Conversations in Exile-Gorbanevskaya

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

NG

'88

"'Latent schizophrenia'"-223

"not ruled" out- meant she had it

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

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

didn't need many copies for radio-228

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

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

Hopkins, Vol. 7 "Unknown, Unsung"

Bukovsky on the typewriter- he would erect a monument to it  (137)

"First recall that all printing presses, duplicating machines, and photocopiers in the Soviet Union are state-owned and -controlled. That is, the KGB oversees their use. There are known cases of dissident groups establishing illegal underground presses, but these have been rare. Moreover, officially printed material in the Soviet Union is censored by the government agency Glavit. There is, in short, no conceivable, practical way for a Soviet citizens' group to mass-produce thousands or tens of thousands of copies of a newspaper, periodical or newsletter without state permission."

"The Chronicle's typists, however, never graduated to international celebrity rank. There are reliable reports of several women sentenced to labor camps for typing the Chronicle and of others interrogated. For the most part, the names of those who did produce the Chronicle-and most of them have been women-have disappeared in the anonymous mass that forms the private Soviet world." (H, 139)

"THe first problem a staffer faced in producing an issue was obtaining a typewrite. In the early 1960s, typewriters for private purchase were scarce in the Soviet Union, as were many consumer good. Even as production of Soviet models and foreign imports later increased, however, type-writers could leave a trail for the KGB to follow. Some times a purchaser of a new or used machine would be required to give a name and address. Moreover, it was believed among Soviet dissidents that the KGB routinely took samples of type imprints from each machine. Typed samizdat would be matched against these samples to incriminate the writer."

Ludmilla- find in THaw generation, inherited them to friends, give when emigree

"There is an unmistakable attachment of Chronicle workers to the typewriters. It is borne out by the fact that they can still recall in interviews precisely the manufacture of their typewrites, the price, and where the machines were purchased.' (H,140)

"THe constant noise of the machine carried through thin walls of Soviet apartments, possibly spurring a hostile or suspicious neighbor to inform the KGB. KBG-implanted listening devices in apartments could pick up continuous typewriter sounds. THe prudent choice, then was, to type the Chronicle in apartments not readily identified by the KGB as those of dissidents or their friends. Using such apartments meant, however, carrying a 20-pound typewriter hidden in a satchel from one's home to another address, pushing onto crowded buses or the subway, and then trudging blocks with heavy load to the final destination." (H, 140)

Galina Salova-worker:

"'I would lookt at people after they had put out an issue of the Chronicle,' she remembers. 'Their eyes were red. They obviously had had now sleep

-work at "fever pitch

-single spaced
6 or 12 carbon copies with original

"It was physically hard work. Typists would pound keys of old manual typewriters, trying to give clarity to carbon copies. THere was a premium on accuracy, for mistakes usually were not erased, but simply 'x-ed' out. So typing for the Chronicle meant tense, exhausting hours closeted in a safe apartment, feeling anxiety rise as fatigue set in and wondering if the KGB was preparing a search. " (H, 140-141)

Salova interview:

"It was difficult to find thin paper and carbons. You had to buy it at special stores. And people who worked there watched who bought the paper. A woman friend of mine found a professional typist to buy the paper, since she had reason to do so because of her work. How did we find the paper? Someone would call and tell me that there is carbon paper at such and such a store. I'd tell friend go buy what they could. You could only buy a limited amount-say 50 or 100 pieces.

...I was always worried when the Chronicle was being retyped.

For one thing there was the problem of getting a Chronicle copy for retyping..We would not talk out loud about it-apartments were monitored. We'd write notes to each other if we had to exchange information.

