Khrushchev/Solzhenitsyn Old Paper

            Nikita Khrushchev approved the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962, forging a connection between the Soviet Premier and the novel. The links between the two become more apparent after examining Khrushchev’s Secret Speech, because both the speech and the novel explore similar ideas including “anti-Soviet” traitors, the way the war and Five Year Plans was portrayed, and the role of the Soviet artist. While the two men discuss similar topics, they offer vastly different interpretations. For one, Khrushchev indicts the cult of the individual surrounding Stalin, while Solzhenitsyn attacks Stalinism as a whole. Moreover, Solzhenitsyn is vastly more willing to unveil the past that Khrushchev. While One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and the Secret Speech explore similar topics, two writers have  different analyses of the situation.

            The two men offer similar assessments of the presence of “anti-Soviet” traitors in Gulag.  Following World War II, Stalin imprisoned many military commanders who had fought against the Nazis in the war. Stalin slandered these soldiers, arguing they had been contaminated by the German forces and were now enemies of the state. Solzhenitsyn’s fictional Ivan Denisovich is one of these soldiers. Solzhenitsyn writes,

“So the Germans rounded them up a few at a time in the forest.  Shukhov was a prisoner…then he and four others escaped…If they'd had any sense they'd have said they'd got lost in the forest, and nothing would have happened to them.  But they came out in the open: yes, we were taken prisoner, we've escaped from the Germans.  Escaped prisoners, eh?  Like fuck you are!  Nazi spies, more like!  Behind bars is where you belong.[1]"

This was a common occurrence throughout 1937-1941. Khrushchev attacks it as an extension of Stalin’s paranoia. He argues forcefully throughout his speech that Stalin routinely acted in his own interest, rather than in the interest of the country as a whole. In this particular instance, he contends that Stalin was convinced successful military commanders would turn against him and threaten his job and power. Khrushchev stated in his speech, “Very grievous consequences, especially in reference to the beginning of the war, followed Stalin’s annihilation of many military commanders and political workers during 1937-1941 because of his suspiciousness and through slanderous accusations.[2]” Stalin put them in labor camps in order to ensure he had no competition. Khrushchev clearly calls out Stalin, blaming him and his paranoia for this phenomenon. Solzhenitsyn, unlike Khrushchev, avoids placing specific blame on Stalin. Rather, he implies the entire Stalinist system is to blame, writing about unnamed interrogators and “them.”

            Just as both writers come down on these false accusations, Solzhenitsyn and Khrushchev both condemn the “official” heroic story of the Great Fatherland War. Both writers argue that Russia was woefully underprepared for the war. Again, Solzhenitsyn is vague in who he blames. His narrator states, “But what am I here for?  Because they weren't ready for the war in '41 — is that the reason?  Was that my fault?[3]” Solzhenitsyn is careful to make clear that ordinary Russians are not to blame for Russian’s under preparedness, pointing out the absurdity that his narrator could possibly be held responsible for Russia’s failures. Again, the reader grasps a vague indictment of the Stalinist system. Khrushchev, however, rips Stalin to pieces. He holds Stalin was unfit to lead the Red Army and routinely made erratic, poorly thought-out decisions He said, “The Soviet Army, on the basis of a strategic plan prepared by Stalin long before, used the tactics of so-called “active defense” i.e the tactics which, as we know allowed the Germans to come up to Moscow and Stalingrad.[4]” Beyond that, he blasts Stalin for not mobilizing industry to prepare for war. Khrushchev sarcastically alludes multiple times to Stalin’s “genius.” He asserts that had Stalin not been so sure of himself and his military genius that the war would have been fought in a better, less devastating manner. Stalin’s “genius” is to blame for the Russian losses during World War II.

            Like the “Great Fatherland War,” the Five Year Plans had an official story surrounding them. When discussing this official stories, the difference between the two writers grow more stark. Khrushchev argued the Five Year plans were not only necessary, but also heroic. However, he maintains that collectivization and industrialization were successful in spite of, not because of, Stalin. He praises the progress made throughout the Soviet Union, particularly in Georgia where industrial production was 27 times what it had been prior to the revolution[5], but attacks Stalin for not visiting villages. He said, “Stalin separated himself from the people and never went anywhere. This lasted ten years. The last time he visited a village was in January 1928…How then could he have known the situation in the provinces?[6]”Stalin, Khrushchev argued, was out of touch with the industrialization and collectivization movements. They happened without his knowledge and assistance. Khrushchev was careful to hold up the Russian people as the true heroes of the industrialization and collectivization, stating, “The Socialist Revolution was attained by the working class and by the poor peasantry with the partial support of middle-class peasants.” This marks a major difference between the two writers because Solzhenitsyn’s novel argues industrialization was accomplished by workers in Gulag. They served as slave labor for Stalin and the party[7]. The characters in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich spend their day building a power plant. They are of use to society while serving their sentences in labor camps. Khrushchev, however, refuses to acknowledge the role slave labor played in industrialization. He was not willing to uncover this piece of the past.

