"To use the term 'editors' is necessary but imprecise shorthand for discussing those who produce the underground publication. PErsons once involved in final stages of Chronicle issues repeatedly have said in interviews that there really have been no Chronicle "editors" in the larger sense of person who plan and direct Chronicle coverage. "Compiler" seems the more accurate description of Chronicle editors' actual functions, for they usually have had little to say about what information reached them and most frequently have been responsible for assembling what information they did receive into readable, coherent form." (H,119)
"Outside of the small group in Moscow that has provided continuity for overall production responsibility, there has been a larger corps of correspondents, informants, messengers, writers, typists, couriers and distributors without the Chronicle would have remained the narrowly focused brief bulletin it was in 1968. Now a periodical of 100 pages and more per issue, the Chronicle probable ranks in the numbers of people producing it with a large newspaper." -second round
"What would be called the 'news flow' in an American periodical has developed in the Chronicle case with remarkable efficiency. It has improved over the years as the network spread, connecting not only the sources of news but readers and user of Chronicle information both inside the Soviet Union and abroad. The KGB seems to have been unable to halt the Chronicle news flow, and indeed may have decided that the most difficult task in attempts to silence the publication. For Chronicle information moves through successive hands to typed pages in a private world of special and close peripheral relationships. It may be remembered that in the first months of the infant Chronicle, Natalia Gorbanevskaya..."-how to get them info (H,120)
"This system has functioned for years with impressive reliability and accuracy, while also protecting the Chronicle. Even persons who lived in Moscow and knew active dissidents and who themselves were involved in the democratic movement usually did not know who compiled the Chronicle." (H, 120)
"To discuss the organization of the Chronicle is virtually a contradiction in terms. Those who have worked on the Chronicle describe an amorphous, undisciplined process in which participants pass slips of paper with handwritten notes brought from Siberia or carry a few sheets of type-written paper across Moscow to another apartment. Trust in one another and deep commitment to promoting the practice of civil rights nurtured voluntary and self-discipline work on the Chronicle. It has been a system devoid of directives and commands, as well editorial assignments." (H, 121
"News from labor camps also flowed naturally to the Chronicle, as wives and friends of dissidents returned from remote Siberian prisons to pass on information. The Soviet labor camps eventually became something of a seive for information." (H, 121)
Ginzburg interview:
"The basic thing is that there are lots of political prisoners. Each one is sentenced to a certain period of time, so no month passes when someone is not release. NAturally, e can carry a good deal of information from the camps. When you leave the camp you feel like a "stuffed duck," we'd say. For three months before you are scheduled for release,, people are giveing you information to pass on. After I got out, I'd remember things in my sleep and I'd wake up and write them down.
Then you would write down things in the camps and smuggle those out. It's hard, but not impossible. I managed to get a copy of the labor camp rules smuggled out. In 1969, we made a tape recording inside a camp and smuggled that out and Voice of America broadcast it. We thought about smuggling for 24 hours a day." (H 121-122)
Bukobsky interview
"The information comes by devious routes. Some is carried when a fellow is released from the camps. THere would be a contact somewhere along the line after he left. Or you could bribe prison guards so that when you met with relatives, you could pass written information or verbal information. Then the relatives might stop in Moscow and pass on what you said." (H, 122)
"Trials of dissidents are an obvious source of news for the Chronicle. Although ostensible public, the trials usually have been held in courtrooms packed with KGB crowds. But when friends of dissident could argue their way info the courts, they would make careful notes of procedures. It was risky business, for the notetaker was automatically identified to the KGB and he or she invited arrest of questioning. In later years, friend of dissidents smuggled small tape recorders into courtrooms. From these recordings came the unusual transcripts of trials published by the Chronicle." (H, 123)
123: by mid '70s full proceedings
"Time and again, as Soviet authorities attempted to stage political trials in the form of authentic proceedings, the Chronicle published embarrassing verbatim texts showing judges refusing to hear dissidents' evidence, or prosecutors and investigators distorting facts and of judges handing down sentences against all rational consideration of original charges." (H, 123-124)
127: estimate 20-40 people involved in final stages of an issue
early years just NG
129: flaws
"One can find similar imbalances in the early years of the Chronicle regarding religious affairs, pr the vast Soviet rural population, or workers' grievances, or women's rights. The Chronicle was the child of Moscow intellectuals concerned with rights of speech and press. Successive issues of the Chronicle attracted readers with like attitudes, ready to contribute like information. Grigorenko's special interest in the Crimean Tartars, Alexeyeva's contacts with the Ukranians, and Kovalev's connections with Lithuanians likewise accounted for some earlier editorial themes." (H, 129)
"THe surrogate Chronicles in London, New York, and Munich have become important in their own right as outlets for Soviet internal news. Their circumstances allowed editors leeway in shaping publications, although the Kline-Chalidze Chronicle of Human Rights in the USSR or Lyubarsky USSR News Brief found themselves limited, too, by the available channels of information from the Soviet Union. (H,130)
THe Chronicle of Current Events that is translated and printed by Amnesty International has become an unequaled source of photographs of Soviet human rights activists. Smuggled from the Soviet Union and reproduced beginning in the volume containing Chronicle nos. 28-31... (H,130)
News reports that have reached New York and Munich from Moscow have come through many channels. Recall that the Kline-Chalidze Chronicle was started in the spring of 1973, after it seemed that the Moscow Chronicle had been silenced. With that Moscow outlet closed information flowed to New York." (H,130)
Reddaway interview: "We were amazed at the volume of material forwarded to use; it was really enormous, so much so that it was never able to fit all the available material in one issue. THe sources are many: for instance, we have recieved a great deal from the so-called democratic circles, the humanists, as it were, of the Soviet movement for human rights. We have received, and still receiving, a lot of material from labor camps, psychiatric institutions, and from the activists of the Jewish Exodus movement. " (H,130-131)
"This underground stream of documents from the Soviet Union to to Western Europe and the United States began as a trickle in the mid-1960s. THe volume had become so great by 1972 that the Munich-based Radio Liberty assembled enough samizdat to produce four volumes averaging more than 600 pages each. These formed the basis of a samizdat archive, directed initially by Albert Boiter, that grew to tens of thousands of pages of material. In 1973 and 1074, when the New York Chronicle was getting underway, the Radio Liberty Arkhiv Samizdata averaged more than 3500 pages of documents from the Soviet Union each year."(H,131)
"This material was being smuggled or simply carried out of the Soviet Union by Western correspondents, by tourists and diplomats. Some was being sent in diplomatic pouches. The early issues of the Chronicle itself were slipped into the sealed diplomatic mail of the Moscow embassies of Italy, the United STates, France and Canada, although not necessarily with the ambassador's knowledge. Letters sent to Vienna and Helsinki from Moscow successfully carried samizdat. Addressed to these "neutral" capitals, they seemed to pass Soviet surveillance of international mail more readily than letters going else where in Western Europe. " (H, 131)
"There was little risk in these enterprises, and so the samizdat flow surged by the year. At worst, a foreigner carrying samizdat out of the Soviet Union would be searched and the material confiscation...But for every piece of samizdat the KGB found, hundreds of other documents streamed out of the Soviet Union." (H, 131)