If we arranged to meet, say, in the subway to pass the Chronicle, the person might give me a book. Inside would be a copy of the Chronicle. " (H, 143)

hired prof typers sometimes

"A representative issue, done by a profession typist at 20 kopeks a page (100 kopecks to the ruble) would total about 20 rubles. Even that price was half the rate for professional work. But 20 rubles amounts to 10 to 15 percent of a monthly wage. Many of those reproducing the Chronicle have had no other money to live on aside from their pay. They could not always accept the extra financial burden of the Chronicle. The logical choice for some, then, was to sell it. Prices  per copy varied. Figures of 2 to 5 rubles a Chronicle copy are mentioned. Some people sold other samizdat-reproduction of Solzhenitsyn's novels, for example--to help subsidize production of the Chronicle. Others accepted contributions from friends and sympathizers. Still others simply paid from their own pockets for reproduction of Chronicle issues, necessarily giving up something for themselves."

145: photo copying

"The Chronicle has national circulation in the Soviet Union since its inception. Once distributed only in Moscow, then in LEningrad and Kiev, the Chronicle now reaches most major cities. It is believed the Chronicle routinely has been distributed to these Soviet cities in large numbers: Leningrad, Vilnius, Riga, and perhaps Tallin in the Baltic states region; Kiev, Odessa, Kishinev, Kharkov, and Everan in the souther and southwestern regions; and Novosbirsk, Sverdlovsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Volograd, Tomsk, and Tashkent in the Soviet Siberian and central Asian areas. The Chronicle has found its way elsewhere, to remote Siberian villages to political prisoners in exile, for example. But given the reproduction and distribution system, there is no reliable method to document where each issue of the Chronicle moves or how many copies. (H,148)

The total circulation of the Chronicle generally is estimated in the thousands, not many in a country of 270 million people. In successive reproductions by typerwriter of photocopying, a single Chronicle number might total between 1,000 and 10,000 individual copies. Each number might, in fact, vary in total copies, depending, for example on the extent of KGB harassment at the rime or availability of paper. Multiply by ten for the number of readers per issue and the total reading audience in the Soviet Union of a Chronicle issue might be 10,000 to 100,000. These are only approximations. The truth is no one really knows wither the readership or the circulation of the Chronicle." (H, 148)

"The Chronicle's audience has been magnified, however, by foreign radiobroadcasts. Especially in the earlier years, when the Chronicle was almost the sole source of uncensored and reliable news of political affairs in the Soviet Union, the foreign press corps routinely extracted from the Chronicle. In turn, Radio Liberty, Voice of America, BBC, Deutsche Welle, and other foreign radio broadcast the information back to the Soviet Union in Russian-language programs. Radio Liberty, the American-financed radio station transmitting in Russian and other languages of the Soviet Union, eventually broadcast whole issues of the Chronicle. The programs have been recorded in the Soviet Union for transcription and samizdat circulation. Thus, the entire state Glavit censorshop system has veen circumvented and Chronicle reports have reached millions of Soviet listeners." (H, 149)

Several conditional facts must be kept in mind in assessing the Chronicle's network. First, Soviet authorities reinstituted jamming of foreign radiobroadcasts in August 1968, coincident with the invasion of Czechoslavakia. The jamming was not halted until 1973, the year Brezhnev leadership searched for a conciliatory gesture to spur the Helinski agreement negotiations." (H, 149)

"An essential element in the Chronicle's network has been the foreign press corps in Moscow, first and foremost the American correspondents. Soviet dissidents interviewed about the Chronicle often mention individual reporters who took special interest in the struggle between Soviet authorities and dissidents. To mention some is to risk slighting other correspondents who were equally involved, but these names come up: George Krimsky and Roger Leddington of the Associated Press; Ray Anderson, Hendrick Smith and Robert Kaiser of the Washington Post; James Yuenger and Frank Starr of the Chicago Tribune; Robert Toth of the Los Angeles Times; and Jay Alexbank and Alfred Friend, Jr. of Newsweek.... (H,149)

"Soviet authorities recognized the importance of foreign correspondents in the Chronicle and other samizdat information network. Some of the best informed Western reporters were routinely harassed and some were expelled. David Bonovia and George Krimsky, for example, were ordered out of the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s. The KGB interrogated Robert Toth for three days before he was permitted to leave Moscow in 1978. THere was not doubt that their contacts among Soviet dissidents, and their reporting of what Soviet authorities considered highly objectionable information, led to their expulsion." (H, 150)