            This difference is also evidenced by how the two perceive the role of the artist in Soviet society. Solzhenitsyn believes the most important role of the artist is to tell the truth. In one scene in the novel, two prisoners, Kh-123 and Tsezar, discuss the film Ivan the Terrible. While Tsezar argues the film is a work of genius because of its camera angles and artistic beauty. When Kh-123 says it’s a piece of propaganda, Tsezar responds it’s the only way it would have gotten past the censors. Kh-123 retorts, “Let through, you say? Then don’t call him a genius! Call him a toady. Say he carried out orders like a dog. A genius doesn’t adapt his treatment to the taste of tyrants![8]” Artists are not supposed to conform to the wills of politicians in order to get their works approved; they are supposed to be the truth-tellers. Khrushchev, while leading the thaw, still believed in limited party control over art. This is evidenced by the simple fact that Khrushchev needed to approve Solzhenitsyn’s work.

            Their views on the role of artists are indicative of a more significant difference between the two writers. Solzhenitsyn’s desire for the truth drove him to attempt to unveil the truth about the Stalinist years, in his novel.  Khrushchev, in contrast, felt, “We should not wash out dirty linen before their eyes.[9]” Solzhenitsyn’s novel is, in some ways, a response to this idea presented.[10] While Khrushchev exposed the extent of Stalin’s purges within the party, he neglected to discuss the terror or forced labor camps. Solzhenitsyn’s novel is call for Khrushchev to release it all, and to uncover the past.

            Their desire for differing levels of historic transparency is the most considerable difference between the two men. It is evidenced by their contrasting views on the labor camps and the role of Soviet artists. The other difference between the two writers is how responsible they held Stalin personally for the terrible things that went on during his reign. Khrushchev holds Stalin personally responsible for the party purge and placing military commanders in labor camps, while Solzhenitsyn holds the administration as a whole accountable.

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[1] Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, page 54

[2] Nikita Khrushchev, “Khrushchev’s De-Stalinization Speech, February 24-25, 1956,” USSR: A Concise History, ed. Basil Dmytryshyn, page 549

[3] Solzhenitsyn, page 141

[4] Khrushchev, page 546

[5] Khrushchev, page 555

[6] Khrushchev, page 563

[7] Linda Gerstein, Class Lecture, December 3, 2009

[8] Solzhenitsyn, page 67

[9] Khrushchev, page 568

[10] Linda Gerstein, Class Lecture, December 3

One Day in the Life

"'You're wrong, pal,' Caesar was saying, and he was trying not to be too hard on him. 'One must say in all objectivity that Eisenstein is a genius. Now isn't Ivan the Terrible a work of genius? The opirchniki dancing in the masks! The scene in the cathedral!'

'All show-off!' K-123 snapped. He was holding his spoon in front of his mouth. 'To much art is no art at all. Like candy instead of bread! And the politics of it is utterly vile--vindication of a one-man tyranny. An insult to the memory of three generations of Russian intellectuals!' (He ate his mush, but there was not taste in his mouth. It was wasted on him.)

'But what other treatment of the subject would have been let through...?'

'Ha! Let through, you say? Then don't call him a genius! Call him a toady, say he carried out orders like a dog. A genius doesn't adapt his treatment to the taste of tyrants!'

Caesar looked around and streched out his hand for the mush, as if it had just come to him out of thin air. He didn't even look at Shukob and went back to his talk.

'But listen! It's not what but how that matters in art.'

Kh-123 jumped up and banged his fist on the table.