"The surrogate Chronicles have been directed to two large audiences. One iabroad, largely in the United States and WEstern Europe, and composed of journalists, government officials, human rights advocates attached to various civic organizations, and scholars. The other audience is the Soviet population itself. Some 2,000 copies of the Russian translation of each issue of the Chronicle of Human Rights in the Soviet Union are printed and most of those are intended for the Soviet Union. In addition, Khronka Press has reprinted Russian copies of the Moscow Chronicle as issues have been recieved in New York. The pressrun has gotten up to as many as 1200 and these too are meant to be smuggled into the Soviet Union." (H, 133)
Showing posts with label Chronicle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chronicle. Show all posts
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Saturday, October 29, 2011
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)"
"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)"
Friday, October 28, 2011
Hopkins- Vol. 2 "The Spark"
21: Baptist newspaper since '64
"From the start, then, the Chronicle was set apart from other and plentiful samizdat literature, political tracrs, petitions, statements and reports...Soviet and foreign journalists could get this type of information in Moscow in the late 1960s only on a sporadic basis and only if they were involved in samizdat and dissident circles. Even then, sometimes incomplete. If one were outside established dissident circles, the most one knew about official actions besides rumors was contained in cryptic Soviet reports. They told virtually nothing except that something had happened. (H, 22)"
-alternative to official information
"The style of the Chronicle was heavy on facts--names, ages, dates, places, specific events. It was light on both judgements and speculation or opinion (H,22)"
NG: "Basically there was an attempt in all the letters to be very exact, to lay out the facts, to describe the violations of rights, to quote articles of law. Nothing was exaggerated. The love for objectivity was in the air. (H, 23)"
"The first issue drew heavily on actions against the Chronicle group and its friends and acquaintances. Besides the Galanskov-Ginzburg proceeding with which some of the Chronicle people were closely connected, protest statements reproduced in that first issue revealed a pattern of signatures. Many of those who encouraged founding of the Chronicle turned up as co-authors of grievances...This is to sat that Gorbanevskaya used what was available, and most of that information came from or was collected by one relatively small Moscow group. (H,25)"
"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 particul samizdat item were made could not be said, the work being done privately and separately. (H, 26)
-expected it to be short
-28: -end of '68, assert legality
-how to submit info
29: ""The price for that system, however, was a secrecy and confidentiality that amounted to an underground publication (H,29). "
"If the Chronicle was legal, why be secret? If the Chronicle was secret could it be legal? (H,29)"
"Not only the now standard arrests and interrogations were reported; political documents and statements, internal disputes involving Soviet policy, and protests and grievances from among an increasingly broad spectrum of the Soviet population were reported as well. The information, moreover, was assembled in one readable source, in direct and unambiguous Russian. There was no need to read between the lines as Soviets routinely did when the official Soviet press reported some specially sensitive issue." (H, 30)
31: samizdat news
"The information flow to and from the Chronicle developed in important ways under Gorbanevskaya. First the volume of facts increased as friends and readers caught on to what the Chronicle wanted and was willing to publish. Also, a sort of "beat" system of reporting emerged. It was not planned but developed simply because of personal interests and contacts. (H, 33)."
Ei: Tartars- Grigorkenko
Jews Takir
Ukraine-Alexeyeva
34: Amalrik, Litinov, Yakir
"Through this connection, the contents of the Chronicle moved through an already established information network of Moscow correspondents, Western news agencies and newspaper, radio, and television reports to editorial offices and media abroad. Abroad, foreign shortwave broadcasters picked up Chronicle information, and individual news reports based on Chronicle items or contents of whole issues found their way back to the Soviet Union in Russian-language broadcasts of the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and Voice of America. Radio Liberty broadcast readings of entire issues of the Chronicle. (H, 34)
"Although foreign radio signals were heavily hammed from the summer of 1968 to the fall of 1973, broadcasts could still be generally served the Chronicle well, as audiences numbering in the tens of millions in the Soviet Union heard the news from the Chronicle. (H, 34)"
36: implications of Red Square
"In the aftermath of the invasion, in the three years leading up to the twenty-fourth Communist party congress in 1971, at which General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev renewed a policy of coexistence and cooperation with the West, important debates were held over the implications of this policy. On the one side, the benefits of detente in terms of Western trade and financial assistance for the lagging Soviet economy were attractive to a number of groups in the Soviet Union. But there also was the argument, frequently made in the Soviet press, that in times of closer relations with the West, greater vigilance was required within the country. This was an old problem for Soviet leaders-... Not great on the re-freeze"(H, 37)
41-42: Gorbanevskaya trial
"From the start, then, the Chronicle was set apart from other and plentiful samizdat literature, political tracrs, petitions, statements and reports...Soviet and foreign journalists could get this type of information in Moscow in the late 1960s only on a sporadic basis and only if they were involved in samizdat and dissident circles. Even then, sometimes incomplete. If one were outside established dissident circles, the most one knew about official actions besides rumors was contained in cryptic Soviet reports. They told virtually nothing except that something had happened. (H, 22)"
-alternative to official information
"The style of the Chronicle was heavy on facts--names, ages, dates, places, specific events. It was light on both judgements and speculation or opinion (H,22)"
NG: "Basically there was an attempt in all the letters to be very exact, to lay out the facts, to describe the violations of rights, to quote articles of law. Nothing was exaggerated. The love for objectivity was in the air. (H, 23)"
"The first issue drew heavily on actions against the Chronicle group and its friends and acquaintances. Besides the Galanskov-Ginzburg proceeding with which some of the Chronicle people were closely connected, protest statements reproduced in that first issue revealed a pattern of signatures. Many of those who encouraged founding of the Chronicle turned up as co-authors of grievances...This is to sat that Gorbanevskaya used what was available, and most of that information came from or was collected by one relatively small Moscow group. (H,25)"
"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 particul samizdat item were made could not be said, the work being done privately and separately. (H, 26)
-expected it to be short
-28: -end of '68, assert legality
-how to submit info
29: ""The price for that system, however, was a secrecy and confidentiality that amounted to an underground publication (H,29). "
"If the Chronicle was legal, why be secret? If the Chronicle was secret could it be legal? (H,29)"
"Not only the now standard arrests and interrogations were reported; political documents and statements, internal disputes involving Soviet policy, and protests and grievances from among an increasingly broad spectrum of the Soviet population were reported as well. The information, moreover, was assembled in one readable source, in direct and unambiguous Russian. There was no need to read between the lines as Soviets routinely did when the official Soviet press reported some specially sensitive issue." (H, 30)
31: samizdat news
"The information flow to and from the Chronicle developed in important ways under Gorbanevskaya. First the volume of facts increased as friends and readers caught on to what the Chronicle wanted and was willing to publish. Also, a sort of "beat" system of reporting emerged. It was not planned but developed simply because of personal interests and contacts. (H, 33)."
