Jacoby

Jacoby, Susan. Moscow Conversations. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1972. 


"Moscow is one of the easiest places in the world for a journalist to become dishonest with himself and his readers."  15


"Dishonesty becomes a part of journalism in Moscow when correspondents fail to tell their readers about these inhibitions and the profound effect they have on a reporter's perceptions of Russian life. The reluctance of the Moscow press corps to write about its working conditions is less a conspiracy of silence than a product of frustrated resignations; an abnormal situation begins to seem quite normal after only a few months of life in Russia."  15


"Foreign correspondents do not travel as much as they would like to, partly because editors at home demand a steady flow of political news from the capital and partly because each trip involves endless bureacratic snags. A correspondent must obtain special permission from the press departmente of the Soveit Foreign Ministry if he wishes to travel outside a twenty-five mile radius of Moscow and even for some points inside the circle" 19


"THe dissenters are a small, diverse collection of people who disagree strongly on long-range goals for Russia; their main area of agreement is their determination to make the Soviet authorities observe their own laws. Their chief activity is publicizing official actions against other dissenters; they view the publicity as an important guarantee that no one will quietly  disappear into prison or exile, as in the Stalin years. The dissenters naturally need foreign journalists to transmit the news of their activities to the outside world. Stories about Soviet political dissent published in foreign newspapers ensure that many Russians also hear the news." 22-23


"Some journalists are happy to consider dissidents friends as well as news sources; relationships with dissenters involve somewhat less strain and prestense than relationships with ther Russians. The skepticism about absolute truth that is characteristic of most truly educated minds in the west is completely foreign to the majority of Russians; only with a few of the dissidents did I find a common approach to intellectual questions that had nothing to do with politics."  23


"Khrushchev abolished formal censorship of correspondents outgoing news dispatches in 1961. Foreign journalists are now free to transmit their articles by telephone, Telex or cable without prior approval of a Soviet official. The authorities now attempt to censor news dispatches indirectly, through post-publication earnings, KGB harassment and the ultimate sanction of expulsion from the country. Officials in the press deparment in Soviet embassies throughout the world read articles that appear in newspapers and magazines with Moscow correspondents. If an article is both highly important and abrasive, a correspondent may receive an officialwarning from the press department in Moscow within two or three days of publication." 23


"Soviet officials are clearly furious about being unable to prevent contacts between foreign correspondents and political dissidents. The press department has established a pattern of harrassing and trying to get rid of correspondents who see dissidents frequently." 23


"Four foreign journalists were expelled from the Soviet Union during 1970; three of them had been particularly active in gathering news about political dissent and relaying it to other correspondents. Because it is difficult to arrange meetings and also because only the most urgent news is relayed over tapped phone lines, it is impractical for every correspondent to track down rach piece of dissident news himself. One or two correspondents usually meet with a dissenter and pass the news on to the rest of the Moscow press corps. Unfortunately, many spineless Moscow correspondents are only too happy to acquire the news of political dissent from their colleagues but are unwilling to incur official displeasure by meeting dissidents themselves." 23-24


26-most of the sources are intellectuals 


"The reluctance to talk about Stalin today is deep and wide-spread, even amonf people who recognize the dimensions of spread, even among people who recognize the dimensions of the tragedy that befell their country under his dictatorship. Admissions of Stalin's evil, which meant the death and imprisonment of millions of Russians are not forthcoming from most Soviet citizens who grew up during that period. To acknowledge the full extent of the tragedy would be to admit complicity in horrors too great for most people even to think about: The refusal of many middle-aged Germans to admit they knew about the Nazi concentration camps is a similar reaction." 42


"Stalin was never fully toppled from his pedestal, even when Khrushchev's de-Stalinization campaign was at its height. Too many officials still in power had been the executors of Stalin's policies; indeed, many Western analysts believe Khrushchev's seriousness about de-Stalinization was the major gavtor that led to his loss of support within the Party Central Committee. After Khrushchev's partial cleansing operation, the new Brezhnev-Kosygin leadership said in effect, 'Enough is enough,' and clamped hte lid back on the sewer. " 42


"I never met a student in any part of the Societ Union who did not listen to the VOA. Although reception is hampered by jamming, Russians patiently persevere. For obvious reasons, English language broadcasts are interfered with less than Russian language runs. Many students also listened to the BBC, saying they preferred its news broadcasts because the reports were less slanted by American government propaganda. (I prefereed the BBC for the same reason in Moscow.) The student consensus, however, was that the VOA offered better music than the BBC." 94

"The girls said they did not believe everything in Soviet newspapers 'any more than you believe everything in yours.' Tanya's favorite paper was Komsomolskaya pravda, the organ of the Komsomol Central Committee.