Hopkins, Vol. 6 "The Network"

"To use the term 'editors' is necessary but imprecise shorthand for discussing those who produce the underground publication. PErsons once involved in final stages of Chronicle issues repeatedly have said in interviews that there really have been no Chronicle "editors" in the larger sense of person who plan and direct Chronicle coverage. "Compiler" seems the more accurate description of Chronicle editors' actual functions, for they usually have had little to say about what information reached them and most frequently have been responsible for assembling what information they did receive into readable, coherent form." (H,119)

"Outside of the small group in Moscow that has provided continuity for overall production responsibility, there has been a larger corps of correspondents, informants, messengers, writers, typists, couriers and distributors without the Chronicle would have remained the narrowly focused brief bulletin it was in 1968. Now a periodical of 100 pages and more per issue, the Chronicle probable ranks in the numbers of people producing it with a large newspaper." -second round

"What would be called the 'news flow' in an American periodical has developed in the Chronicle case with remarkable efficiency. It has improved over the years as the network spread, connecting not only the sources of news but readers and user of Chronicle information both inside the Soviet Union and abroad. The KGB seems to have been unable to halt the Chronicle news flow, and indeed may have decided that the most difficult task in attempts to silence the publication. For Chronicle information moves through successive hands to typed pages in a private world of special and close peripheral relationships. It may be remembered that in the first months of the infant Chronicle, Natalia Gorbanevskaya..."-how to get them info (H,120)

"This system has functioned for years with impressive reliability and accuracy, while also protecting the Chronicle. Even persons who lived in Moscow and knew active dissidents and who themselves were involved in the democratic movement usually did not know who compiled the Chronicle." (H, 120)

"To discuss the organization of the Chronicle is virtually a contradiction in terms. Those who have worked on the Chronicle describe an amorphous, undisciplined process in which participants pass slips of paper with handwritten notes brought from Siberia or carry a few sheets of type-written paper across Moscow to another apartment. Trust in one another and deep commitment to promoting the practice of civil rights nurtured voluntary and self-discipline work on the Chronicle. It has been a system devoid of directives and commands, as well editorial assignments." (H, 121

"News from labor camps also flowed naturally to the Chronicle, as wives and friends of dissidents returned from remote Siberian prisons to pass on information. The Soviet labor camps eventually became something of a seive for information." (H, 121)

Ginzburg interview:

"The basic thing is that there are lots of political prisoners. Each one is sentenced to a certain period of time, so no month passes when someone is not release. NAturally, e can carry a good deal of information from the camps. When you leave the camp you feel like a "stuffed duck," we'd say. For three months before you are scheduled for release,, people are giveing you information to pass on. After I got out, I'd remember things in my sleep and I'd wake up and write them down.

Then you would write down things in the camps and smuggle those out. It's hard, but not impossible. I managed to get a copy of the labor camp rules smuggled out. In 1969, we made a tape recording inside a camp and smuggled that out and Voice of America broadcast it. We thought about smuggling for 24 hours a day." (H 121-122)

Bukobsky interview

"The information comes by devious routes. Some is carried when a fellow is released from the camps. THere would be a contact somewhere along the line after he left. Or you could bribe prison guards so that when you met with relatives, you could pass written information or verbal information. Then the relatives might stop in Moscow and pass on what you said." (H, 122)

"Trials of dissidents are an obvious source of news for the Chronicle. Although ostensible public, the trials usually have been held in courtrooms packed with KGB crowds. But when friends of dissident could argue their way info the courts, they would make careful notes of procedures.  It was risky business, for the notetaker was automatically identified to the KGB and he or she invited arrest of questioning. In later years, friend of dissidents smuggled small tape recorders into courtrooms. From these recordings came the unusual transcripts of trials published by the Chronicle." (H, 123)

123: by mid '70s full proceedings

"Time and again, as Soviet authorities attempted to stage political trials in the form of authentic proceedings, the Chronicle published embarrassing verbatim texts showing judges refusing to hear dissidents' evidence, or prosecutors and investigators distorting facts and of judges handing down sentences against all rational consideration of original charges." (H, 123-124)