Ei: Tartars- Grigorkenko
Jews Takir
Ukraine-Alexeyeva
34: Amalrik, Litinov, Yakir
"Through this connection, the contents of the Chronicle moved through an already established information network of Moscow correspondents, Western news agencies and newspaper, radio, and television reports to editorial offices and media abroad. Abroad, foreign shortwave broadcasters picked up Chronicle information, and individual news reports based on Chronicle items or contents of whole issues found their way back to the Soviet Union in Russian-language broadcasts of the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and Voice of America. Radio Liberty broadcast readings of entire issues of the Chronicle. (H, 34)
"Although foreign radio signals were heavily hammed from the summer of 1968 to the fall of 1973, broadcasts could still be generally served the Chronicle well, as audiences numbering in the tens of millions in the Soviet Union heard the news from the Chronicle. (H, 34)"
36: implications of Red Square
"In the aftermath of the invasion, in the three years leading up to the twenty-fourth Communist party congress in 1971, at which General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev renewed a policy of coexistence and cooperation with the West, important debates were held over the implications of this policy. On the one side, the benefits of detente in terms of Western trade and financial assistance for the lagging Soviet economy were attractive to a number of groups in the Soviet Union. But there also was the argument, frequently made in the Soviet press, that in times of closer relations with the West, greater vigilance was required within the country. This was an old problem for Soviet leaders-... Not great on the re-freeze"(H, 37)
41-42: Gorbanevskaya trial
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Issue 28 Published by Amnesty International
December 21, 1970
Moscow
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
Friday, October 14, 2011
Hopkins Vol. 1 "Resistance"
Hopkins,
Mark. Russia’s Underground Press: The
Chronicle of Current Events.” New York: Praeger Publishers, 1983.
"They were all acutely aware that information five to Western correspondents in Moscow about arrests and trials about ominous reports of hunger strikes in labor camps, and of life there among political prisoners could be transmitted in foreign broadcasts. Sometimes it was just a matter of hours after a document was given to an American news agency in Moscow that a foreign radio report about the event could be heard in shortwave programs in Moscow. The British Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Livbery, Duetsche Welle and Voice of America Russian-language broadcasts circumvented the Soviet censorship administration for the press, radio, television, literature and general publishing. These reports in turn attracted new sources of information, nurturing a grapevine of civil rights news. Khushchev had halted blanket jamming of foreign radio broadcasts in Russian in 1963, with the exception of the officially despised Radio Liberty, whose special focus on internal Soviet political events made it a category unto itself. People could listen to all the foreign news they wanted in the mid-1960s in the Soviet Union. The tacit foreign radio stations was creating a vast information network reporting to the mass Soviet audience independently of the Glavit organization.
"They were all acutely aware that information five to Western correspondents in Moscow about arrests and trials about ominous reports of hunger strikes in labor camps, and of life there among political prisoners could be transmitted in foreign broadcasts. Sometimes it was just a matter of hours after a document was given to an American news agency in Moscow that a foreign radio report about the event could be heard in shortwave programs in Moscow. The British Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Livbery, Duetsche Welle and Voice of America Russian-language broadcasts circumvented the Soviet censorship administration for the press, radio, television, literature and general publishing. These reports in turn attracted new sources of information, nurturing a grapevine of civil rights news. Khushchev had halted blanket jamming of foreign radio broadcasts in Russian in 1963, with the exception of the officially despised Radio Liberty, whose special focus on internal Soviet political events made it a category unto itself. People could listen to all the foreign news they wanted in the mid-1960s in the Soviet Union. The tacit foreign radio stations was creating a vast information network reporting to the mass Soviet audience independently of the Glavit organization.
"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. (H, 8-9)"
"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. (H,9)
10-11: Dologprudny meeting
"There were a series of get-togethers among the increasingly active dissidents in the late winter and early spring of 1968. There was no organization, no specific leaders, no agendas, no records-none of the paraphenalia that goes on with planned, orderly action. Natalia Gorbanevskaya remembers talking with Ilya Gabai, among others, before the first issue of "The Chronicle" appeared and deciding that a bulletin of some kind must be issued to publicize the mounting information they had on hand... (H, 10)"
-it was an informal decision 10-11
10-11: Dologprudny meeting
"There were a series of get-togethers among the increasingly active dissidents in the late winter and early spring of 1968. There was no organization, no specific leaders, no agendas, no records-none of the paraphenalia that goes on with planned, orderly action. Natalia Gorbanevskaya remembers talking with Ilya Gabai, among others, before the first issue of "The Chronicle" appeared and deciding that a bulletin of some kind must be issued to publicize the mounting information they had on hand... (H, 10)"
-it was an informal decision 10-11
"The Dolgoprudny meeting ended with an understanding that Natalia Gorbanevskaya would produce some sort of "bulletin" reporting information from friends of the group and anyone else about the persectutions underway. It still had no name. It would be typed because that was how virtually all samizdat was produced in the Soviet Union. The general Soviet public, then or now, did not nor does not have access top printing presses or even mimeograph machines, let alone electonic copiers. Anything produced on Soviet state presses, in any case, is censored by Glavit. This is to say that the talk in 1968 of putting out a private, unofficial "bulletin" readily translated in the minds of those involved into a few typed carbon copies of the samizdat that would be circulated among friends, one of the copies being reserved for a contact in the Western press corps in Moscow. (H,12)
Paradox: "Its main intent was to publicize violations of human rights in the Soviet Union, especially the lesser known incidents, and thereby draw what dissidents thought would be curative world opinion to the Soviet malady. The group set out to be neither clandestine on public activities and confined itself scrupulously within the limits of written Soviet law. (H,12)
12: didn't think it would survive
"The Chronicle group shunned conscious, planned secrecy. They regarded that tactic as too similar to the Bolsheviks, to the Leninst concept of a political movement" (H,13)
"The Chronicle group believed more in public action, in holding a mirror to the the Soviet social syste built by Stalin. They wanted little more than the civil liberties ensured in the 1936 "Stalin constitution." (H,13)
"Yet, as Gorbanevskaya began preparing the first issue of the Chronicle, the work was per force and by habit and practice more of a clandestine operation than a public petition. It was the opposite of how the dissidents, in their more idealistic moments, hoped to function." (H, 13)
"Two specific phrases proved important to the Chronicle-in article 70, the words "slanderous fabrication that discredit," and in article 190-1, "deliberately false statement derogatory" to the Soviet state. The KGB and Soviet courts were to use these time and time again to argue that the Chronicle was an illegal publication."
