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

Uncensored Russia Vol. 4- Czech

95: R: "THe dramatic Sovietinvasion of Czechoslavokia on the night of August 20-21st, 1968, introduced a new dimension into the Soviet civil rights movement....The demonstration of August 25th and other acts of protest by Soviet citizens form the core of this chapter."

96: No 3. was 10 days after the invasion

99: protests begin

THey reprint a LEditor about the protest
-includes list of participants
-It's by the editor of Chronicle Natalya Gorbanevskaya

102: (7 and 5)- consequences of being a radical

104: Rise of self-immolation as a form of protest.

112-begins trials of the arrested demonstrators

113 (4) "As reported in the third issue of the Chronicle, seven people staged a sit down demonstration at Execution Place in REd Square on August 25th, 1968 as a protest against the sending of Soviet troops into Czechoslavakia (R, 113)."

Gorbanavskaya declared unfit

114-118: just how absurd the trial was.

119: The Soviet Press as a comparison

4: "Just like the official announcement the articles mention, in the first place, only one charge, that of violating public order: i/e/ the charge under article 190-3. Secondly, even this 'violation' is not described, and nowhere is there any reference to the fact that was a protest demonstration against the intervention of Soviet troops in in Czechoslovakia. Instead, the writers of these articles, not shrinking from direct liverl, give 'character sketches of the accused aimed at compromising them in the eyes of the reader (R, 119)"

159 (11): Gorbanavskaya  arrested

Uncensored Russia Notes Vol. 1

Reddaway, Peter, trans. Uncensored Russia: The Unofficial Moscow journal, a Chronicle of Current Events. American Heritage Press, 1972. 

"The Chronicle is in fact the "organ" of these movements' mainstream, a mainstream called by its members either the Democratic Movement or, with a narrower application, the Civil (or Human) Rights Movement (Reddaway, 17). "

"The Chronicle, by contrast, focuses on precisely on many of those aspects of Soviet life where the official press is most inadequate. It illuminates them, like the best primary sources, in precise, unemotive language. It is uninhibited by censorship, yet in taking advantage of this it is constrained by potent considerations to achieve a high level of accuaracy. In brief, it both articulates the demand of aggrieved groups in Soviet society and throws fresh light on those institutions with which the groups conflict. Meanwhile almost nothing of all this reflected--at least recognizably-- in the official press. (Reddaway 17)"

17-18: Really great historical overview of samizdat beginning with Pushkin

18: Secret Speech 

19: Sinyavsky and Daniel- "Symptoms of the new conditions were that serious criticism of STalin was now forbidden, that two secret police generals were appointed to sit on the Supreme Couty, and that in 1966 Sinyavsky and Daniel recieved savage sentences of seven and five years' hard labour. This trial--and even more so that of Galanskov and Ginzburg in January 1968--gave an immense stimulus to unofficial literary life, provoking mass protests and turning people's attention in a remarkable degree towards politics (Reddaway, 19)."

"Seemingly , in fact, it was the year 1966 which saw the birth of an expressive new Russian word--full of ominous overtones for the authorities samizdat (Reddaway, 19)." 

"But how does a work get into samizdat? Usually the author, or a friend of his, or a publishing house editor, types out some copies and passes them around. In this way popular items are typed and retyped indefinitely and often reach the outside world through the help of a Soviet or Western tourist. In that case, they have a chance of second publication, this time in tamizday i.e. in the Western press or an emigre journal 'tam' or 'over there'. Finally they may also then be broadcast back to the Soviet Union by Western radio stations, thus achieving a third 'publication (Reddaway, 19).'

22: summary of the movement, solid

23: "As for foreign links, all reformist elements--those fully within the system as well as as well as those on the fringes--  have, as in the last century, profited from their development. Especially under Khrushchev foreign books and periodicals became more accessible, travel abroad, even defection, was possible for some, Western radio stations broadcasting in Russian were in certain periods not hammed, and emigre material began to circulate (R, 23)."

"The political liberalism underlying article 19 of the U.N's Declaration does indeed also underlie the Chronicle's Editorial policy. Individuals with widely varying views are, for example, given an equal amount of space. Similarly with samizdat items. And the activities of almost all the known democratically inclined groups are at least on occasion recorded. (R, 25)

But the Chronicle contains little purely editorial material, so particular aspects of its editors' position must often be inferred. No. 5, however provides some broad guidelines. After discussing the movement for human rights and its 'general aim of democratization,' the editors go on to describe 'the more particular aim pursued by the Chronicle as : 'seeing that the Soviet public is informed about about what goes on in the country' in the field of human rights. Thus 'the Chronicle is in no sense an illegal publication, and the difficult conditions in which it is produced are created by the peculiar notions about law and freedom of information which, in the course of long years, have become established in certain Soviet organizations. for this reason the Chronicle cannot like any other journal give its postal address on the last page (R,25) ."