'No! Your how can go to hell if it doesn't raise the right feelings in me!'" (Sol, 67)

In the First Circle

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. In the First Circle. Translated by Harry T. Willetts. New York: Harper Perennial, 2009.

first written '55-'58

in their way to prison camp, intelligentsia, essentially political prisoners

"Swinging the compressed mass of bodies to and fro, the gaily painted orange-and-blue truck swished along the city streets, passed one of the stations, and pulled up at a crossing. A dark red car was  held up by traffic lights at the sam road junction. It belonged to the Moscow correspondent of the newspaper Liberation, who was on his way to a hockey match in the Dynamo stadium. The correspondent read the words on the side of the truck: Myaso/Viande/Fleish/Meat


He had made a mental note of several such trucks seen in various parts of Moscow that day. He took our a notebook and jotted down in dark red ink:

'Every now and then, one encounters on the streets of Moscow food delivery trucks, spick-and-span and impeccably hygenic. There can be no doubt that the capital's food supplies are extremely well organized.'"

(740-741)

Solzhenitsyn Participation and the Lie

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. "Participation and the Lie."I Must Speak Out: The Best of The Voluntaryist. Edited by Carl Warner. 200-202. San Francisco: Fox and Wilkes,  1999.

published in 1975 by Little Brown and Company in Under the Rubble


"Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and active participation in the general conscious lie."  (Sol, 200)


"The most important part of our freedom, inner freedom, is always subject to our will. If we surrender it to corruption, we do not deserve to be called human."(Sol, 200)

"But let us note that if the absolutely essential task is not political liberation, but the liberation of our souls from participation in the lie forced upon us, then is requires no physical, revolutionary, social, organizational easures, no meetings, strikes trade unions-things fearful for us to even contemplate and from which we quite naturally allow circumstances to dissaude us. No! IT requires from each individual a moral step within his power- no more than that.  200


"Do not lie! Do not take part in the lie~ Do not support the lie!" 200


"It is an invasion of man's moral world, and our straightening up and refusing to lie is also not political, but simply the retrieval of our human dignity." 200

"It simply means: not saying what you don't think, and that includes not whispering, not opening your mouth, not raising your hand, not casting your vote, not feigning a smile, not lending you presence, not standing up, and not cheering." 201

"We all work in different fields and move in different walks of life. THose who work in the humanities and all who are studying find themselves much more profoundly and inextricably involved in lying and participating in the lie- they are fenced about by layer after layer of lies. In the technical science it can be more ingeniously avoided, but even so one cannot excape daily entering some door, attending some meeting, putting one's signature to something or undertaking some obligation which is a cowwardly submission to the lie. The lie surrounds us at work, on our way to work, in our leisure pursuits--in everything we see, hear and read." 201

"It will cost you canceled dissertations, annulled degrees, demotions, dismissals, expulsions, sometimes even deportations. But you will not be cast into flames. Or crushed by a tank. And you will still have food and shelter." 202

"This path is the safest and most accessible of all the paths open to the average man in the street. But it is also most effective! Only we, knowing out system, can imagine what will happen when thousand and tens of thousands of people take this path--how our country will be purified and transformed without shots or bloodshed." 202

"But this path is also the most moral: we shall be commencing this liveration and purification with our sown souls. Before we purify the country we shall have purification with our own souls. Before we purify the country we shall have purified ourselves. And this is the only correct historical order; for what is the food of purifying our country's air if we ourselves remain dirty."  202

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. 

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[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

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[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: Contemporary Movements for National, Religious, and Human Rights Pt. 1

Alexeyeva, Ludmilla. Soviet Dissent: Contemporary Movements for National, Religious, and Human Rights. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1987.

"Samizdat completed the data necessary for this book. The source of essential information is the Chronicle of Current Events, which the academic Sakharov has called the principal achievement of the human rights movement. The anonymous editorial board that publishes CCE is renewed approximatley every two years, generally because of the arrests of it's editors. Since 1968, sixty-four issues of Chronicle have appeared; they contain an immense amount of material about the violation of human rights throughout the USSR and about the continuing struggle against these abuses. The excellent quality of the information from Chronicle has withstood investigation. At the trials for those involved in Chronicle, usually on the charges of "slander," teams of KGB agents seeking frounds on these accusation on several occasions checked the reliability of the information of human rights activists. (Al, vii-viii)

Al 9: Birthday of the movement- Dec. 5 1965, Pushkin Square

Al 10: Historical background, Secret Speech,

Al 11: Novy Mir as signal of part of the movement, publication of One Day

Al 12: How Samizdat works

"The more successful a work, the faster and further it is distributed. Of course, samizdat is extremely inefficient in terms of the time and effort expended but it is the only possible way of overcoming the government monopoly on ideas and information (Al, 12)."