127: estimate 20-40 people involved in final stages of an issue
early years just NG

129: flaws

"One can find similar imbalances in the early years of the Chronicle regarding religious affairs, pr the vast Soviet rural population, or workers' grievances, or women's rights. The Chronicle was the child of Moscow intellectuals concerned with rights of speech and press. Successive issues of the Chronicle attracted readers with like attitudes, ready to contribute like information. Grigorenko's special interest in the Crimean Tartars, Alexeyeva's contacts with the Ukranians, and Kovalev's connections with Lithuanians likewise accounted for some earlier editorial themes." (H, 129)

"THe surrogate Chronicles in London, New York, and Munich have become important in their own right as outlets for Soviet internal news. Their circumstances allowed editors leeway in shaping publications, although the Kline-Chalidze Chronicle of Human Rights in the USSR or Lyubarsky USSR News Brief found themselves limited, too, by the available channels of information from the Soviet Union. (H,130)

THe Chronicle of Current Events that is translated and printed by Amnesty International has become an unequaled source of photographs of Soviet human rights activists. Smuggled from the Soviet Union and reproduced beginning in the volume containing Chronicle nos. 28-31... (H,130)

News reports that have reached New York and Munich from Moscow have come through many channels. Recall that the Kline-Chalidze Chronicle was started in the spring of 1973, after it seemed that the Moscow Chronicle had been silenced. With that Moscow outlet closed information flowed to New York." (H,130)

Reddaway interview: "We were amazed at the volume of material forwarded to use; it was really enormous, so much so that it was never able to fit all the available material in one issue. THe sources are many: for instance, we have recieved a great deal from the so-called democratic circles, the humanists, as it were, of the Soviet movement for human rights. We have received, and still receiving, a lot of material from labor camps, psychiatric institutions, and from the activists of the Jewish Exodus movement. " (H,130-131)

"This underground stream of documents from the Soviet Union to to Western Europe and the United States began as a trickle in the mid-1960s. THe volume had become so great by 1972 that the Munich-based Radio Liberty assembled enough samizdat to produce four volumes averaging more than 600 pages each. These formed the basis of a samizdat archive, directed initially by Albert Boiter, that grew to tens of thousands of pages of material. In 1973 and 1074, when the New York Chronicle was getting underway, the Radio Liberty Arkhiv Samizdata averaged more than 3500 pages of documents from the Soviet Union each year."(H,131)

"This material was being smuggled or simply carried out of the Soviet Union by Western correspondents, by tourists and diplomats. Some was being sent in diplomatic pouches. The early issues of the Chronicle itself were slipped into the sealed diplomatic mail of the Moscow embassies of Italy, the United STates, France and Canada, although not necessarily with the ambassador's knowledge. Letters sent to Vienna and Helsinki from Moscow successfully carried samizdat. Addressed to these "neutral" capitals, they seemed to pass Soviet surveillance of international mail more readily than letters going else where in Western Europe. " (H, 131)

"There was little risk in these enterprises, and so the samizdat flow surged by the year. At worst, a foreigner carrying samizdat out of the Soviet Union would be searched and the material confiscation...But for every piece of samizdat the KGB found, hundreds of other documents streamed out of the Soviet Union." (H, 131)

"The surrogate Chronicles have been directed to two large audiences. One iabroad, largely in the United States and WEstern Europe, and composed of journalists, government officials, human rights advocates attached to various civic organizations, and scholars. The other audience is the Soviet population itself. Some 2,000 copies of the Russian translation of each issue of the Chronicle of Human Rights in the Soviet Union are printed and most of those are intended for the Soviet Union. In addition, Khronka Press has reprinted Russian copies of the Moscow Chronicle as issues have been recieved in New York. The pressrun has gotten up to as many as 1200 and these too are meant to be smuggled into the Soviet Union." (H, 133)

Hopkins- Vol. 2 "The Spark"

