Hayward, Max, translator. On Trial: The Soviet State versus "Abram Tertz" and "Nikolai Arzhak." New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1966.

Intro:

made it to WEst by "undisclosed channels, but is of indubitable authenticity." (1)

on Sinyavsky: "It is true that, like most Russian intellectuals of his generation, he was deeply affected by Khrushchev's revelations at the 20th Party Congress in 1956 about the horrors of the Stalinist past, and reacted with all the inevitable outrage of one who had, albeit with some qualms of intellect and conscience, beleieved. This was a turning point for many younf Russians, who had hitherto tended to excuse the excesses of the Stalin era on the grounds of revolutionary expediency." 4

arrested on Sept. 13, 1965

"For the next two months, numberous anxious inquiries, both public and private, from leading Wester writers and organizations were addressed to Kosygin, Surkov (Secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers) and others. They were met by silence. Only on November 22 did Surkov (Secretary of the Union of Soviet WRiters) and others. They wre met by silence. Only on Novemeber 22 did Surkov admit the arrests at a press conference in Paris, at the same time giving a solemn assurance that 'legality' would be observed. (22)

"Ivestia tried to run a follow-up campaign of 'massive indignation' in response to Eremin's article. but it could produce only three or four rather unconvincing expressions of outrage from an ill assorted collection of 'average citizens.' The classical orchestration was lacking." (25)

"There were several unusual features about it and in one respect it was unprecedented, namelt, that it was the first time in the history of the Soviet Union that writers had been put on trial for what they had written." (26)

"The second unusual  feature was a striking difference in the way the case was reported in the fovernment newspaper Ivestia and the way it was reported in the party newspaper Pravda....The pieces are writeen in the classical style of the Russian satirical feuilleton, speak with heavy sarcasm of the accused, quote their words in order to mock them, and in general assume the guilt of the two men before the court reached its verdict. The defendants are presented as cowwardly felons who squirmed under the withering attack and the iron logic of the prosecution." (27)

More available about illegality of trial on 27

"The third unusual feature of the trial is that the accused did not plead guilty. This evidently took the prosecution by surprise and may partly explain the the very maladroit handling of of the trial, and the gingerly way in which it was reported by Pravda." (28)


"What is tragic about this trial is not only that the two men have been tried and sentenced for heresy, sacrilege and blasphemy, but that the trend toward and improvement in the administration of justice, the frequently expressed desire to do away with 'distortion of justic; as part of Stalin's legacy-- all this has recieved a sever setback. Sinyavsky and Daniel's trial could have been a test case to show that 'socialist legality' had really been established, that the earnest debate among Soviet jurists in recent years about the need to see that due legal procedures wer observed really counted for something." (32)

Article 70: "Agitation or propaganda carried out with the purpose of subverting or weakening the Soviet refime or in order to commit particularly dangerous crimes against the state, the dissemination for the said purposes of slanderous inventions defamatory to the Soviet political and social system as well as the dissemination or production or harboring for the said purposes of literature of similar content, are punishable by imprisonment for a period of from sic months to seven years  and with exile from two to five tears, or without exile, or by exile from two to five years." (42)

"In the novel The Trial Begins, Sinyavsky, under the guise of criticism of the cult of personality, sneers at the Soviet system and the principles of MArxism-Leninism." (45)

Daniel: "Stalin had not been dead all that long. We all remembered well what were called 'violations of socialist legality.' And I saw again all the symptoms: there was again one man who knew everything again one man who knew everything, again one person was being exalted, again one person was dictating his will to agricultural experts, artists, diplomats and writers. WE saw again how one single name appeared on the pages of newspapers and on posters, how the most banal and crude statement of this person was being held up to us as a revelation, as the quinesence of wisdom."  (61)

Daniel: "Even the statutes of the Writers oUnion don't require writers to write about only novle, intelligent people." (68)

Daniel: "I was asked all the time what I wrote my story This is Moscow Speaking. Every time I replied: Because I felt there was a real danger of a resurgence of the cult of personality. To this the answer was always: What is the relevance of the cult of personality, if the story was written in 1960-61? To this I say: It was precisely in these year that a number of events made one feel that the vult of personality was being revived. This was not denied; I was not told. 'You are lying, this is not true'--my words were simply ifnored as though I had never said them." (150)

Walker, Western Journalists

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

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

isolation-906

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

Insider and outsiders and the purges

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

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

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

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

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

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

ment was distinctly indigenous and inward-looking in nature. 

