cradle of Russian samizdat. With Pasternak it began as process of the creative formation of consciousness. At first it was in literature, the poetry, the arts...Then it grew into a spontaneous social process expressed in hundreds of letters, complaints, witnessing the violation of 'human rights.' Finally, it gave birth to independent political and social thought. (M-A, 28)

"The subsequent growth of a 'legal' samizdat literature revealed: letters of protest to native and foreign organizations which witness widespread violations, a whole literature that calls for a formal adherence to socialist law and, finally, the emergence of the bulletin Khronika and the Committee for for teh Defense of Human Rights in the USSR." (M-A, 31)

"The movement is characterized by an 'absence of ideals' and by empiricism: its purpose is to defend, on the basis of law, those who are under attack by the regime; and hence it can function without overly concentrating on the nature of the regime itself." (M-A, 33)

"In the role of a disseminator of samizdat, typed in six to fifteen copies on a typewriter, I have heard the following requests many times from the reader: 'Please give me one of the first copies. In five years of reading samizdat I have managed to ruin my eyesite. 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." (M-A, 38)

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)"

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: 

- 

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

Notes of a Revolutionary

Amalrik, Andrei. Notes of a Revolutionary.  New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1982.

NB: He has a complicated reln. w/ western journalists. Needs them, but thinks they were manipulated.

Intro by Susan Jacoby: "My former husband, then the correspondent of the Washington Post, was among the minority of journalists who were willing to meet with dissenters. Most of the press corps was content to get its "unofficial" news secondhand, from less timid. Andrei Amalrik, who was a reliable source of news about official persecution of other dissenters, was the first--and for many years the only-- Russian dissident to discuss publicly what he considered to be the inadequacy of western news reporting from Moscow." (A, xii-xiii)

Ginzburg asks for help getting in touch w/ the west

" But I never asked him to let me read it, partly so that if an investigator asked me if I had seen it, I couls say I knew nothing about it. I figured the authorities would not stand upon ceremony with either Ginzburg or me. And apparently Ginzburb had the same idea, which might explain why he didn't risk going to see the foreign correspondent. Or perhaps he thought the latter would be frightened if he came to see him. Because in those days, all of us were a little afraid: afraid of the regime; afraid that people who feared the regime would take us for provocateurs; and afraid of provocateurs.

Nonetheless, I agreed to put the correspondent in touch with Ginzburg and thereby took upon myself to a role that I played until the autumn of 1969--a role that involved me, to some extent, in what was later called the Democratic Movement...Ginzburg met with the journalist at our place. Since my wife and I had no curtains for our windows, we came up with a naive conspiratorial strategy just in case someone tried to photograph us from outside: we covered the windows with paintings." (A, 3)

7: met W. through wife's arts

"The Soviet authorities are stern. They don't like girls' panties hanging on cherry trees, Russians going as guests to the homes of Americans, or foreigners buying and selling paintings. And above al, they don't like when foreign correspondents stay in Russia to long: because the longer a correspondent lives there, the better he understands the situation." (A, 9)

20: sets up interviews for Ginzburg's mother

2 generations of dissidents

"The 'generation of 1956' was influenced by de-Stalinization, by disturbances in Poland, and especially by the Hungarian uprising in October 1956. I recall my impatience while waiting for the news from Hungary. If at that time there had exited some organization that asked me to take up arms agasint the regime, I would have agreed without giving it a second thought. But there was no such organization.

The 'generation of 1966' was formed under the influence of the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial of 1966, the Czechoslavak reforms of 1967-68, and (finally) the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The 'generation of 1956' was one of 'dropouts.' I use the word in quotes, because it is the Soviet press's favorite epithet for us. It can, however, also be used without quotes, because in fact we began our protests at such an early afe that we were not allowed to complete our education. Galanskov, Ginzburg, Vladimir Bukovsky, myself, and many others were expelled from universities on several occasions; in some cases, expulsion was either preceded by arrest or followed by it.