"In compiling a bulletin bout protests and objections to the Soviet government and about reprisals against individuals who challenged authorities, Gorbanevskaya had to conduct herself carefully. She could not use the telepone to obtain information, for everyone knew that the KGB tapped private phones. She could not, without some risk, carry notes with information on her person. It was risky for her, and it was risky for those who supplied her. KGB experts could trace people by their handwriting. Traveling around spread-out Moscow in crowded buses or the metro took hours our of a day if one wanted personally to talk with friends. Gorbanevskaya had to keep a file of information in her apartment. The KGB could search apartments whenever they chose. She had no readily available reference books on Soviet law to check criminal proceedings. She had no archive, no file of newspaper or magazine clippings against which to check names, dates, places and events. It was like putting together a bulletin out of a shoebox, relying on one's own memory or the memory and exactness of others." (H, 15)
"The KGB could connect documents and typewriters. Each machine, like fingerprints, has its own its own typeface characteristics. One had to be careful in writing samizdat that it could not be traced through other items typed on the same machine." (H, 16)
17: Human Rights Year
17: she gave birth, came back and finished it up
Paradox: "Its main intent was to publicize violations of human rights in the Soviet Union, especially the lesser known incidents, and thereby draw what dissidents thought would be curative world opinion to the Soviet malady. The group set out to be neither clandestine on public activities and confined itself scrupulously within the limits of written Soviet law. (H,12)
12: didn't think it would survive
"The Chronicle group shunned conscious, planned secrecy. They regarded that tactic as too similar to the Bolsheviks, to the Leninst concept of a political movement" (H,13)
"The Chronicle group believed more in public action, in holding a mirror to the the Soviet social syste built by Stalin. They wanted little more than the civil liberties ensured in the 1936 "Stalin constitution." (H,13)
"Yet, as Gorbanevskaya began preparing the first issue of the Chronicle, the work was per force and by habit and practice more of a clandestine operation than a public petition. It was the opposite of how the dissidents, in their more idealistic moments, hoped to function." (H, 13)
"Two specific phrases proved important to the Chronicle-in article 70, the words "slanderous fabrication that discredit," and in article 190-1, "deliberately false statement derogatory" to the Soviet state. The KGB and Soviet courts were to use these time and time again to argue that the Chronicle was an illegal publication."
"In compiling a bulletin bout protests and objections to the Soviet government and about reprisals against individuals who challenged authorities, Gorbanevskaya had to conduct herself carefully. She could not use the telepone to obtain information, for everyone knew that the KGB tapped private phones. She could not, without some risk, carry notes with information on her person. It was risky for her, and it was risky for those who supplied her. KGB experts could trace people by their handwriting. Traveling around spread-out Moscow in crowded buses or the metro took hours our of a day if one wanted personally to talk with friends. Gorbanevskaya had to keep a file of information in her apartment. The KGB could search apartments whenever they chose. She had no readily available reference books on Soviet law to check criminal proceedings. She had no archive, no file of newspaper or magazine clippings against which to check names, dates, places and events. It was like putting together a bulletin out of a shoebox, relying on one's own memory or the memory and exactness of others." (H, 15)
"The KGB could connect documents and typewriters. Each machine, like fingerprints, has its own its own typeface characteristics. One had to be careful in writing samizdat that it could not be traced through other items typed on the same machine." (H, 16)
17: Human Rights Year
17: she gave birth, came back and finished it up
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Uncensored Russia Vol. 5- Camps
206: Information itself is evidence of a network
207 (6): Ginzburg, Daniel start hunger strike-they get concessions
208-209 (8): Ginzburg personal hunger strike
214 (9): "It has become known..."that's the reporting network---things just "become known."
224 (11): letter from Prisoners summarized in Chronicle
350: They tried to get a feel for samizdat in the country and promote it
354: Sakharov
Extensive reporting on the provinces
402: Uzbekistan
207 (6): Ginzburg, Daniel start hunger strike-they get concessions
208-209 (8): Ginzburg personal hunger strike
214 (9): "It has become known..."that's the reporting network---things just "become known."
224 (11): letter from Prisoners summarized in Chronicle
350: They tried to get a feel for samizdat in the country and promote it
354: Sakharov
Extensive reporting on the provinces
402: Uzbekistan
Uncensored Russia Vol. 4- Czech
95: R: "THe dramatic Sovietinvasion of Czechoslavokia on the night of August 20-21st, 1968, introduced a new dimension into the Soviet civil rights movement....The demonstration of August 25th and other acts of protest by Soviet citizens form the core of this chapter."
96: No 3. was 10 days after the invasion
99: protests begin
THey reprint a LEditor about the protest
-includes list of participants
-It's by the editor of Chronicle Natalya Gorbanevskaya
102: (7 and 5)- consequences of being a radical
104: Rise of self-immolation as a form of protest.
112-begins trials of the arrested demonstrators
113 (4) "As reported in the third issue of the Chronicle, seven people staged a sit down demonstration at Execution Place in REd Square on August 25th, 1968 as a protest against the sending of Soviet troops into Czechoslavakia (R, 113)."
Gorbanavskaya declared unfit
114-118: just how absurd the trial was.
119: The Soviet Press as a comparison
4: "Just like the official announcement the articles mention, in the first place, only one charge, that of violating public order: i/e/ the charge under article 190-3. Secondly, even this 'violation' is not described, and nowhere is there any reference to the fact that was a protest demonstration against the intervention of Soviet troops in in Czechoslovakia. Instead, the writers of these articles, not shrinking from direct liverl, give 'character sketches of the accused aimed at compromising them in the eyes of the reader (R, 119)"
159 (11): Gorbanavskaya arrested
96: No 3. was 10 days after the invasion
99: protests begin
THey reprint a LEditor about the protest
-includes list of participants
-It's by the editor of Chronicle Natalya Gorbanevskaya
102: (7 and 5)- consequences of being a radical
104: Rise of self-immolation as a form of protest.
112-begins trials of the arrested demonstrators
113 (4) "As reported in the third issue of the Chronicle, seven people staged a sit down demonstration at Execution Place in REd Square on August 25th, 1968 as a protest against the sending of Soviet troops into Czechoslavakia (R, 113)."
Gorbanavskaya declared unfit
114-118: just how absurd the trial was.
119: The Soviet Press as a comparison
4: "Just like the official announcement the articles mention, in the first place, only one charge, that of violating public order: i/e/ the charge under article 190-3. Secondly, even this 'violation' is not described, and nowhere is there any reference to the fact that was a protest demonstration against the intervention of Soviet troops in in Czechoslovakia. Instead, the writers of these articles, not shrinking from direct liverl, give 'character sketches of the accused aimed at compromising them in the eyes of the reader (R, 119)"
159 (11): Gorbanavskaya arrested
Uncensored Russia Vol. 3-Ginzburg
68: Trial for someone reading The White Book
71: BIRTH OF THE MOVEMENT
(6) "On December 5th, 1968, the traditional demonstration to mark Constitution Day took play on Pushkin Square in Moscow. It is well known that the first demonstration at the Pushkin monument took place on December 5th, 1965, as a sign of protest afainst te arrest of Sinyavsky and Daniel and was held under the slogan 'Respect the Constitution!' The demonstration in 1968 was a silent meeting: about twenty people stood for ten minutes with head bared around the monument. A large number of volunteer police and K.G.B. men were also present: they waited expectedly on the sidelines but did not themselves attempt to organize any provocations. (R, 71)
(11) On December 5th, 1969, the traditional silent demonstration was held on Pushkin Square...This time about fifty people went to honour the memory of their comrades in camps, prison and exile. At six o'clock in the evening the demonstrators surrounded by a crowd of plain-clothese security men, bared their heads (R, 71) ."