"Russian samizdat began with poetry, possibly because poetry is easier to reproduce--brief and easier to memorize. But there may be a deeper cause: spiritual emancipation begins in the area of simple human feelings (Al, 13)."

Al 13: Estimate more than 300 authors most young circulating

Al 15: Zhivago

THE HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT IS INHERENTLY TIED WITH SAMIZDAT

"It was only by virtue of samizdat that the human rights movement itself was able to rise and spread.

The chief functions of the human rights movement are gathering and disseminating information on human rights violations and defending these rights, irrespective of citizens' nationality, religion or social background. In this way contacts are established with other dissident movements. The movement's participants carry out their work with samizdat information journals, the best known of which is the Chronicle of Current Events. 


AL 41: Ukranian Chronicle spin off

AL 52: Ukranian dissidents and western journalist

Al 74: Catholic Chronicle

Al 109-114: Comparison between Chronicle and Official Coverage

A Narrowing of My Thesis

To narrow down my thesis, I find myself going back to where I started this project, with The Chronicle of Current Events. [1] The Chronicle was an underground newspaper published by a select group of dissidents in the late sixties and early seventies.  When I sat down to do this assignment earlier in the week, I panicked. I was going through my notes and it seemed to be a jumble of odd anecdotes about newspapers, journalists, Decembrists and radio. There was no sort of overarching idea.

That was until I found my notes on The Thaw Generation, written by Ludmilla Alexeyeva and translated by Paul Goldberg[2]. Alexeya’s book is her memoir of her years as a leader in the dissident movement; in particular, she focuses on the years she spent as an editor of the Chronicle. Looking at it, I realized everything I’ve been reading connects back to The Chronicle, at least in a tangential way. So my narrowed topic is: the reporting and dissemination of The Chronicle as a case study for how information was shared by dissidents in the Soviet Union.

Here’s how I see it shaping up, so far:

·      How The Chronicle came about-The context of The Chronicle is a fascinating story. The concern with openness and transparency began earnestly among dissidents after Khrushchev’s Secret Speech and the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich[3]. But the samizdat movement began in earnest after the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel, and the subsequent publication of Ginzberg’s The White Book[4].

·      How an underground newspaper gathers news- This is one of the things that initially attracted to me to this topic. I spent the summer working at a newspaper and have a decent feel on traditional reporting. I didn’t have a sense of how to report a story when it was dangerous to get caught with notes or interview the people stories were on. The Chronicle used a network of dissidents spreading information back and forth to each other in person.

·      How to publish an underground newspaper in the USSR-This is where history of samizdat publishing comes in. Dissidents typed up carbon copies and passed them around. It’s impossible to estimate how many copies of The Chronicle were in circulation for this reason.

·      How/Why The Chronicle stories were broadcast on Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Part of the reason The Chronicle was so influential in the USSR was that its articles were broadcast in. Dissidents were savvy about getting in touch with foreign broadcasters and journalists to bring their stories abroad.

·      How/Why The Chronicle  was published in the United States? How did Reddaway’s Uncensored Russia come to be? The Chronicle and tons of other samizdat was smuggled to the States and published here.

This is still somewhat of a jumble. The way I’m looking at it is the process story of how samizdat, using The Chronicle, as a case study came to be an influential part of the dissident movement.

I still don’t have a thesis for my thesis, per se, but everything I’ve been looking at does connect to the story of The Chronicle.

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[1] Peter Reddaway, Uncensored Russia: protest and dissent in the Soviet Union: the unofficial Moscow journal, a Chronicle of current events (New York: American Heritage Press), 1972.

[2] Alexeyeva, Ludmilla and Paul Goldberg, trans. The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press), 1993.

[3] Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 2005.

[4]Hayward, Max, trans, On Trial: The Soviet State versus “Abram Tertz” and “Nikolai Arzha,” (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers), 1966.

The Thaw Generation-Notes

Alexeyeva, Ludmilla and Paul Goldberg, trans. The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the

Post-Stalin Era. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993.

"Every night, we gathered in cramped apartments to recite poetry, read "unofficial" prose, and swp stories that, taken together, yielded a realistic picture of what was going on in our country (A & G, 4)."

Dissidents have 3 options

"The first was to toe the party line and be allowed to advance professionally; the second was to put a career on hold and wait for another thaw; the third was to stay the course of the thaw and accept the consequences: an aborted career and the life of a pariah (A & G, 5)." 

