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

Shatz, The Sinyavsky-Daniel trial and its aftermath: legal tactics and organizational efforts

"Signs of 're-Stalinization' had been appearing since the removal of Khrushchev from power in the autumn of 1964. Public references to the STalin era were beginning to play down the negative sides-the purges, te executions, the camps-and to stress he more favorabl e aspects, such as the heroic efforts of the first Five Years Plans and the war years. Stalin's role as war leader, which Khrushchev had criticized with particularly harshness was partially refurbished and articles extolling the victims of Stalin's purges began to disappear from the press. Finally, early in 1966, Pravda printed a statement ruling out further use of 'period of the cult of personality.'" (Shatz, 118)

"The embarrassing problem facing the prosecution was the two writers had not in fact committed an illegal act. There was no law on the Soviet statute books prohibiting an author from sending manuscripts abroad for publication." (Shatz, 119)

"Complaints came from many quarters that legality had not been observed in the treatment of Siniavskay and Daniel: the charge against them was false; the standards of evidence and trial procedure had been deplorable; the trial was not truly open to the public as required by law; and the reports in the press had been scanty and grossly biased against the defendents.")120

"In making this demand, the critics and protestors were calling for the redemption of one of the promises Khrushchev had made in his 1956 speech. Agter detailing the arrrests and executions of the STalin period, Khrushchev had assured his audience that 'socialist legality' woudl be restored and violations of it no longer tolerated.'" 120

"The Soviet legal system is under considerable pressure to apply Party policy, that is, to respond to political considerations, in the determination of individual cases."

Article 70

"They were accused of slandering the Soviet government and people, of slandering Lenin and of enabling some WEstern commentators to use their works for anti-Soviet purposes-hardly the 'especially dangerous crimes against the state' referred to in the law code." (Shatz, 119)-airing dirty laundry

"By putting the writers on trial, the authorities tacitly confirmed the political significance of literature and validated the role of the writer as a social critic. LIterature is recognized by the Soviet government as such a powerful force that it insists on monopolizing it for its own purposes punishing any use of it for unauthorized sentiments-writers, after all, are 'engineers of human souls.'" (Shatz, 120)

"The management of the trial reflected the government's general policy toward the issue of Stalinism in the wake of Khrushchev's departure from office. On the one hand, it wished to impose greater restrictions on criticism of the Stalinist past, with its inescapable implication of criticism of the post-Stalin present; on the other hand, it showed no desire to revert to the outright terrorism of the previous era. Therefore it sought to manipulate the courts and the legal system, giving a veneer of legality to the curtailment of political self-expression. The result was a glaring infringement of legal due process; it shocked many Soviet citizens who felt they had been assured by the Party that such travesties of justice were a thing of the Stalinist past and would not be permitted to recur. This was the main issue on which the various currents of dissent now concentrated." (Shatz, 121)

"The wave of indignation elicited by the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial advanced two major themes. First, putting writers on trial for the content of their fiction struck many observers as an absurd and shocking violation of the sanctity of literature." (Shatz, 121-122)

"The second major theme which gave Soviet dissent a new dimension, was a demand for dure process of law....Many of those who voiced such complaints stated that they disagreed with the writers' views or with the methods they had used to publish them. Nevertheless, they felt compelled to protest against the abitrariness and unfairness with which teh case had been handled. There were no public complaints about te laws themselves, or about the judicial process or the legal system in general; it was assumed that the law was just but had not been properly applied. The critics therefore demanded that the trial be reviewed and the writers acquitted (because they had obviously not violated the laws under which they have been tried) or at least that their very hard sentsences be reduced" (Shatz, 122)

-first it was petitions

then (Again younger generation)

"At the same time, some younger individuals decided to adopt bolder though still technically legal, forms of protest. Even before the trial itseld, on December 6, 1965, Soviet Constitution Day, some 200 students from the Gorky Institute of World Literature, where Siniavsky worked, had staged a rally in Moscow's Pushkin Square to demand a fair and open trial for the two writers. (This began something of an annual tradition: silent demonstrations in behalf of dissidents hae been held at the same spot on the same day in subsequent years.) THe rally was he first public protest Moscow had seen since the 1920s. (Shatz, 123)

124: trial documents, you're working against us (Socialist realism?)