50s dissidents:

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

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

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

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

he just walked out freely.” 910

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

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

Way for Westerners to show their inside status

Yet another path to perceived insider status for some Westerners that would become especially important to human rights activity throughout the late 1960s was aid in overcoming the barriers to discourse and other interaction with the outside world. Such support included carrying letters and manuscripts across the Soviet border to the West, as well as money and information that might be politically touchy. This could be dangerous for Westerners and the willingness of some of them, especially those in the diplomatic corps, to risk jobs and physical safety and emotional peace of mind made a deep impression on some dissenters.19 As generous expressions of Western freedom, such supportive activities helped create a sense of what might be described as a kind of communality between some Westerners and some dissenters. As the human rights activist Aleksandr Podrabinek put it in an interview: “those mutual goals, that general atmosphere, it’s very hard to convey in words… . [I]t was an astonishing atmosphere that Western people fell into. People with responsive [otzyvchivye] hearts, they were drawn into it, they became a part of that atmosphere, part of that dissident culture, they were even participants, to a greater or lesser degree.” (912)

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

Westerners have an obligation: 

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

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

913: Starts with Sinyavsky and Daniel

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

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

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

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

The dissident connection with Western journalists also had an ideological and intellectual logic, arising directly from a central tenet of the human rights movement: the right to openness, to freedom of discourse. (914-915)

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

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

WHy W. cared?-GENERATIONAL

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

United States. 

More than just reporting:

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

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

Criticism:

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

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

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

Amalrik-923

Sinyavsky "The Literary Process in Russia"

Sinyavsky, Andrei. "The Literary Process in Russia." Kontinent. New York: Anchor Books, 1976.

satirical

 "The Russian author does not want to write to the state's direction has assumed the nightmarish status of an underground writer, that is to say, from the state's point of view he has chosen a life of crime for which  strict penalties and deterrents are laid down. Literature has become a forbidden, risky and thus all the more fascinating activity." (S, 77)

"The writer had to be reduced to the status of a criminal, a lawbreaker-to which some writers first had to be driven to suicide, others expelled, still others tortured. Thousand of writers had to be corrupted and castrated-a task undertaken for several decades by the founders and stormy petrels of Soviet literature." (S, 78)

"Thus at a certain stage the literary process has assumed the character of a double-edged game, an escapade which in itself could well provide the plot of an entertaining novel. Authors have been turned into the heroes of as yet unwritten books; they have tasted the savor of an intrigue which may end in disaster ('If you play with fire, you can burn your fingers,' as Khrushchev warned writers with his customary bluntness), but which on the other hand lends a certain higher meaning-a gaiety, an interest, 'a pledge who knows, of immortality'--to the writer's otherwise drab existence." (S,79)

"The wrier nowadays is walking a knife-edge; but unlike the old days, when writers were simply eliminated one after another, he now derives pleasure and moral satisfaction from this curious pastime. The writer is now someone to be reckoned with." (S, 79)

"When they discovered that a woman of my acquaintance going to Russia from the West, was carrying a copy of Doctor Zhivago in her suitcase, she was immediately put into a gynecological chair and subjected to a medical examination to find out whether she might be carrying any more banned novels. This is excellent. This all to the good. It means that a book is worth something, it is sought after pursued; and by escaping, hiding, or being buried in the ground it gathers weight and power." (S, 80-81)