By contrast, the 'generation of 1966' consisted of 'establishmen' people. Instead of half-scholars, it included doctors of science; instead of poets who had never published a single line, it included longtime members of the Union of Soviet Writers; instead of "persons with no specific occupations,' it included old Bolsheviks, officers, actors, and artists. For many of them, the years of 1953-1956 had also been decisive. But they still had hopes for improvement; and it was not until the unmistakable regression toward Stalinization in 1965-1966 that their inner dissent was strengthened and their protest provoked." (A, 21)

29: at a trial he met Karel van het Reve-Het Parol University of Leyden, published his books abroad

"Although it was against the law, the witnesses were taken out of teh 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," "realease of the degendents 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.


The importance of the statement was understood in the West. It was reprinted, fully or in part, in many newspapers, and The Times of London devoted an editorial to it. The flow of statements and appeals that followed it during the next two months raised hopes that a social movement of sorts had surfaced in the USSR and that something would happen at any moment. It was rather like the hopes raised in 1956 by the theory of liberalization known as 'The Thaw.' (A, 31)

36-37: Attempt to hold press conference, KGB discovers it

"No foreign journalist in the USSR can really feel and believe that he is a "noninvolved" chronicler "looking upon both good and evil with indifference" primarily because he himself is an object of manipulation by the Soviet system. Naturally, the authorities realize they cannot manage the foreign press as they do the Soviet media. But to some degree they are able to control the information that foreign correspondents send abroad from Moscow. This accomplished in two ways: by isolating the correspondents and by employing stick-and-carrot policy. (A, 38)"-examples if need be

"The role played by foreign journalists in the USSR as a source of information has been, and still is, crucial. And many journalists, despite all difficulties, have resisted blackmail--a fact confirmed inter alia by the long list of correspondents expelled from Moscow in the past fifteen years...

Lots of thoughts on Western journalists, carrots and sticks-flogging

"We had been sending our declarations and articles to the outside world because that was hte only way we could make them public without censorship. Our aim was to give the world a better idea of the state of affairs in the USSR and to reach the Russian people via Western radio. And in that we succeeded. The number of listeners to foreign radio broadcasts increased several times over. We could not, of course, instruct the Western papers and radio stations how to publish and broadcast our material. And sometimes they wrote and broadcast the opposite of what we wanted people to hear." (A, 52)

59: VOA on Czech invasion
60: brings names of protestors

73: "In that cold spring of 1969 we often met with Anatole Shub of the Washington Post, who tried to convince me that the USSR would soon have to make some changes, however slight, in order to find a common language with the West. But Shub, as an American, had too much faith in common sense. The Soviet system is basically senseless."

74: Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?


84: Western correspondents assumed he was KGB
"They took it for granted that Russians were afraid to socialize with foreigners and that the KGB would send agents to contact them. From this it followed that a Russian whou held no official position and yet was so manifestly willing to meet with them must--or could--be a KGB agent. (A,91)"

91: search of Natalya Gorbanevskaya's house

92: "After Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? was published, I gave my first interviews to American correspondents: to James Clarity of the New York Times and William Cole of CBS...We established good relations with both of them and were invited to their homes for dinner on several occasions. (A, 92)"

"I regarded the interview with William Cole as very important, since it was the first TV interview weith a dissident and millions of people would be able to see an gear me. It was a terrible blow when I learned that the video tape had been confiscated Sheremetovo Airport. (It was shown at my trial as one of the most damning pieces of evidence.) I thought that Cole would be mortally frightened by all this, but he suhhested that we repeat the interview. I agreed, with the proviso that he not try and get the videotape out of the country himself. This time I invited Petr Yakir to take part, and he invite Bukovsky, and a taped talk by Ginzburg was smuggled out of his prison camp. (A, 93)"

93: CBS never shows it, it's in Russian , why people dislike America

"I have never understood the notion that Brezhnev is a "liberal," or what meaning his admirers attach to that word. 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. (A, 97)"

107-108-legality

"I told Kirinkin that in my opinion there was nothing either anti-Soviet  or libelous in my writings, and that I would give no testimony during the investigation." (A, 108)

141: legality issues w/ the trial

142-143: getting statement to wife, it was eventually published in the Chronicle

Soviet Dissent, Part 3

"There is no formal structure in the human rights movement in the USSR. There are neither leaders, nor subordinates; no one assigns tasks to others; instead each is prepared to do what is necessary (A, 283)."