Oskar Rabin- Unofficial painter

on Hope against Hope: "He felt that one of its greatest strengths was its recognition that what happened under Stalin was not a passing aberration--the product of one man's insanity--but a national sickness that permitted the Stalinist terrror to develop and may appear in mutant forms for generations to come." 171

"Realism is a word that loses its meaning in such an ideological context. If a painter chooses to depict a shabby apartment or a drunk, he is being a "critical realist" rather a Socialist realist, and the authorities frown on critical realism. In the Soviet Union, realism refers to reality as Soviet ideologues think it should be--not to a reality that an individual artist might perceive." 173

"Soviet papers--like books, magazines, canned food labels and every other form of printed material--are subject to official censorship. The existence of censorship does not, however, mean that every statement in every newspaper represent the official policy of the Soviet government. Pravda, the organ of the Party Central Committee, and to a slightly lesser extent Ivestia, the government newspaper, are forums for top-level statements on foreign and domestic policy. To use a favorite phrase of Stalin's, 'it is not by accident' that articles appear in Pravda and Ivestia. Columns by important political commentators sometimes reflect the official government position on important matters."  213

"Ideas for articles are initiated by party authorities, editors, reporters, outside specialists and sometimes by readers. Letters-to-the-editor columns are extremely important in Soviet newspapers; they provide what is essentially the only public forum for complaints about the way various institutions are run." 216

"Government offices often take percautions to prevent their typewriters from being stolen or used for nefarious purposes. At Vera's newspaper, every typewriter had to be locked away before the staff went home at night."234

Dmitri-college student
"At the same time all of this was rumbling around in my head, One Day came out. I thought things might have changed enough so there was actually a possibility of publishing honest writing." 237

"Dmitri's attitude toward the official writers is, quite simply that they are prostitutes. It is an attitude shared by all committted samizdatchiki and political dissidents." 242

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. 1 "Resistance"

Hopkins, Mark. Russia’s Underground Press: The Chronicle of Current Events.” New York: Praeger Publishers, 1983.


"They were all acutely aware that information five to Western correspondents in Moscow about arrests and trials about ominous reports of hunger strikes in labor camps, and of life there among political prisoners could be transmitted in foreign broadcasts. Sometimes it was just a matter of hours after a document was given to an American news agency in Moscow that a foreign radio report about the event could be heard in shortwave programs in Moscow. The British Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Livbery, Duetsche Welle and Voice of America Russian-language broadcasts circumvented the Soviet censorship administration for the press, radio, television, literature and general publishing. These reports in turn attracted new sources of information, nurturing a grapevine of civil rights news. Khushchev had halted blanket jamming of foreign radio broadcasts in Russian in 1963, with the exception of the officially despised Radio Liberty, whose special focus on internal Soviet political events made it a category unto itself. People could listen to all the foreign news they wanted in the mid-1960s in the Soviet Union. The tacit foreign radio stations was creating a vast information network reporting to the mass Soviet audience independently of the Glavit organization.

"The information network among the dissidents themselves operated on the basis of personal knowledge and trust and sometimes out of sheer chance. It happened like this: Larisa Bogoraz, wife of Yuly Daniel, was on the train traveling to see her imprisoned husband. She met the wife of Valery Ronkin, who also, it turned out, was on a trip to visit her husband in the same Siberian labor camp. Ronkin was an unfamiliar name to Moscow dissidents. A Leningrader, Ronkin had been arrested in 1965 for antistate activities after the KGB broke up a clandestine and preached a truly workers' state. It was called the Union of Communards and preached a truly workers' state. In the conspiratorial fashion of earlier illegal Russian Marxist circles, the group met in secret. It published a samizdat journal called The Bell on a clandestine printing press...Even after the KGB penetrated the Union of communards and imprisoned Ronkin, not many in the Soviet Union, let alone the outside world, knew about him or his group, such was the compartmental quality of of Soviet life, especially concerning dissident political and police matters. The Moscow dissidents thus learned of the Ronkin case only when two wives met to share common information about their imprisoned husbands. (H, 8-9)" 

