Conversations in Exile-Gorbanevskaya

Glad, John Ed. Conversations in Exile. Translated by Richard and Joanna Robin. North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1993.

NG

'88

"'Latent schizophrenia'"-223

"not ruled" out- meant she had it

"In 1969 I think all of Moscow knew that I was publishing the Chronicle. The only question was when I would be arrested. Since I knew I would be arrested, all I had to do was find a successor. But that turned out to be more difficult than I imagined. One idea was to hand it over to Galya Gabai, but her apartment was constantly being searched. Once she took some material for the Chronicle home, and her mother was forced to throw it into a pot of soup to keep it out of the hands of the KGB. That was in 1969. After that Galya said she wouldn't be able to take over for me. I started work on it again, and after a while I was arrested." (G, 226)

"I was arrested on Wednesday, December 24, 1969. I had found someone who was thinking over the Chronicle, and he was supposed to come over that night to see how the publication was put together. Material for the eleventh edition, which was supposed to come out in a week, was in my desk. That day my apartment was searched. In the pocket of my winter coat I had notes on a hunger strike in the camps from an interview with the wife of a political prisoner. So much material was found during the search that they stopped filling out that statement, stuffed the rest of the papers into a folder, sealed it, and said that the statement would be completed in my presence and said that the statement would be completed in my presence and in the presence of other witnesses. That never happened, and I had the impression that the envelope never left my desk. Furthermore, I put on a jacket instead of my winter coat and indicated with my eyes that the coat, which had not been searched, should be taken care of.  All that material was left in the apartment and wound up in the hands of those who continued to publish the Chronicle after I was arrested. the eleventh edition came out on time with a lead article about my arrest. I never learned what happened to the envelope, whether it was left untouched or if it had just seemed that way to me. The material had been collected by all sorts of people, all with different handwriting. If it had fallen into the hands of the KGB, it would have provided evidence against many people." (G, 227)

didn't need many copies for radio-228

"I would get seven copies on fairly thin paper. Later we started getting twenty copies on very thing paper, although the last couple of copies were almost completely illegible. Each of these was then retyped several times in Moscow and other cities. When things got more repressive, copying became more difficult. But even so, we would get out several hundred copies of each issue.

Another method was to photograph the pages and print them on photo paper. We got more copies that way, but they came out very thick. All the same, it was a popular, if expensive method. It was hard to find the proper film and paper. After prison I used to buy photo paper in Leningrad, where it was easier to get, and bring it to Moscow." (G, 228)

Hopkins, Vol. 5 "New Times"

85: Reboot w/ press conference

"In doing so, they were trying to demonstrate that the Chronicle was a legal enterprise, that htey themselves were doing no more than excersising the right of free press guaranteed in the Soviet constitution. But they also were inviting KGB retaliation, for they were challenging Andropov's authority, deliberaley it seemed."

prepared the back missing issues 28-30

"There was somehing new about the Chronicle. For the first time, contributors to the Chronicle publicly associated themselves with what Soviet authorities bluntly said was an illegal publication. Tatyana Khodorovich was a Russian-language linguist, a cultured woman with the just ends of the blossoming Soviet human rights movement. The other two public sponsors of the new Chronicle were equally dedicated. Tatyana Velikanova, a mathematics programmer, had long been connected with the Chronicle as a source of information. Sergei Kovalev, an internationally known biologist, was a friend of Andrei Sakharov and shared the physicist's concerns about the repressive nature of Soviet society. In a separate statement drafted in Khodorovich's hand, and given to correspondents that May 7 when the Chronicle reappeared, Kovalev, Khodorovich and Velikanova obligated themselves to distribute the Chronicle. Others before them had been tried and imprisoned for as much.

'We consider it our duty,' they said, 'to facilitate the wide distribution to the maximum possible extent. We are very convinced of the necessity of making available this very truthful information about infringements of the basic rights of man in the soviet Union to everyone who is interested. (H, 87)"

part of initative group

107: pushing libel charge

"The London involvement began with a translation by Max Hayward of no. 5 of the Chronicle, dated December 1968. It appeared in subsequent issues of Survey, the British journal dealing with Soviet and East European affairs. Its editor, Leo Labedz, was perhaps the first foreign expert in Soviet affairs to recognize the significance of the Chronicle, sufficient in any case to translate into English and reproduce an entire number outside of the Soviet Union. At this point, Peter Reddaway, a Soviet specialist and lecturer at the Chonicle and took on the task of translating subsequent issues into English, beginning with no.  7. These he had mimeographed and sent privately to other Sovietologists. At the optimum, about 100 English-language copies of the early Chronicle were produced. Asked to do a book, Reddaway collected the first 11 issues of the Chronicle-those of the Gorbanevskaya ere-to produce an annotated and analytical account of the fledgling Soviet democratic movement that appeared in 1972 as the volume Uncensored Russia.

As Reddaway worked on his book, the head of research for the London-based Amnesty International also took an interest in the Chronicle. Dr. Zbynek Zeman, a scholar of Czech extraction, recognized that the Chronicle published precisely the type of well-documented information about human rights violations with which Amnesty International dealt. Starting February 1971, then, with issue no. 16, Amnesty International translated each Chronicle issue into English. Districution eventaully reached a maximum of 3,000 copies.

As all this was going on in London, other versions of the Chronicle were born in New York.  Valery Chalidze, the physicist who with fellow scientists Andrei Sakharov and Andrei Tverdokhlebov had formed the Human Rights Committee, had been allowed to travel to the United States  for a lecture tour in December 1972. Once Chalidze was there, Soviet authorities promptly deprived him of his Soviet citizenship, thus banishing him from his native country. Within a few months after this, it was clear that the Chronicle under KGB pressure had ceased to publish. Chalidze was not directly involved in the Chronicle's production, but he was nonetheless intimately associated with Moscow's dissident community. One in the United States, and with the Chronicle, apparently suppressed, Chalidze was urged to fill the void. The stimulus came from Edward Kline, a wealthy New York businessman with a special dedication to Soviet human rights. With line's financial backing, Chalidze set up Khronika Presss in New York and in mid-1973, as part of Khronika Press, began publishing a was  facsimile of the Soviet Chronicle. The New York version was called A Chronicle of Human Rights in the USSR. Printed in both English and Russian, six times a year, its content, style and format (save for being printed rather than typewritten) mimicked for the Soviet Chronicle. Originally, the editors were Peter Reddaway and Edward Kline. Subsequently, Pavel Litvinov replaced Reddaway who became the London correspondent, and Valery Chalidze became editor in chief.

The Kline-Chalidze drew on a variety of sources in and outside the Soviet Union and ably continued the work of the Soviet Chronicle during the latter's 18-month hiatus. Russian-language copies were smuggled into the Soviet Union, and the English-language veresion were distributed among Western journalists, government specialists, and scholars specializing in Soviet affairs.

While the original Chronicle reappeared in Moscow in May 1974, the question in New York obviously was, What now? The decision was to continue the Chronicle of Human Rights, as a backstop to the Soviet Chronicle and because it could get information in English about Soviet human rights events to influential readers far more rapidly that the Moscow Chronicle. At the same time, it was decided to reproduce the Moscow Chronicle itself in Russian as copies arrived in the United States. This amounted to a Chronicle printing press in exile. Ultimately as many as 1,200 copies per issue of the Russian-language Chronicle were produced in New York, most of them destined for the Soviet Union.

95: MunichChronicle

96-97: post '74 Chronicle, more caught up in national groups, Jews

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)"

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

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.

"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

"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

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) ."

The Thaw Generation- Notes Vol. 2

A & G 141: The White Book

"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