In 1965, a human rights movement emerged in the Soviet Union. Those actively involved did not share a single set of beliefs. Many wanted a variety of civil rights — freedom of expression, of religious belief, of national self-determination. To some it was crucial to provide a truthful record of what was happening in the country, not the heavily censored version provided in official media outlets. Others still were "reform Communists" who thought it possible to change the Soviet system for the better.
Gradually, under the pressure of official actions and responses these groups and interests coalesced in the dissident milieu. The fight for civil and human rights focused on issues of freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, freedom to emigrate, punitive psychiatry, and the plight of political prisoners. It was characterized by a new openness of dissent, a concern for legality, the rejection of any 'underground' and violent struggle.
Like other dissidents in the post-Stalin Soviet Union, human rights activists were subjected to a broad range of repressive measures. They received warnings from the police and the KGB; some lost their jobs, others were imprisoned or incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals; dissidents were sent into exile within the country or pressured to emigrate.
Methods and activities
Samizdat documentation The documentation of political repressions as well as citizens' reactions to them through samizdat (unsanctioned self-publishing) methods played a key role in the formation of the human rights movement. Dissidents collected and distributed transcripts, open letters and appeals relating to specific cases of political repressions.A Chronicle of Current Events (CCE) 5.1 (31 December 1968), "A Survey of samizdat in 1968".
The prototype for this type of writing was journalist Frida Vigdorova's record of the trial of poet Joseph Brodsky (convicted for "social parasitism" in early 1964). Similar documenting activity was taken up by dissidents in publications such as Alexander Ginzburg's White Book (1967, on the Sinyavsky-Daniel case)CCE 4.6 (31 October 1968) "An addition to the White Book about Sinyavsky and Daniel". and Pavel Litvinov's The Trial of the Four (1968, on the Galanskov–Ginzburg case).CCE 1 (30 April 1968).
From 1968 on, the samizdat periodical A Chronicle of Current Events played a key role for the human rights movement. Founded in April 1968, the Chronicle ran until 1983, producing 65 issues in 14 years.A Chronicle of Current Events (in English). It documented the extensive human rights violations committed by the Soviet government and the ever-expanding samizdat publications (political tracts, fiction, translations) circulating among the critical and opposition-minded.
Protest letters and petitions Podpisanty, literally signatories, were individuals who signed a series of petitions to officials and the Soviet press against political trials of the mid- to late-1960s.CCE 1.2 (30 April 1968), "Protests about the trial". The podpisanty surge reached its high water mark during the trial of writers Aleksandr Ginzburg and Yuri Galanskov in January 1968. The authorities responded to this challenge by offering each podpisant a choice between recantation and some kind of professional punishment. Nevertheless, by 1968 more than 1500 people had signed appeals protesting various cases.
The first Soviet dissidents to appeal to the world public were Larisa Bogoraz and Pavel Litvinov, who wrote an open letter protesting the trial of samizdat authors Alexander Ginsburg and Yuri Galanskov in January 1968. Appeals to the international community and human rights bodies later became a central method of early civic dissident groups such as the Action GroupCCE 8.10 (30 June 1969) "An appeal to the UN Commission on Human Rights". and the Committee on Human Rights, as well as the Helsinki Watch Groups.
Demonstrations Limited in scope and number, several demonstrations nevertheless became significant landmarks of the human rights movement.
On 5 December 1965 (Soviet Constitution Day) a small rally in Moscow, which became known as the (glasnost meeting), the first public and overtly political demonstration took place in the post-Stalin USSR. Responding to the criminal charges against the writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel (Sinyavsky–Daniel trial), a few dozen people gathered on Pushkin Square, calling for a trial open to the public and the media (glasny sud), as required by the 1961 RSFSR Code of Criminal Procedure. The demonstration was one of the first organized actions by the civil right movement in the Soviet Union. Silent gatherings on that date became an annual event.
A similar demonstration followed in January 1967, when a group of young demonstrators protested against the recent arrests of samizdat authors, and against the introduction of new articles to the Criminal Code that restricted the right to protest.
Responding to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, on 25 August 1968 seven dissidents demonstrated on Red Square (1968 Red Square demonstration).CCE 3 (30 August 1968). The participants were subsequently sentenced to terms of imprisonment in labor camps, banishment to Siberia or incarceration in psychiatric prison-hospitals.CCE 4.1 (30 October 1968), "The trial of the demonstrators on Red Square."
On 30 October 1974, dissidents initiated a Day of the Political Prisoner in the USSR, intended to raise awareness of the existence and conditions of political prisoners throughout the Soviet Union.CCE 33.1 (10 December 1974), "Political Prisoners' Day in the USSR." It was marked by hunger strikes in prisons and labor camps, and became an annual event marked by political prisoners in labor camps.