"What was happening, then, as trials picked up in the Soviet Union of the late 1960s and as dissidents met and talked was a growing awareness of a pattern of events. That some of this information was obtained by Western correspondents and that some of it was broadcast back to the Soviet Union in Russian served to document and enlarge the dissidents' picture of their society. For they suffered from a sense of isolation and ignorance of daily events in the Soviet Union, where authorities ensure that the mass media present a narrow and particular portrait of the country. In the late 1960s, Soviet dissidents only graduating assembled facts to convince them that the post-Khrushchev leadership was undertaking a deliberate policy of repression. (H,9) 


10-11: Dologprudny meeting


"There were a series of get-togethers among the increasingly active dissidents in the late winter and early spring of 1968. There was no organization, no specific leaders, no agendas, no records-none of the paraphenalia that goes on with planned, orderly action. Natalia Gorbanevskaya remembers talking with Ilya Gabai, among others, before the first issue of "The Chronicle" appeared and deciding that a bulletin of some kind must be issued to publicize the mounting information they had on hand... (H, 10)"


-it was an informal decision 10-11

"The Dolgoprudny meeting ended with an understanding that Natalia Gorbanevskaya would produce some sort of "bulletin" reporting information from friends of the group and anyone else about the persectutions underway. It still had no name. It would be typed because that was how virtually all samizdat was produced in the Soviet Union. The general Soviet public, then or now, did not nor does not have access top printing presses or even mimeograph machines, let alone electonic copiers. Anything produced on Soviet state presses, in any case, is censored by Glavit. This is to say that the talk in 1968 of putting out a private, unofficial "bulletin" readily translated in the minds of those involved into a few typed carbon copies of the samizdat that would be circulated among friends, one of the copies being reserved for a contact in the Western press corps in Moscow. (H,12)


Paradox: "Its main intent was to publicize violations of human rights in the Soviet Union, especially the lesser known incidents, and thereby draw what dissidents thought would be curative world opinion to the Soviet malady. The group set out to be neither clandestine on public activities and confined itself scrupulously within the limits of written Soviet law. (H,12)  


12: didn't think it would survive


"The Chronicle group shunned conscious, planned secrecy. They regarded that tactic as too similar to the Bolsheviks, to the Leninst concept of a political movement" (H,13)


"The Chronicle group believed more in public action, in holding a mirror to the the Soviet social syste built by Stalin. They wanted little more than the civil liberties ensured in the 1936 "Stalin constitution."  (H,13)


"Yet, as Gorbanevskaya began preparing the first issue of the Chronicle, the work was per force and by habit and practice more of a clandestine operation than a public petition. It was the opposite of how the dissidents, in their more idealistic moments, hoped to function." (H, 13)


"Two specific phrases proved important to the Chronicle-in article 70, the words "slanderous fabrication that discredit," and in article 190-1, "deliberately false statement derogatory" to the Soviet state. The KGB and Soviet courts were to use these time and time again to argue that the Chronicle was an illegal publication." 


"In compiling a bulletin bout protests and objections to the Soviet government and about  reprisals against individuals who challenged authorities, Gorbanevskaya had to conduct herself carefully. She could not use the telepone to obtain information, for everyone knew that the KGB tapped private phones. She could not, without some risk, carry notes with information on her person. It was risky for her, and it was risky for those who supplied her. KGB experts could trace people by their handwriting. Traveling around spread-out Moscow in crowded buses or the metro took hours our of a day if one wanted personally to talk with friends. Gorbanevskaya had to keep a file of information in her apartment. The KGB could search apartments whenever they chose. She had no readily available  reference books on Soviet law to check criminal proceedings. She had no archive, no file of newspaper or magazine clippings against which to check names, dates, places and events. It was like putting together a bulletin out of a shoebox, relying on one's own memory or the memory and exactness of others." (H, 15) 


"The KGB could connect documents and typewriters. Each machine, like fingerprints, has its own its own typeface characteristics. One had to be careful in writing samizdat that it could not be traced through other items typed on the same machine." (H, 16)


17: Human Rights Year


17: she gave birth, came back and finished it up