"THe trials of 1967 and 1968, like the Siniavsky-Daniel trial, generated a series of petitions and open letters to the authorities protesting these new violations of due process and calling for review of the conviction and sentences." (Shatz, 126)

Ginzburg protest-126

"The most conspicuous effort in behalf of freedom of expression-and in retrospect, the highwater mark of the tide of dissent in the late sixties, at least in terms of public assertiveness-was the demonstration in Moscow's Red Square on August 25, 1968...The word 'demonstration' somewhat magnifies what actually occured: seven individuals gathered at noon at the ancient Execution Place in Red Square and unfurled a few hand-letered banners protesting the invasion." (shatz, 127)

"What was so unique about this event was that , for the first time in the history of Soviet dissent, the demonstrators were not protesting a specific case of injustice in the Soviet Union or even an issue that directly concerned them (although in the crushing of the Czech experiment in 'democratic socialism'  they percieved a real threat to their aspirations for their own country). The demonstrations in Red Square was purely an act of civic duty and inficidual conscience. This is amply confirmed by the statements of the defendants at their subsequent trial."

Larisa Bogoraz" "I was faced by the choice of protesting or staying silent. Staying silent would have meant for me sharing in the general approbal of actions which I did not approve. STaying silent would have meant lying." - just like Lie essay (Shatz, 129)

128-this trial is how the W. discovers samizdat

Birth of the Chronicle

"Some kind of permanent cohesive organization was essential in order to mount a sustained campaign for civil liberties instead of merely responding to the government's acts of repression; it was also essential if such a campaign were to survive the arrest of individual dissidents by the police. With an organizational base, the scattered and highly vulnerable individuals and circles that had emerged in the late sixties might be able to transform their expression of criticism and protest into a real "movement" on behalf of civil liberties." (Shaztz, 131)

"One of the first, and most successful, of these organizing efforts was A Chronicle of Current Events....A number of other underground journals have made their appearance in the last two decades, some of a literary nature and others devoted to political and social themes. Like the intelligentsia's 'thick journals' of the nineteenth century, they have served as behicles for the expression of a variety of nonconformist ideas, though most of these publications have been of brief duration. The Chronicle was the first one devoted exclusively to dissent itself." (Shatz, 131)

"More broadly, the rise of autonomous public associations represents a new stage of political consciousness on the part of at least some Soviet dissidents. Post-Stalin dissent in its initial phas was limited to moral appeals to the authorities for more humane treatment, and in its seconde phase to peitions and protests against violations of Soviet law and judicial procedure. It did not challenge the authorities' right to rule, nor did it question their legitimacy or demand that they be held accountable for their actions except in a moral sense. But the attempt to create citizens' organizations independent of the Party and state represents a significant break with the paternalistic principle of authority comparable to that achieved by the early intelligentsia at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century." (Shatz, 135)

Nelidov "Ideocratic Consciousness and Personality"

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


1973


"The culture of social adaptation or the negative ideology of which we speak and which firs into a sepcial, semi-displaced, semi-conscious part of the soul, is at the same time a system of internal filters or censorship.  Censorship forms as the results of the hardening of settled reactions to ideological energy impulses which are regularly sent and organized in a special way. It pre-determines the mastering of information being received, enlivening and coloring some, sterilizing and ousting others." (M-A, 274)


"Today we see the consequences of this process in the culture of social adaptation (i.e. in the meaning which this idea acquires), in the attempt to raise a new type of people whose ctions and views are already predetermined prior to birth. People are born condemned to atheism, doublethink, and ideological instincts. The oppresion of the truth imposed on them is far more serious than the oppression of sultan or dictator. Truth not only demands that you sacrifice be brought to it. Truth breaks into the consciousness and creeps into the heart. It wishes to rule you from the outside." (M-A, 278)


healing the double speak


"A government, after al, which endlessly speaks about freedom and the thorough development of the personality, cannot simply write in its constitution: there is no freedom of conscience, there is no freedom of the press, there is no freedom of speech nd of demonstration. It acs much more cunningly. It concludes something like a secret agreement with its citizens. I will speak to you of your freedom but you act as if there was no freedom. And, in general, that was how the citizens behaved. Otherwise they would not have had to pay so deatly. These are the elementary ethics of doublethink, understandable to a child." (M-A, 281)