"We shall not be far wrong if we say that the major topics are prison and labor camps. The themes which inspire the Russian writer today are not stories about collective farms, or factories, not love stories or even the pangs of youth, but how people are imprisoned, where they are sent into exile and exactly how (interesting topic, you must admit) they shoot you in the back of the neck. The labor camp is now the central, the dominant them of literature." (S, 81)

"Whether we take Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, or for greater respectability Tolstoy's Resurrection, we will notice that both of them are based on the notion of escape, of breaking the bounds; that the writer's very soul longs to escape; that the savor, the sense, the ideal of being a writer has nothing whatever to do with 'telling the truth' (go an tell it if you want to-in a tramcar), but it has to do with planting that so-called 'truth' across the tracks of the 'lie' which is universally, legally, and publicly accepted as truth-- and thus to assume, as a duty, the role of 'criminal,' 'lawbreaker,' 'renegade,' 'degenerate,' or (what an apt new word  they have invented) as 'ideological saboteur (hell-no dynamite!) and as he surveys the horizon wondering what to write about, more often than not he will chose some forbidden topic." (S, 84)

"It would be hard to invent a more precise and more inoffensive name than samizdat, indicating no more than that a person has simply written everything he wanted to say as he thought fit, and has published it himself, regardless of the consequences, by passing a wad of typewritten sheets to a friend. The friend has gone running to boas about it to two more like-minded drop-outs-and we are witnessing the conception of something great, fantastic, unique, incomparable: the embryo of Russian literature, which once before in the in the nineteenth century, delighted mankind, and is now once more feeling the urge to return to the old battleground." (S, 87)

"In historical perspective of the literary process in Russia, that period which for convenience we have marked with the searing brand of 'Stalinism' has also, perhaps made its modest but legitimate contributin to this process. It may be that too long a spell of silence and despair has made us speak up with such passion and fervor in the conditions of today's relatively tolerable (and even, as I have said, in some ways beneficial) unfreedom--in other words, as soon as the writers were able so much as to open thier mouths. If nowadays we shout so loudly to the world at large about the terrible and shameful things that are being done in Russia, then it is because among other things we have had direct experience eof the 'cold and murk of days to come' which Alexander Blok prophesied for us all." (S, 90)

"It is at this point that literature must be on its guard and must not give way to the seductive spell of speaking the truth and nothing but the truth. The  danger threatening modern Russian literature--banned literature, of course (the other literature is not worth considering, since artistically it is about two hundred years out of date)--is assuming the role of a sort of whining complaints book, supposedly to be pursued by the leaders (who don't give a damn anyway), or to be stored away in a cupboard untli the advent of those better times when people will have learned to live by the light of truth." (S, 104)

"We are again faced by the eternal Russian dilemma: Where is your allegiance, you profession purveyors of culture? Whose side are you on? Are you for truth, or for the official lie? When the question is put like that,  the writer obviously has no choice but to answer proudly: for truth! And that is the only fitting reply in such a situation. But in proclaiming oneself to be on the side of truth, it is worthwhile remembering what Stalin said when some brave members of the Union of Writers asked him to explain once and for all what socialist realism was, and how, in practical terms, to attain thos glittering heights. Without taking a moment's thought or batting an eyelid, the leader replied:

'Write the truth--and that will be socialist realism!'

The point has been reached where we should feat the truth, lest it hang round out necks again like an albatross. Let the writer refuse to tell lies, but let him create fiction--and in disregard of any kind of 'realism.'" (S, 104)

"All this is simply a set of variations on my original theme: the belief in the power of words. Everyone shares this belief: the common people, the writers, the authorities (who, having investigated the leaflets, immediately, as the rules prescribe, arrested and imprisoned the young truth-seekers), as well as the writers of those countless letters, complaints, and appeals to those same authorities. That is why people write, and why they are forbidden to write." (S, 108)

Conversations in Exile- Sinyavsky

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

Conducted 1983

Interview w/ Sinyavsky

how discovered his identity

AS: "Keep in mind that we first started sending manuscripts to the West in 1956. They were published in 1959. That wasn't our fault. The person who smuggled out the manuscripts and had them published help them up so as to first clear the way for Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago." 