73: Issue 1 juxtaposes Ginzburg w/ human rights year
79-80: protest letters re: Ginzburg
83: effects of signing letters
90: Kaiden (student who committed suicide after found to be reading Ginzburg) Chronicle devotes lots to him
71: BIRTH OF THE MOVEMENT
(6) "On December 5th, 1968, the traditional demonstration to mark Constitution Day took play on Pushkin Square in Moscow. It is well known that the first demonstration at the Pushkin monument took place on December 5th, 1965, as a sign of protest afainst te arrest of Sinyavsky and Daniel and was held under the slogan 'Respect the Constitution!' The demonstration in 1968 was a silent meeting: about twenty people stood for ten minutes with head bared around the monument. A large number of volunteer police and K.G.B. men were also present: they waited expectedly on the sidelines but did not themselves attempt to organize any provocations. (R, 71)
(11) On December 5th, 1969, the traditional silent demonstration was held on Pushkin Square...This time about fifty people went to honour the memory of their comrades in camps, prison and exile. At six o'clock in the evening the demonstrators surrounded by a crowd of plain-clothese security men, bared their heads (R, 71) ."
73: Issue 1 juxtaposes Ginzburg w/ human rights year
79-80: protest letters re: Ginzburg
83: effects of signing letters
90: Kaiden (student who committed suicide after found to be reading Ginzburg) Chronicle devotes lots to him
Uncensored Russia Vol. 2- S & D
"Two important points emerge. First, the Chronicle's aim is openness, non-secretiveness, freedom of information and expression. All these notions are subsumed in the one Russian word glasnost. (R, 26)"
"The Chronicle regards itself as lefal because it merely compiles an accurate recrod of events and there is truth there can--legally speaking--be no 'libel'. 'anti-Soviet' or otherwise( R, 26)."
"Anonymity, let us recall, has seemed to the Chronicle's editors a regretabble necessity, forced on them by the authorities regard for legality. (R, 29)"
That confidence has grown still more when the maximum cross-checking against the Soviet press, reports from Western documents has confirmed the Chronicle's accuracy and revealed no serious errors at all (R, 29)."
R. is GLOWING
"As for the correspondents' own sources, these vary widely. In the compiling of trial accounts, for example, many people--including defendants witnesses and lawyers-- who have been present either at the original trial or at the appeal hearing, can help. In addition leaks of information and even of documents (176-183) sometimes provide material from official institutions...(R, 30)"
30: Correspondent's network-look how impressive
reaches the west 2 weeks to 2 months
32: audience
33: KGB
54 (1)": We are not illegal, how to send them info
55 (2): discussion of their tone
"Samizdat had a dual right to figure in the Chronicle: first, in so far as a part of expressly devoted to te 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.
58 (7): please be careful about submitting information-avoid inacurracies
61-64: letter re: S & D
66: White book and subsequent protests
"The Chronicle regards itself as lefal because it merely compiles an accurate recrod of events and there is truth there can--legally speaking--be no 'libel'. 'anti-Soviet' or otherwise( R, 26)."
"Anonymity, let us recall, has seemed to the Chronicle's editors a regretabble necessity, forced on them by the authorities regard for legality. (R, 29)"
That confidence has grown still more when the maximum cross-checking against the Soviet press, reports from Western documents has confirmed the Chronicle's accuracy and revealed no serious errors at all (R, 29)."
R. is GLOWING
"As for the correspondents' own sources, these vary widely. In the compiling of trial accounts, for example, many people--including defendants witnesses and lawyers-- who have been present either at the original trial or at the appeal hearing, can help. In addition leaks of information and even of documents (176-183) sometimes provide material from official institutions...(R, 30)"
30: Correspondent's network-look how impressive
reaches the west 2 weeks to 2 months
32: audience
33: KGB
54 (1)": We are not illegal, how to send them info
55 (2): discussion of their tone
"Samizdat had a dual right to figure in the Chronicle: first, in so far as a part of expressly devoted to te 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.
58 (7): please be careful about submitting information-avoid inacurracies
61-64: letter re: S & D
66: White book and subsequent protests
Monday, September 26, 2011
Uncensored Russia Notes Vol. 1
Reddaway, Peter, trans. Uncensored Russia: The Unofficial Moscow journal, a Chronicle of Current Events. American Heritage Press, 1972.
"The Chronicle is in fact the "organ" of these movements' mainstream, a mainstream called by its members either the Democratic Movement or, with a narrower application, the Civil (or Human) Rights Movement (Reddaway, 17). "
"The Chronicle, by contrast, focuses on precisely on many of those aspects of Soviet life where the official press is most inadequate. It illuminates them, like the best primary sources, in precise, unemotive language. It is uninhibited by censorship, yet in taking advantage of this it is constrained by potent considerations to achieve a high level of accuaracy. In brief, it both articulates the demand of aggrieved groups in Soviet society and throws fresh light on those institutions with which the groups conflict. Meanwhile almost nothing of all this reflected--at least recognizably-- in the official press. (Reddaway 17)"
17-18: Really great historical overview of samizdat beginning with Pushkin
18: Secret Speech
19: Sinyavsky and Daniel- "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 Couty, and that in 1966 Sinyavsky and Daniel recieved savage sentences of seven and five years' hard labour. This trial--and even more so that of Galanskov and Ginzburg in January 1968--gave an immense stimulus to unofficial literary life, provoking mass protests and turning people's attention in a remarkable degree towards politics (Reddaway, 19)."
"Seemingly , in fact, it was the year 1966 which saw the birth of an expressive new Russian word--full of ominous overtones for the authorities samizdat (Reddaway, 19)."
"But how does a work get into samizdat? Usually the author, or a friend of his, or a publishing house editor, types out some copies and passes them around. In this way popular items are typed and retyped indefinitely and often reach the outside world through the help of a Soviet or Western tourist. In that case, they have a chance of second publication, this time in tamizday i.e. in the Western press or an emigre journal 'tam' or 'over there'. Finally they may also then be broadcast back to the Soviet Union by Western radio stations, thus achieving a third 'publication (Reddaway, 19).'
22: summary of the movement, solid
23: "As for foreign links, all reformist elements--those fully within the system as well as as well as those on the fringes-- have, as in the last century, profited from their development. Especially under Khrushchev foreign books and periodicals became more accessible, travel abroad, even defection, was possible for some, Western radio stations broadcasting in Russian were in certain periods not hammed, and emigre material began to circulate (R, 23)."
"The political liberalism underlying article 19 of the U.N's Declaration does indeed also underlie the Chronicle's Editorial policy. Individuals with widely varying views are, for example, given an equal amount of space. Similarly with samizdat items. And the activities of almost all the known democratically inclined groups are at least on occasion recorded. (R, 25)
But the Chronicle contains little purely editorial material, so particular aspects of its editors' position must often be inferred. No. 5, however provides some broad guidelines. After discussing the movement for human rights and its 'general aim of democratization,' the editors go on to describe 'the more particular aim pursued by the Chronicle as : 'seeing that the Soviet public is informed about about what goes on in the country' in the field of human rights. Thus '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 (R,25) ."
"The political liberalism underlying article 19 of the U.N's Declaration does indeed also underlie the Chronicle's Editorial policy. Individuals with widely varying views are, for example, given an equal amount of space. Similarly with samizdat items. And the activities of almost all the known democratically inclined groups are at least on occasion recorded. (R, 25)
But the Chronicle contains little purely editorial material, so particular aspects of its editors' position must often be inferred. No. 5, however provides some broad guidelines. After discussing the movement for human rights and its 'general aim of democratization,' the editors go on to describe 'the more particular aim pursued by the Chronicle as : 'seeing that the Soviet public is informed about about what goes on in the country' in the field of human rights. Thus '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 (R,25) ."