Civic watch groups Starting with the Action (Initiative) Group formed in 1969 by 15 dissidents and the Committee on Human Rights in the USSR founded in 1970 by Andrei Sakharov, early Soviet human rights groups legitimized their work by referring to the principles enshrined in the Soviet constitution and to international agreements.
These attempts were later succeeded by the more successful Moscow Helsinki Group (founded 1977). The group as well as the watch groups modeled after it brought the human rights dissidents to increased international attention.
The dissident civil and human rights groups were faced with harsh repressions, with most members facing imprisonment, punitive psychiatry, or exile.
Mutual aid for prisoners of conscience Families of arrested dissidents often suffered repercussions such as the loss of jobs and opportunities to study. Relatives and friends of political prisoners supported each other through informal networks of volunteers. From 1974 on, this support was bolstered by the Solzhenitsyn Aid Fund set up by the expelled dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Despite limited resources and a crackdown by the KGB, it was used to distribute funds and material support to the prisoners' families.
Background
In the wake of Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 "Secret Speech" condemning crimes of Stalinism and the following relative political relaxation (Khrushchev Thaw), several events and factors formed the background for a dissident movement focused on civil and human rights.
Mayakovsky Square poetry readings A major impulse for the current of dissent later known as the civil or human rights movement came from individuals concerned with literary and cultural freedom. During 1960-61 and again in 1965, public poetry readings in Moscow's Mayakovsky Square (Mayakovsky Square poetry readings) served as a platform for politically charged literary dissent. Provoking measures ranging from expulsions from universities to lengthy labor camp terms for some of the participants, the regular meetings served as an incubator for many protagonists of the human rights movement, including writer Alexander Ginzburg and student Vladimir Bukovsky.
Dissidents in the mid-1960s By the mid-1960s, dissenting voices in the Soviet Union also included movements of nations that had been deported under Stalin, religious movements that opposed the anti-religious state directives, and other groups such as reform communists and independent unions.
Some later human rights activists came from a circle of reform communists around Pyotr Grigorenko, a Ukrainian army general who fell out of favor in the early 1960s. The Crimean Tatars, an ethnic group who had been deported under Stalin and who had formed a movement petitioning to return to their homeland, would serve as an inspiration for the human rights activists, and their leader Mustafa Dzhemilev was later active in the broader human rights movement. Others who made an impact on the future movement were religious activists, such as Russian Orthodox priest Gleb Yakunin, who penned an influential open letter to the Patriarch of Moscow Alexius I in 1965, arguing that the Church must be liberated from the total control of the Soviet state.
The civil and human rights initiatives of the 1960s and 1970s managed to consolidate such different currents within the dissident spectrum by focusing on issues of freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, freedom to emigrate, and political prisoners. The movement became informed by "an idea of civic protest as an existentialist act, one not burdened with any political connotations."
History
Emergence of "defenders of rights" The circle of human rights activists in the Soviet Union formed as a result of several events in 1966–68. Marking the end of Khrushchev's relative liberalism (Khrushchev Thaw) and the beginning of the Brezhnev epoch (Brezhnev stagnation), these years saw an increase in political repression. A succession of writers and dissidents warning against a return to Stalinism were put on trial, and the beginnings of political liberalization reforms in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (Prague Spring) were crushed with military force.
Critically minded individuals reacted by petitioning against abuses and documenting them in samizdat (underground press) publications, and a small group turned towards protesting openly and eventually began to appeal to the international community. Those who insisted on protesting rights violations became known as "defenders of rights" (pravozashchitniki). Avoiding moral and political commentary in favor of close attention to legal and procedural issues, they demanded that the existing laws and rights formally guaranteed by the Soviet state be observed. This approach became a common cause for diverse social groups in the dissident milieu, ranging from academics to activists in the youth subculture.
Sinyavsky-Daniel trial (1966) – First rights-defense activity
In the mid-1960s, a number of writers who warned of a return to Stalinism were put on trial. One such a case was the 1966 trial of Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky, two writers who had published satirical writings under pseudonyms in the West. They were sentenced to seven years in a labor camp for "anti-Soviet agitation". The trial was perceived by many in the intelligentsia as a return to previous Soviet show trials. It provoked a number of demonstrations and petition campaigns, mostly in Moscow and Leningrad, which emphasizes issues of creative freedom and the historical role of the writer in Russian society.In December 1965, the Sinyavsky-Daniel case motivated a small current of dissidents who decided to focus the legality of the trial. Mathematician Alexander Esenin-Volpin with the help of writer Yuri Galanskov and student Vladimir Bukovsky organized an unsanctioned rally on Pushkin Square ("glasnost meeting"). The demonstrators demanded an open trial for the writers as formally guaranteed by the Soviet Constitution. A "Civic Appeal" distributed through samizdat informed potential demonstrators of the rights being violated in the case and informed them of the possibility of formally legal protest.