"Helene Zamoiskaya, an old French friend, whom I had met back in the years I was a student. I met her in 1947 at Moscow State University. And we're still friends to this day.

After it was published the KGB began an investigation, and I was given some idea as to their progress. For instance, I learned that the Soviet ambassador to France asked the publisher where he got the material, who gave it to him, how it was gotten out, and so on and so on. So they were on the lookout.

...

It was the courier they had to identity. They had to find hte route being used. There were attempts to bribe some foreigners, particularly French and American, to establish the route. They had to establish the courier's contacts in Russia, and usually the contacts of a person like that are limited to a small at Mosxow State University. The rest was easy. Our rooms were bugged, Daniel's and mine, for at least six months and I think it was more like nine months." (G, 152)

Post- arrest:

"I think too that in a situation like this it's important to be true to yourself. And for me it would have been a lie to admit some sort of guilt for art. Moreover (I learned thins only later) ours was the first public political trial--with the possible exception of the Penkovsky trial--since the Stalin era. So you can see, deep down in my consciousness were the show trials of the thirties where the accused were always repented. And I loathed all of that. So it would been stupid if I had repented. It would have been stupid if I had repented. It would have been unnatural.

What this is natural. I really am a proponent of pure art. Even if I have political motives, I don't believe you can try a writer for that. In the interrogations everything was reduced to long and sometimes ludicrous theoretical arguments. I might have read a short story to someone. That counted as agitation and propaganda, as "distribution" of material. (G, 155)

Radio in prison:

"And they all knew about me before I arrived. They practically lifted me up onto their shoulders! They realize that the more a person is criticized in the Soviet press, the better a person he must be. Because the papers said that I wasn't remorseful, the other prisoners realized that I wasn't an informer or provocateur. They were impressed that I was writer. Of course, they had never read any of my books. They probably would have been horrified if they had. But a writer who was imprisoned because of his books must have been writing the truth. So they treated me very well. " (G, 157)

Kenez Vol. 5 Sinyavsky and Daniel, Birth of the Chronicle

"From the point of view of the regime, however, this judicial persecution badly backfired, and the authorities never committed this mistake again. The news of the trial brought ill repute and and even ridicule to the regime abroad, and even some Western communists found it necessary to distance themselves from the Soviet regime. More importantly, instead of frightening potential dissidents into silence, it gave them a platform to organize. It was only from this time forward that once can talk about a self-conscious movement of courageous and mutually supportive individuals. Dissidents compiled a record of the trial, spread it among themselves, and even sent it to the authorities. By undermining the monopoly of the regime in spreading information, and by acting openly, the dissenters attacked the regime at a vulnerable point. When the organizers were arrested, that action spawned further protests (K, 226) ."

"The principles and tactics of the dissenters grew out of the situation in which they found themselves. First, they decided to act as openly as was possible under Soviet circumstances. Second, they made the point repeatedly: the regime was not observing its own announced principles. The dissenters were willing to accept a great risk by maintaining connects with foreign journalists and letting them know about what was happening. Their protests, and Soviet responses, were published in Western newspapers and more importantly broadcast over Western radio stations, and this way penetrated into the Soviet Union itself."

"The crowning achievement of the dissenters was the publication of the purposely modestly titled Chronicle of Current Events. THis samizdat publication, beginning in 1968, went from hand to hand typed and retyped with so many carbons that at times it was hardly legible. It simply described arrests and searches of apartments for compromising materials, wisely refraining from comments. In most instances comments were unnecessary, for the regime was self-evidently hypocritical. The always anonymous editors were periodically arrested, but others took their place. That this publication could survived with-- shorter or longer gaps--for approximately a decade, showed how much the Soviet Union had changed. However faintly, one could see in the dissident movement the emergenxe of public opinion, the gradual opening of the public sphere (K,227)."