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Old Notes of Uncensored Russia
On April 30, 1968, the first edition of The Chronicle of Current Events was distributed. The first words of the issue juxtaposed the beginning of the worldwide Human Rights Year with the start of the trial of Yury Galanskov, Alexander Ginzburg, Aleksei Dobrovolsky. [1] It also marked the beginning of the crown jewel of the dissident movement. The Chronicle of Current Events was samizdat published; typists secretly typed it on layers upon layers of carbon paper and distributed it discretely. The paper was genius in its simplicity, writers described raids of apartments and arrests and on what was going on in prison camps and psychiatric hospitals, but offered no commentary. The events spoke for them selves. [2] In Uncensored Russia, Peter Reddaway compiled the first eleven issues of The Chronicle, published in Russia during 1968 and 1969. His book was published in the U.S, as a tamizdat, text in 1972. Rather than just run the issues in their entirety, Reddaway organized individual articles into different thematic sections, such as “The Camps and Prisons,” “The Mental Hospitals” and “Solzhenitsyn.”
...
Following Stalin’s death, Khrushchev brought the “Thaw” to Soviet culture. He ushered in an era of de-Stalinization with his “Secret Speech” in 1956. The Thaw is demonstrated by Nadezhda Mandelstam’s Hope Against Hope, her memoir of her husband’s persecution for writing a poem attacking Stalin. The most important moment of the Thaw occurred in 1962 when Khrushchev personally approved the publication Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
In many ways, Solzhenitsyn’s work is an attempt to further what Khrushchev said the Secret Speech. While Khrushvhev felt that “We should not wash out dirty linen before their eyes,[1]” Solzhenitsyn believed the opposite: that it was necessary to expose everything about the Stalinist years. For Solzhenitsyn, telling the truth is tied with the role of the artist. In one scene in the novel, two prisoners, Kh-123 and Tsezar, discuss the film Ivan the Terrible. Tsezar argues the film is a work of art because of its camera angles and aesthetic beauty. But Kh-123 responds, saying it’s a piece of propaganda. Tsezar believes the movie’s message is the only reason it made it past the censors. Kh-123 retorts, “A genius doesn’t adapt his treatment to the taste of tyrants![2]” This scene represents Solzhenitsyn’s overall point in writing One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. He wrote the novel, a piece of art, to expose what occurred in the camps.
Both Mandelstam’s memoir, and especially, Solzhenitsyn’s novel are in response to Khrushchev’s speech. While Khrushchev exposed and denounced the party purges in his speech, he failed to mention the terror and the persecution of the intelligentsia. Both writers believed they had a fundamental obligation as survivors of the terror to tell their stories, and to prevent the deformation of future generations. [3] Their works sought to correct the omissions in Khrushchev’s speech.
If One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was a response to the secret speech, and the events surrounding it, then The Chronicle was a response to Solzhenitsyn novel and the events of the early sixties. While Khruschev had ushered in the age of the Thaw, his successor Brezhnev tightened state controls on publishing. In his introduction, Reddaway writes of Brezhnev’s reign, “The Khrushchev era of more or less peaceful coexistence between the party and the liberal intelligentsia was at an end.[4]” As censorship became more prevalent, there were also other indications that Stalinist conditions were returning. For one, it became illegal to make any negative comments about the former leader. Additionally, two members of the secret police were appointed to the Supreme Court. While reformers were clearly unhappy with these events, Reddaway argues the ultimate catalyst for the birth of The Chronicle was the trial and sentencing of Sinyavsky and Daniel. He describes their sentences of seven and five years, respectively, of hard labor as “savage.” The uproar surrounding their sentencing was unheard of for the time. He writes, “This trial…gave an immense stimulus to unofficial literary life, provoking mass protests and turning people’s attention in a remarkable degree towards politics.[5]” The injustice of their trial revitalized the literary community and reminded them of what Solzhenitsyn said was their duty: to expose the truth. Out of these conditions, a newly reinvigorated literary class and a desire to show the public the truth, came The Chronicle.
Indeed, a great deal of The Chronicle was dedicated to discussing the case of Sinyavsky and Daniel. The paper chose to print Ginzburg’s White Book, a defense of the two writers. It also printed a letter by Vitaly Potapenko attacking the newspaper, the Izvestia for slandering Sinyavsky and Daniel. The letter calls out the writer of an article about the trial that referred to Sinyavsky and Daniel as “anti-Soviet lampoons.” Potapenko writes, “Such statements are called ‘contempt of court’ and are an attempt influence public opinion and the decision of the court.[6]’ Potapenkos then calls for the writer and editor of the article to be brought to court for their actions. Potapenko’s letter avoids making a judgment about whether or not Sinyavsky and Daniel were guilty, rather it demonstrates the injustice of their trial and sentencing. This letter represents one of The Chronicle’s main goals, to establish “some measure of the rule of law.[7]” The paper sought to prevent the arbitrary nature of arrests and searches in Soviet society, as part of their quest for basic human rights in the Soviet state. Potapenko’s letter demonstrates just how arbitrary the system was. The government had convinced the public the two writers were guilty before they were even put on trial. Furthermore, it also calls for the writer and editor of the news article to be held accountable for their actions. He seeks a system of laws that would not allow the Izvestia to get away with their slanderous article.
The Chronicle’s desire for a system of law is also evident in it its coverage of political prisoners sent to labor camps. In its seventh issue, The Chronicle ran the story of Svyatoslav Karavansky who was sentenced to twenty-five years in 1944 because of his role in a Ukranian nationalist organization. He received amnesty in 1960, but in 1965 he was ordered to complete his sentence after writing an article about national discrimination against university entrants. Besides the unjust nature of his second sentencing, the article also discusses trials in camps, which never included defense lawyers. Again, it demonstrates the few civil rights Russians had when attempting to fight charges levied against them.
In other articles in Reddaway’s “The Camps and Prisons” sections, writers describe the horrific conditions in the camps. A great number of the pieces focus on hunger strikes the prisoners either threatened or went through with because of their poor living conditions. For instance, eleventh issue describes a hunger strike at the political camps of Mordovia. The prisoners at the camp decided to embark on a strike after one of their own was sent to the cooler. Other examples include hunger strikes over the denial of packages and not allowing prisoners to have guests. The hunger strikes gave The Chronicle an excuse to comment on the conditions in camps because it was necessary to explain the prisoners reasoning in undergoing the strikes.
In another piece on camps, The Chronicle printed a summary of a letter from camp prisoners laying out an argument against the camps. It states, “The authors show how the system of concentration camps established under Stalin and since condemned in words alone, continues to serve as the basis of penal policy in our country[8].” They argue that the camps were a disgrace to the country, especially in the eyes of the world. They also pointed out most prisoners in the camps posed no true threat to the state, but rather were post-war nationalists and preachers. This particular argument is reminiscent of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The title character is not, in the least, a threat to Soviet society. During World War II, while serving the Red Army, Denisovich was a German prisoner of war. After he escaped, he was accused of being a Nazi spy, and was sentenced to work in a labor camp. The prisoners in the camps during The Chronicle’s years were sent to camps on similarly false, trumped up charges.