"An elementary reflection, i.e. a certain rejection of these contradictions, speaks of erosion of such consciousness. Reflection makes the accommodation purely external. It makes its realization possible and, in individual cases its repudiation. It is precisely from this simple realization (accepted spiritually, not cynically) and the rejection of doublethink which followed that the 'Democratic Movement' began." (M-A, 282)


"Special mention must be made about the publication of the Chronicle of Current events which, it is possible, was not the direct labor of the 'movement,' but which was contiguous to it. The Chronicle elicited the greatest fear in the State's subconscious. This was not slow in appearing in those repressions which it drew upon itself. In its form, the Chronicle is most inoffensive. It has only information regarding the persecution of ideologically inconvenient people: the arrests, searches, protocols of trials, starvation in camps, the closing of churches, or simply the addresses of the incarcerated. Only information, almost no commentary, and no emotion. Here is just on example..." (M-A, 282)


"These names are not a secret and nothing will happen if they will be known. These, after all, are criminal offenders condemned by Soviet laws and for the most part, probably in juridically normal trials. Nothing will hapen even if the facts about them are openly published and anyone who wishes will be able to find them out, to know the length of their sentences, their guilt, their age. Everyone knows that the State is is not the kind fairy, that is has long hands and cold nerves. And no one will be particularly surprised at such publicity. Nevertheless, some instictive, not fully realized wisdom forces it conceal this as much as military secrets. If one speaks of this publicly, some rules of the game are violated. Toorrow there may be other rules but today in our country, as well as in the "international arena," as few people as possible should know about the composition of the women's labor camp, ZhKh 385/3, or about political prisoners in the Soviet Union in general. All of these not even longs lists somehow out of rhythm with the great stride of the magnanimous patron of of the poorly developed nations and the implacable champion of democracy And it is quite indecent to recall this after so many words regarding the 'thorough development' or 'dirty slanderers,' know all the properties very well and know perfectly well how to exclude all that people should not know about." (M-A, 284)


"The Chronicle witnesses to coercion and, in so doing, draws coercion upon itself. IT cites facts of government cruelty which are so systematically and shamelessly concealed. It thus forces one to look at that which is forbidden by some unaccountable law. All of this is done with blindfolded eyes so as not to know, not to see, so as to forget. Even those at whose hands this is done are afraid to take full account of themselves." (M-A, 284)


"The perversion of consciousness becomes a principle which attempts to impose itself on vision, hearing, and speech. The Chronicle, in calling things by their real names, opposed this perversion. It is percisely to the perverted consciousness that it  appears to be deliberatley criminal. If this is analyzed, the whole system of the coercions of a totalitarian state proves to have grown out of the ancient sub-conscious fear of the magical significance of certain works." (M-A, 285)


"The essential point is not that a person is put in jail for expressing his convictions (even though they be in the form of objectionable information). It is in the fact that even prior to any jailing he is deprived of the right to the fundamental, universal choice of his spiritual orientation. Then, by the very means of punishment, the attempt is to physically destroy the possibility of this choice. It has already left the sphere of ideological hypnosis and ceremony is not stood upon in relation to it. What is particularly astounding is a certain petty calculatedness of this overwhelming cruelty: the instructions to organize starvation, cold, searches, denunciations, eavesdropping and the sadism of political indoctrination. THe idea of the punishments is to have the political prisoner lose his personality, to have him accept the imposed scenario or vanish completely. But the pressure of the jail is not enough and someone's fantasy events imprisonment in psychiatric hospitals." (M-A, 285) 