"The regime fought back. Although the difference between Stalin and Brezhnev eras was vast, the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s remained a repressive society. Dissenters were called in the offices of the KGB, where agents tried to reason with them and persuade them to mend their ways. THe agents let them know that the Soviet state possessed powerful instruments to enforce its will (K, 227)"- mentally ill

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

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

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) ."

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

---

[1] Ed. Peter Reddaway, Uncensored Russia, page 53

[2] Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, page 227

Soviet Dissent Notes Part 2

119: Soviet vs. dissident texts

167: German samizdat

181: Jewish samizdat

210: Baptist samizdat

226-228: Pentacostal

269: "Samizdat played an immense role in the spiritual emancipation of Soviet society.

It made possible a change in the life-style of Muscovites and others in the late fifties. Under STalin, when informing had become the norm, unofficial contacts between people had been reduced to a bare minimum. As a rule, two or three families would associate only among themselves, and there were very few homes where many people gathered. After the fear of mass arrests had passed, people three themselves at each other, deriving satisfaction from merely being together. A normal Moscow circle numbered forty to fifty "close friends." Although divided into smaller subgroups, teh entire group regularly gathered for parties that were held on the slightest excuse, and everyone knew everything about everyone else. All these circles were connected with other similar circles and the links led to Leningrad, Novosibirisk and other cities. Everyone gathered around the table imbibed tea and more than tea. Affairs were begun; families formed and broken up. Together everyone sang, danced , and listened to music. Tape recorders had gone on sale, and they were not particularly expensive. They facilitated the distribution of song... (A 269)

270: "Large groups that fostered mutual trust created ideal conditions for the spread of samizdat. Samizdat was probably first circulated within such groups and then spread to various others. Although everyone knew it was necessary to be very careful, few, in fact were. Most people confined their effors to awkward attempts at camouflage, which were often the object of humor (A, 270)"-there's a joke

270: 20th party congress, openness

274: Sinyavsky and Daniel

"It was clear that their arrest had been calculated as a declaration of war on samizdat" on its contributors, distributors and readers. Theirs were the first arrests reported by foreign radio stations broadcasting to the Soviet Union. They referred to Daniel as Danielo and from time to time reported on the indignation of the West: Terts and Arzhak had been translated into several European languages and their books were successful.

These foreign radio reports made everyone aware of the arrests and caused consternation among all those connected with samizdat. Everyone, not just friends and family of the arrested, argued hotly over how the incident would turn out: would the authorities quietly dispose of the arrested or would they put on a "show trial" in the Stalinist tradition in which, somehow, defendents were induced to slander themselves monstrously and even ask to be tried without leniency. Afterwards, would new arrests begin? What would the sentences be? Speculation included death by firing squad. (Experience during the Stalinist period taught that the word "enemy" in the newspaper meant just that.

In this uncertain and anxious environment that the first demonstration in the history of the Soviet regime that was accompanied by human rights slogans took plac in Moscow's Pushkin Square on December 5, 1965. A few days prior to December 5, which was celebrated as Constitution Day, typed leaflets containing a "civic plea" appeared...(A 273-275)"

The doc. is there.

276: Trial of S & D

276: "However, when people left the courthouse, either for a lunch break or at the end of a session, everyone rushed up to the wives of the defendants, who told their friends what was going on inside. Both the correspondents and the KGB could hear them. And every evening reports on the trial and commentary were carried by foreign radio broadcasts. Thanks to this procedure, the West learned about the trial, and especially important, so did people all over the Soviet Union. Thus, future human rights activists discovered the only means available to them to spread ideas and information under Soviet Condition. (A, 277)

277: The White Book, protest Methods