The chapter on the camps and their prisoners recalls One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich for another simpler reason. Both pieces of writing exposed the truth about what was going on in the camps. Khrushchev’s speech conspicuously failed to mention forced labor camps. Solzhenitsyn’s novel seeks to rectify this oversight. He wants to air the truth about the camps, exposing them as slave labor camps, but Khrushchev is not willing. The Chronicle, too, sought to reveal the truth about human rights violations. In the first issue, it states,
“We believe it is our duty to point out also that several thousands of political prisoners, of whom the rest of the world is virtually unaware, are in camps and prisons. They are kept in inhuman conditions of forced labour, on a semi-starvation diet, exposed to the arbitrary actions of the administration still operating.”
Besides echoing Solzhenitsyn’s images of life in the camps as devastating, it also recalls his language. The Chronicle claims it was their “duty” to expose the truth, just as Solzhenitsyn believed it was his duty, as an artist, to tell the true story about the forced labor camps.
There are other indications of The Chronicle’s relation to One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. For one, they devoted so much content to Solzhenitsyn that Reddaway dedicated an entire chapter of his book to it. The paper frequently ran content sympathetic to Solzhenitsyn’s call for the abolishment of censorship. In fact, it printed the entirety of his letter to the Russian Republic Writers’ Union. Moreover, after Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Writers Union, The Chronicle featured many statements and letters of support from various sources, including the National Committee of French Writers, Arthur Toynbee and Arthur Miller.
The letter from Westerners brings up another important part of samizdat publishing, its evolution to tamizdat publishing. Underground texts, such as Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago, were sent abroad to be published. A prime example is the very publishing Reddaway’s book, a collection of samizdat texts, in the United States. The spread of tamizdat allowed for the outside world to understand what was going on in Russia and dissidents sought to use this to their advantage. In 1969, Yury Galanskov wrote an essay about the Russia penal system and called on Westerners to pressure the Soviet government to change them. He wrote,
“The Western press, and especially the Western radio-stations broadcasting in Russian, publicise arbitrariness and acts of crude coercion by Soviet official personnel, and thus force the state bodies and officials to take quick action. In this way the Western press are fulfilling the tasks of what is at present lacking in Russia, an organized opposition, and thereby stimulating our national development[9].”
Galanskov believed that the West was able to stimulate democratic change in Russia in a way that Russians themselves were not able to.
However, Galanskov was ultimately proved wrong by the glasnost reforms. During the late eighties, Russians ushered in an age of reform in their own country, although the Western world was supportive of their efforts. In his introduction, Reddaway describes the class structure of the dissident movement. Close to half were academics, particularly in science fields, many were writers, artists and actors and some were engineers. [10] This was the third generation of cohorts within the apparatchik. This group matured after Khrushchev’s speech in 1956, and was never intimately acquainted with Stalinism. They were an educated middle class, who were career driven and careful not to be considered party hacks. This group flirted with the dissident movement. They read and supported things like The Chronicle. In particular, they were the generation that centered around unburying the past, just as Solzhenitsyn and The Chronicle sough to do.
It was this group of young urban professionals that ultimately forced democratic reforms.
[1] Khrushchev, Secret Speech, page 568
[2] Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, page 67
[3] Linda Gerstein, Class Lecture, December 3, 2009
[4] Ed. Peter Reddaway, Uncensored Russia, page 18
[5] Ed. Peter Reddaway, Uncensored Russia, page 19
[6] Ed. Peter Reddaway, Uncensored Russia, page 63
[7] Ed. Peter Reddaway, Uncensored Russia, page 22
[8] Ed. Peter Reddaway, Uncensored Russia, page 224
[9] Ed. Peter Reddaway, Uncensored Russia, page 225
[10] Ed. Peter Reddaway, Uncensored Russia, page 24
[11] Linda Gerstein, Class Lecture, December 10
[12] Linda Gerstein, Class lecture, November 24, 2009
Friday, September 23, 2011
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) ."
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) ."
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Soviet Dissent: Contemporary Movements for National, Religious, and Human Rights Pt. 1
Alexeyeva, Ludmilla. Soviet Dissent: Contemporary Movements for National, Religious, and Human Rights. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1987.
"Samizdat completed the data necessary for this book. The source of essential information is the Chronicle of Current Events, which the academic Sakharov has called the principal achievement of the human rights movement. The anonymous editorial board that publishes CCE is renewed approximatley every two years, generally because of the arrests of it's editors. Since 1968, sixty-four issues of Chronicle have appeared; they contain an immense amount of material about the violation of human rights throughout the USSR and about the continuing struggle against these abuses. The excellent quality of the information from Chronicle has withstood investigation. At the trials for those involved in Chronicle, usually on the charges of "slander," teams of KGB agents seeking frounds on these accusation on several occasions checked the reliability of the information of human rights activists. (Al, vii-viii)
Al 9: Birthday of the movement- Dec. 5 1965, Pushkin Square
Al 10: Historical background, Secret Speech,
Al 11: Novy Mir as signal of part of the movement, publication of One Day
Al 12: How Samizdat works
"The more successful a work, the faster and further it is distributed. Of course, samizdat is extremely inefficient in terms of the time and effort expended but it is the only possible way of overcoming the government monopoly on ideas and information (Al, 12)."
"Russian samizdat began with poetry, possibly because poetry is easier to reproduce--brief and easier to memorize. But there may be a deeper cause: spiritual emancipation begins in the area of simple human feelings (Al, 13)."
Al 13: Estimate more than 300 authors most young circulating
Al 15: Zhivago
THE HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT IS INHERENTLY TIED WITH SAMIZDAT
"It was only by virtue of samizdat that the human rights movement itself was able to rise and spread.
The chief functions of the human rights movement are gathering and disseminating information on human rights violations and defending these rights, irrespective of citizens' nationality, religion or social background. In this way contacts are established with other dissident movements. The movement's participants carry out their work with samizdat information journals, the best known of which is the Chronicle of Current Events.
AL 41: Ukranian Chronicle spin off
AL 52: Ukranian dissidents and western journalist
Al 74: Catholic Chronicle
Al 109-114: Comparison between Chronicle and Official Coverage
"Samizdat completed the data necessary for this book. The source of essential information is the Chronicle of Current Events, which the academic Sakharov has called the principal achievement of the human rights movement. The anonymous editorial board that publishes CCE is renewed approximatley every two years, generally because of the arrests of it's editors. Since 1968, sixty-four issues of Chronicle have appeared; they contain an immense amount of material about the violation of human rights throughout the USSR and about the continuing struggle against these abuses. The excellent quality of the information from Chronicle has withstood investigation. At the trials for those involved in Chronicle, usually on the charges of "slander," teams of KGB agents seeking frounds on these accusation on several occasions checked the reliability of the information of human rights activists. (Al, vii-viii)
Al 9: Birthday of the movement- Dec. 5 1965, Pushkin Square
Al 10: Historical background, Secret Speech,
Al 11: Novy Mir as signal of part of the movement, publication of One Day
Al 12: How Samizdat works
"The more successful a work, the faster and further it is distributed. Of course, samizdat is extremely inefficient in terms of the time and effort expended but it is the only possible way of overcoming the government monopoly on ideas and information (Al, 12)."