21: Baptist newspaper since '64

"From the start, then, the Chronicle was set apart from other and plentiful samizdat literature, political tracrs, petitions, statements and reports...Soviet and foreign journalists could get this type of information in Moscow in the late 1960s only on a sporadic basis and only if they were involved in samizdat and dissident circles. Even then, sometimes incomplete. If one were outside established dissident circles, the most one knew about official actions besides rumors was contained in cryptic Soviet reports. They told virtually nothing except that something had happened. (H, 22)"

-alternative to official information

"The style of the Chronicle was heavy on facts--names, ages, dates, places, specific events. It was light on both judgements and speculation or opinion (H,22)"

NG: "Basically there was an attempt in all the letters to be very exact, to lay out the facts, to describe the violations of rights, to quote articles of law. Nothing was exaggerated. The love for objectivity was in the air. (H, 23)"

"The first issue drew heavily on actions against the Chronicle group and its friends and acquaintances. Besides the Galanskov-Ginzburg proceeding with  which some of the Chronicle people were closely connected, protest statements reproduced in that first issue revealed a pattern of signatures. Many of those who encouraged founding of the Chronicle turned up as co-authors of grievances...This is to sat that Gorbanevskaya used what was available, and most of that information came from or was collected by one relatively small Moscow group. (H,25)"

"Production of the Chronicle came from the very first was along the lines of a "chain letter." Gorbanevskaya typed the first seven copies. One went to a Western correspondent, another was saved in order to produce more copies, and the remaining five copies were given out. In the already established form for distributing samizdat, recipients were expected to reproduce further copies. Commonly these were typed, but homemade photocopying of samizdat was increasingly popular. How many copies of a particul samizdat item were made could not be said, the work being done privately and separately. (H, 26)

-expected it to be short

-28: -end of '68, assert legality
-how to submit info

29: ""The price for that system, however, was a secrecy and confidentiality that amounted to an underground publication (H,29). "

"If the Chronicle was legal, why be secret? If the Chronicle was secret could it be legal? (H,29)"

"Not only the now standard arrests and interrogations were reported; political documents and statements, internal disputes involving Soviet policy, and protests and grievances from among an increasingly broad spectrum of the Soviet population were reported as well. The information, moreover, was assembled in one readable source, in direct and unambiguous Russian. There was no need to read between the lines as Soviets routinely did when the official Soviet press reported some specially sensitive issue." (H, 30)

31:  samizdat news

"The information flow to and from the Chronicle developed in important ways under Gorbanevskaya. First the volume of facts increased as friends and readers caught on to what the Chronicle wanted and was willing to publish. Also, a sort of "beat" system of reporting emerged. It was not planned but developed simply because of personal interests and contacts. (H, 33)."

Ei: Tartars- Grigorkenko
Jews Takir
Ukraine-Alexeyeva

34: Amalrik, Litinov, Yakir

"Through this connection, the contents of the Chronicle moved through an already established information network of Moscow correspondents, Western news agencies and newspaper, radio, and television reports to editorial offices and media abroad. Abroad, foreign shortwave broadcasters picked up Chronicle information, and individual news reports based on Chronicle items or contents of whole issues found their way back to the Soviet Union in Russian-language broadcasts of the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and Voice of America. Radio Liberty broadcast readings of entire issues of the Chronicle. (H, 34)

"Although foreign radio signals were heavily hammed from the summer of 1968 to the fall of 1973, broadcasts could still be generally served the Chronicle well, as audiences numbering in the tens of millions in the Soviet Union heard the news from the Chronicle. (H, 34)"

36: implications of Red Square

"In the aftermath of the invasion, in the three years leading up to the twenty-fourth Communist party congress in 1971, at which General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev renewed a policy of coexistence and cooperation with the West, important debates were held over the implications of this policy. On the one side, the benefits of detente in terms of Western trade and financial assistance for the lagging Soviet economy were attractive to a number of groups in the Soviet Union. But there also was the argument, frequently made in the Soviet press, that in times of closer relations with the West, greater vigilance was required within the country. This was an old problem for Soviet leaders-... Not great on the re-freeze"(H, 37)

41-42: Gorbanevskaya trial