"This is no simply a 'change in the means of repression.' It is a revolutionary leap. The quantity of the punishment transforms into quality. The political prisoner remains a personality. He can announce a hunger-strike write a letter to the prosecutor on a scrap of paper, and no matter how much was added on to his sentence, it would still end one day and he would be released. The mental patient is deprived of being a personality. His protests can be ignored, his hunger-strike may only be a symptom of his illness, he can be legally beaten, poisoned with medicine for the sake of his well being, and subjected to insulin shock. He is not given a pen, is kept with the truly ill, and can only leave when he is considered by the doctors to have recovered. Healthiness means the acceptance of stipulated rules,of the laws of doublethink, of the 'culture of social adaptation.' What is demanded are not prescribed thoughts but accepted gestures, and conditioned instincts. The norm of doublethink put forth its human norm and man's full value was gauged by it. THe whole idea of the political protest of the 'democratic movement; consisted in the fact that it showed a different norm of human health which turned out to be intolerable to a society infected by a spiritual epidemic." (M-A, 286)

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)

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

Puddington Vol. 1

Puddington, Arch. Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2000.


VOA-convey a U.S. Perspective (P,ix)


freedom radio-Cold War institutions (P, ix)


"Their goal was not simply to inform their listeners but also to bring about the peaceful demise of the Communist system and the liberation of what were known as satellite nations. The radios pursued these goals not by promoting the American way of life, but by serving as surrogate home radio services, alternatives to the controlled, party-dominated, domestic press. (P, ix)


"A sizable portion of Radio Liberty's Russian-language programs, including some programs that regularly boasted audiences in the millions, originated from New York. The Russian service included four or five full-time editors and correspondents, but since New York was the preferred destination for those among the intellectual elite who were fed up with Soviet restrictions, Soviet censorship, Soviet poverty and, especially, Soviet hypocrisy, the service was able to recruit literally dozens of talented reporters, writers, poets, musicians and commentators from among the wave emigrants who left the USSR during the 1970s."


"Most were hired as part-timers or freelancers. Though their pay was hardly extravagant, it could be a life-saver for intellectuals who had left good careers in the Soviet Union for the uncertainties of life in the United States. For some, a more important consideration was the opportunity to work as a journalist or critic in the Russian language. Indeed, after years of censorship and self-censorship in the Soviet Union,  a job at Radio Liberty for a journalist or critic often provided the first opportunity for honest commentary. It enabled them to earn a decent living and place the spotlight of journalistic truth on the dark corners of Soviet life.  Having been unwilling participants in the dishonesty of the Soviet system, the exiled commentators could draw on years of experience to inform their listeners about the corruption of Soviet science, Soviet sport, and Soviet culture and the facts about the natural disasters and man-made catastrophes that were systematically covered up by Soviet authorities (P, Xii) ."


Xii: Sports reporter with stories in the drawer


Evgeny Rubin: "Sports journalism in the Soviet Union was dishonest, especially where the professionalism of so-call amateur athletes was concerned. We couldn't write about how athletes were devoting their entire life to sports; we had to write how they were students or soldiers or workers who came to the stadium after working hours to train. All of this was untrue, but we had to write it anyway. And we had to ignore how the officials were sending adult athletes to tournaments supposedly reserved for young people. We had to lie at every level, and we always had the censors looking over our shoulders. Any mistakes and I could be fired" (P, Xiii)


RFE officially launched May Day 1951


Pavel Tigrid (formerly of BBC)


"Tigrid pulled no punches in spelling out Radio Free Europe's methods for dealing with the Communist enemy. 'Our station has, above all, a fighting and political mission." he explained. "Our offensive is directed against Communism and Sovietism, against the representative of the terrorist regimes..." It goes on if you need it


8: Kennan father of project


13: Model for RFE was Radio in the American sector began in 1946 as wired radio service for Germans living in American sector of Berlin


"It broadcast news, commentary and cultural programs that were unavailable in the censored media of the German Democratic Republic."


FEC- Free Europe Commission


"The FEC;s initial radio plans were modest . Exiled leaders were placed before a microphone and given free rein to speak to their countrymen." (P, 17)


By July 1950: "It was to be a "channel of communication by radio with the prisoner states over which things might be said which are in the national interest to have said, but that an official organ of government such as the voice could not itself say.' Those who would speak over the RFE microphone would 'authentic voices of exiled political and intellectual leaders and occasionally the voices of lesser-known or unknown exiles." 


Crusade for freedom-fundraising "freedom dollars" 


24: "The CIA was the conduit for the bulk of RFE's budget and practically all of RL's budget during the stations' first two decades of existence." 