"Russian samizdat began with poetry, possibly because poetry is easier to reproduce--brief and easier to memorize. But there may be a deeper cause: spiritual emancipation begins in the area of simple human feelings (Al, 13)."
Al 13: Estimate more than 300 authors most young circulating
Al 15: Zhivago
THE HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT IS INHERENTLY TIED WITH SAMIZDAT
"It was only by virtue of samizdat that the human rights movement itself was able to rise and spread.
The chief functions of the human rights movement are gathering and disseminating information on human rights violations and defending these rights, irrespective of citizens' nationality, religion or social background. In this way contacts are established with other dissident movements. The movement's participants carry out their work with samizdat information journals, the best known of which is the Chronicle of Current Events.
AL 41: Ukranian Chronicle spin off
AL 52: Ukranian dissidents and western journalist
Al 74: Catholic Chronicle
Al 109-114: Comparison between Chronicle and Official Coverage
Saturday, September 17, 2011
A Narrowing of My Thesis
To narrow down my thesis, I find myself going back to where I started this project, with The Chronicle of Current Events. [1] The Chronicle was an underground newspaper published by a select group of dissidents in the late sixties and early seventies. When I sat down to do this assignment earlier in the week, I panicked. I was going through my notes and it seemed to be a jumble of odd anecdotes about newspapers, journalists, Decembrists and radio. There was no sort of overarching idea.
That was until I found my notes on The Thaw Generation, written by Ludmilla Alexeyeva and translated by Paul Goldberg[2]. Alexeya’s book is her memoir of her years as a leader in the dissident movement; in particular, she focuses on the years she spent as an editor of the Chronicle. Looking at it, I realized everything I’ve been reading connects back to The Chronicle, at least in a tangential way. So my narrowed topic is: the reporting and dissemination of The Chronicle as a case study for how information was shared by dissidents in the Soviet Union.
Here’s how I see it shaping up, so far:
· How The Chronicle came about-The context of The Chronicle is a fascinating story. The concern with openness and transparency began earnestly among dissidents after Khrushchev’s Secret Speech and the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich[3]. But the samizdat movement began in earnest after the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel, and the subsequent publication of Ginzberg’s The White Book[4].
· How an underground newspaper gathers news- This is one of the things that initially attracted to me to this topic. I spent the summer working at a newspaper and have a decent feel on traditional reporting. I didn’t have a sense of how to report a story when it was dangerous to get caught with notes or interview the people stories were on. The Chronicle used a network of dissidents spreading information back and forth to each other in person.
· How to publish an underground newspaper in the USSR-This is where history of samizdat publishing comes in. Dissidents typed up carbon copies and passed them around. It’s impossible to estimate how many copies of The Chronicle were in circulation for this reason.
· How/Why The Chronicle stories were broadcast on Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Part of the reason The Chronicle was so influential in the USSR was that its articles were broadcast in. Dissidents were savvy about getting in touch with foreign broadcasters and journalists to bring their stories abroad.
· How/Why The Chronicle was published in the United States? How did Reddaway’s Uncensored Russia come to be? The Chronicle and tons of other samizdat was smuggled to the States and published here.
This is still somewhat of a jumble. The way I’m looking at it is the process story of how samizdat, using The Chronicle, as a case study came to be an influential part of the dissident movement.
I still don’t have a thesis for my thesis, per se, but everything I’ve been looking at does connect to the story of The Chronicle.
[1] Peter Reddaway, Uncensored Russia: protest and dissent in the Soviet Union: the unofficial Moscow journal, a Chronicle of current events (New York: American Heritage Press), 1972.
[2] Alexeyeva, Ludmilla and Paul Goldberg, trans. The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press), 1993.
[3] Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 2005.
[4]Hayward, Max, trans, On Trial: The Soviet State versus “Abram Tertz” and “Nikolai Arzha,” (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers), 1966.
The Thaw Generation- Notes Vol. 2
A & G 141: The White Book
(A & G) 206: Network as media- How the Chronicle Came About
"I was amazed by the thought of Ginzburg openly handing it top the KGB...The manuscript brought together the first of Western stories about the arrests, a copy of Esenin-Volpin's leaflet, his legal commentary..."
A & G 159:
"By that time, Lara and I had an understanding: we did not ask each other about sensitive matters unless either of us needed assistance.
"Those who could type (there were four of us) worked in shifts, till our minds went dim. Those whou couldn't type dictated or stacked the pages and corrected typos. Two people with a typewriter worked in the kitchen. Two people with a typewriter worked in the kitchen; two more worked in one of he rooms. The hosts' child slept in the room between them. Heaps of paper, carbons and manuscript pagses were stacked all around. In the kitchen, someone was constantly making coffee and sandwiches; and at any given time, at least one of us was asleep on the couch or on the cot."
160: survivor's obligation-One Day in The Life
162-163: Article 190, Article 70
166: Ginzburg/White Book Trial-trial on samizdat
170: RADIO!
171: Anatole Shub-Western journalist who helps Larisa
(A & G) 206: Network as media- How the Chronicle Came About
"Thanks to letters from the camps, we were learning about religious prisoners and about "nationalists" from the Baltic and the Ukraine. Since their families stayed with us in Moscow before taking trains to Mordovia, our network kept expanding. Through those new connections, we could keep track of new government repressions taking place thousands of miles away.
The volume of information we were receiving had begun to overwhelm our ability to record and exchange it. It was simply impossible to keep track of the thousand popisanty as they were being dragged through the KGB's inquisition. That information was no less important than what was in The White Book, and it had to be collected systematically. We needed a samizdat way of sharing new of what was going on-- a bulletin that would record the information that what was going on---a bulletin that would record the information that came our way. It would offer no commentary, no belles lettre, no verbal somersaults; just basic information. Natasha Gorbanevskaya, a professional editor, agreed to take the job.
The name of the bulletin was borrowed from a BBC Russian-language news round up: Khronik tekushchikh sobytiy ("The Chronicle of of Current Events"). Natasha typed up one copy with seven carbons, then handed the carbons to friends for retyping. We typed up a few more copies and handed them out to friends; they, too, made additional copies."
Declaration of Human Rights
"As did most of our works, the issues of Khronika eventually ended up in the West and were broadcast back to the USSR over shortwave radio( G& A 207) ."
"In the first issue, the majority of stories came from Moscow and Leningrad. Only one news item came from the Ukraine. A later issue suggested a method for sending information to the bulletin: 'Tell it to the person from whom you received Khronika, and he will tell it to the person from whom he received Khronika, etc. Whatever you do, don't try to get through that chain on your own if you do, you may be mistaken for a [KGB] informant. (G & A 207)
208: Sakaharov
210: Prague Spring
232: Western Media
245: The rules of being a dissident
251-252: radio stuff
260: "Thus, KGB chief Yuri Andropov's assignment was to strangle Khronika without making too many arrests, especially in Moscow. Unable to resort to mass terror, Andropov had to find a creative way..."
281: Appeal to West and Helinski Group,
284: Holding press conferences, again western journalists
308-309: Media savvy, meets w/ ambassador near reportesr
310-312: survivor obligation
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