In the early years, "Tasks were coordinated between friends, and this ensured mutual trust without which organized activities would be impossible under conditions of constant surveillance. This system made it possible to fill vacancies frequently created by arrests: someone close to te arrested would take over his responsibilities. (A, 283)

"The backbone of the Soviet human rights movement is samizdat which facilitates the dissemination of human rights ideas. The channels of communication used by samizdat provide the connecting links essential for organization work. These channels spread out silently and invisibly; like mushroom spores, they emerge here and there in the form of public statements. (A, 284)"

"Most of the activists' energies are spent on the entire process of samizdat. Because of the lack of sophisticated technology and the necessity of working in secret, the reproduction of samizdat materials requires an enormous amount of labor. Human rights activists have dramatically increased the scope of samizdat distribution by making major changes in this process. They have transformed insolated instances of transmitting manuscripts to the West into an entire system of samizdat-tamizdat-samizdat (A, 284)."

"The first regular contacts with the West were established by Andrey Amalrik. Until 1969 he was practically the only "specialist" in this area. Through him passed most of the human rights documents--transcripts of trials, as well as political and artistic literature. (A, 284)"

What he smuggled-284

"The limited quantities of these books returned home from the West by complicated routes could not possibly satisfy the colossal demand. So tamizdat books were not only read, but used to make copies, usually photographically- a less time-consuming process, but one that requires access to a print shop. Because of the poor quality of Soviet paper, typing ribbons, and carbon paper, the used of typed originals for this process is impossible. The use of copy machines began in the midseventies when people capable of designing and building them could be found. Technical know-how is not enough; the ability and determination to organize the theft of parts not available to the public is also essential. Chanhes in the method of retyping samizdat manuscripts were also made. Side by side with the familiar "cottage industry" typists could be hired because the sale of samizdat works in the demand had become common. People who devoted all their time and effort to reproducing and distributing samizday made their appearance for example, Yulius Telesin (now in Israel), who earned the nickname "Prince of Samizdat" and Ernst Rudenko (now dead). As a rule, price was determined by the cost of typing and materials. Neither the time nor risk involved in distribution were calculated into the price; these were considered a contribution to society. Usually the paid typists were friends of the activists; certain efforts to enlarge the pool of typists were met with disaster. Some new typists, once they realized the nature of what they were typing, turned the manuscripts over to the KGB. After years of painstaking and dangerous work, samizdat channels and thus links between human rights activists were consolidated and greatly enlarged (A, 285)"

"The Chronicle of Current Events, which ten years later Sakharov called the greatest achievement of the movement, was born in 1968, a fruitful and important year for the human rights movement. The first issue appeared on April 30, amid the heat of repression against the signers. Its prototype was the informational bulletin of the Crimean Tartars about which the Moscow activists learned. By the summer of 1983 sixty-four issues of the Chronicle had reached the West. A reliable source of information on the situation of human rights in the USSR, the Chronicle of Current Events is, as its name implies, intended to report violations of human rights in the USSR, human rights statements, and facts relating to the implementation of human rights "without prior official permission." The factual nature of the Chronicle determines its approach to material: in principle it refrains from giving commentary. However, the Chronicle is not only a register for human rights violations in the USSR or a chronicle of the human rights movement, but also, of that emerging movement, as well as between human rights activists and members of other dissident movements, it aided in the dissemination of the ideas and influence (A, 285) ."