"I had to act.  I had to act as an individual. All of us had to. Our leaders were wrong. They needed us. They needed the public. By realizing that, we became citizens (A & G, 19)."

"But at the time we were at school, few of those connections could be called friendships. Going out of the immediate circle of friends --usually limited to two or three-- meant multiplying the chances of having your offhand remarks reported to the authorities (A & G, 32)."

-Mandelstam as an example

A & G 33-34: bond w/ the Decembrists

"Newspapers, books, and journals were now devoted exclusively to praises of Comrade Stalin, our Communist party, the Soviet motherland, the Great Russian People, and Our Valorous Armed Forces. No book could be "idealess." A love story, a poem, or an adventure for its own sake was no longer acceptable. Every work had to be of ideological value. Otherwise, it was classified as "bourgeois diversionism (A & G,  38)."

"As far as I was concerned, the Soviet system was sound, Marxism-Leninsim was the most progressive ideology in the world, and all Russia's problem could be attributed to the large number of "careerists" who had joined the party for personal gain(A & G, 48)."-it's not the system that's broken...this is her early on 

A & G 65: Bloodshed in history, but she's no longer cool with it 

A & G 66: Dissent begins with Lenin

****A & G 71:**** Beria trial

A & G 72: "In December 1953, Novy mir published an article innocuously title "On Sincerity in Literature." In it, Vladimir Pomerantsev, a little-known writer, accused the Soviet literary establishment of "varnishing reality" and churning out contrived, formulaic work that portrayed universal prosperity."

A & G 73: The Thaw

A & G 76: Secret Speech

A & G 86: Sybarites- dissident group

A & G 96: One Day in the Life...

A & G 97: " Sometime in the mid-1950s, poet Nikolai Glazkov decided to act as his own publisher.  Glazkov, a fine poet and a bear of a man who made a living in menial jobs, folded blank sheets of paper and typed his verse on all four sides. Then he took a needle and thread and sewed the pages together at the crease. The result was something like a book.

On the bottom of the first shhet, Glazkov typed "samsebyaizdat" which was both an acronym for "I published myself" and a parody of "gospolitizdat," the name of an official publishing house. Later  "samsebyaizdat" lost the reflexive sebya and was shortened to samizdat, "self-publishing."

Samizdat sprung up on its own, arising naturally from kompanii. It could not have existed without them. My friends and I helped each other fill the enormous void of information, and soon the izdat, publishing, part of samizdat became a kompaniya ritual: if you liked a manuscript, you borrowed it overnight and copied it on your typewriter. Generally, I made five copies. Three went to friends, the fourth went to the person who let me borrow the poem, and the fifth remained in my possession." 

A & G 99: deals with translations

A & G 110: Daniel!!!

A & G 113: Daniel's publications

A & G 117: S & D arrested

120-leaflet to promote Pushkin Square

"Several months ago the organs of state security arrested two citizens: writers A. Sinyavsky and Yu. Daniel. There are reasons to fear violation of glasnost of the legal process. It is commonly known that violation of the law on glasnost (Article 3 of the Constitution of the USSR and Article 18 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Soviet Federation of Socialist Republic) constitutes an illegal action. It is inconceivable that the work of a writer could constitute a crime against the state.

In the past, unlawful actions by the authorities have taken the lives of millions of Soviet citizens. This blood stained past demands vigilance in the present. It is more prudent to give up oe day of tranquility than to spend years suffering the consequences of lawlessness that has not been stopped in time.

Soviet citizens have a means for resisting capricious actions of the authorities. That method is the Glasnost Meeting whose participants chant only one slogan: WE DE-MAND GLAS-NOST FOR THE TRIAL OF (followed by the last names of the accused)!" or where the participants display a corresponding banner. Any shouts or slogans that depart from demands of strict adherence to laws must be regarded as counter-productive or, possibly, provactional must be halted by participants of the meeting." (A-G, 120_

A & G 124: "It was hard to imagine the number of intermediate steps that went into te production of the book I held in my hands. There was the act of smuggling the manuscript to the West, then the no less dangerous act of smuggling the published books back into the country.

Inside was Yulik Daniel's voice and real people in surrealistic situations. There was the story of a young man who in siring children can guarantee which of them will be boys and which will be girls. If at the moment of ejaculation he visualizes Karl Marx...