27-30: CIA involvement


36: mission change w/ outbreak of Korea not just dissidents any more


FEC board: 'The aim of Radio Free Europe is primarily to supplement the Voice of america in the field of propaganda, using the voices of exiled leaders incidentally as this seems consistent with its fundamental purposes. (P, 36)"


"Thus even before it inaugurated its full broadcast schedule, RFE had begun to construct a news and intelifence gatherin operation that would become the envy of scholars and journalists all over the world. In addition to the major Western newspapers, wire services and magazines, RDE acquitted a long list of Communist bloc publications, right down to small provincial weeklies . The next step was to set up a series of monitoring stations in which broadcasts from the official Communist radio stations were recorded, transcribed, and sent to the desk editors as background information. Although it was eventually centralized in the Munich headquarters, monitoring was at first organized on a catch-as-can basis. For example, on man, supplied with a room and and typewriter , took care of the monitoring for the entire Czechoslovak regime radio output. To monitor Romanian and Bulgarian radio broadcasts, a staff was hired in Istanbul; it took nearly a week for the staff's transcripts to reach RFE headquarters in New York. (P,38)" 


"In addition to its monitoring program, RFE opened a network of news and information bureaus throughout Western Europe. The chief of each bureau was an English-speaking journalist; the rest of the staff were usually exiles. THe bureaus eventually came to function like normal news operation, supplying reports relevant to the audience countries from London, Bonn, Rome and PAris. At first, however, the bureaus' main purpose was intelligence gathering. THe original plan called for a division of intelligence gathering between the CIA and RFE, with the CIA providing the general information about conditions behind the Iron Curtain and RFE providing material elicted in interviews with defecors. Thus the decision on where to locate the bureaus depended less on the news potential of the city than on how often it was frequented by travelers or refugees from the East. Bureaus were opened in Hamburg and Stockholm because these cities were often visited by ships from Poland. A bureau was opened in Istanbul because it was the destination of travelers and refugees from Bulgaria and Romania. Bureaus were opened in various cities in Austria because of their proximity to the Hungarian border. THe bureau staff conducted in-depth interviews with travelers and often employed standard defector interrogation techniques. Some of the information was sent to Munich as new reports, but sometimes the format resembled interrogation or intelligence reports. Because civic life was heavily politicized under communism, the inquiries were quite broad. ...." (P 39)


"Radio Free Europe did not maintain paid agents inside the Iron Curtain. It did, however, retain a network of well-connected émigrés in PAris, Vienna, Rome, and other European cities who kept abreast of political developments through contacts within the East European countries. THese agents would pass along information gathered from their various sources, and the material would then be analyzed and occasionally used in special broadcasts about internal conditions in the audience countries. RFE also recieved information on developments within the Communist world from letters sent to its special Box 52-20 in Munich. Listeners were invited to write to this address, and the information was sometimes was used in RFE's Messages programs, in which announcers would reveal the names of Communist spies or informers." (P,40)


41: huge autonomy


46-loyal fan base


"Reports from inside the Iron Curtain indicated that RFE was most appreciated for its harsh brand of anticommunism; at the top of the list of favorite programs were the Messages broadcasts, in which RFE announcers denounced by name Communist spies and informers....(P,47)"


"Radio Free Europe was also gaining listeners by simply broadcasting reports about important news items that the Communist media either ignored or presented hours or even days later than the Western broadcasting stations. According to an internal survey conducted in 1953, the Voice of Free Hungary aired items about the free world an average of forty-four hours earlier than Communist media, and thirteen hours earlier on items about Communist countries. In some cases, the differences were astonishing. ...Examples (47)


47: appeal to workers, but as dissent picked up,  appealed to them.


61: balloon project


92: Secret Speech
Published in NYT


"Though not given exclusive rights to the secret speech, RFE nevertheless played an important role in acquainting its listeners with Khrushchev's anti-Stalin message. The text was read over the air night and day, accompanied by commentaries that speculated on its implications for communism's future. (p, 92) " circulated by balloon


153: March 1953 "Radio Liberty from Bolshevism"
specifically Soviet focused 


155: in the image of RFE