On 10 October 1968 the following official announcement appeared in the papers Moskovskaya pravda (“Moscow Truth”) and Vechernyaya Moskva (Evening Moscow) [1].
“IN THE MOSCOW CITY COURT
“On 9 October the criminal trial began in Moscow of K.I. Babitsky, L.I. Bogoraz-Brukhman, V.N. Delaunay, V.A. Dremlyuga and P.M. Litvinov, accused of violating public order in Red Square, Moscow, on 25 August this year.”
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On 12 October 1968 two articles on the trial were published. “Aiming for a sensation” by N. Bardin appeared in Moskovskaya pravda; A. Smirnov’s “They got their desserts” in Vechernyaya Moskva.
The Place of Proclamation (Lobnoe mesto).
Red Square, Moscow
Like the official announcement referred to in the two articles, only a single charge was mentioned: “violating public order”, i.e., prosecution under Article 190-3 (RSFSR Criminal Code).
Even this ‘violation’ is not described, and nowhere is it stated that this was a protest demonstration against the intervention of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia.
Instead, not shrinking from direct libel, the writers of these articles gave ‘character-sketches’ of the accused aimed at compromising them in the eyes of the reader.
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It was this kind of ‘information’ Larissa Bogoraz had in mind on 11 October 1968 when she said in her closing speech:
“I have no doubt that public opinion will approve the verdict.
“Public opinion will approve of three years exile for a talented scholar and three years in the camps for a young poet.
“One, because we shall be depicted as parasites, renegades and purveyors of a hostile ideology; and, two, because if people appear whose opinion differs from that of the ‘public’ and who have the audacity to speak out they will soon end up here”, (she points to the dock).
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According to unconfirmed rumours, the correspondents of two other Soviet papers present at the trial refused to write the articles required of them.
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NOTES
Within a fortnight of the demonstration the KGB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the USSR Procurator-General sent the following report to the Politburo about the incident on Red Square (8 September 1968, 2102-A).
Thereafter the Committee for State Security (KGB) helped to plan the forthcoming trial.
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- Writing two months after the demonstration, and several weeks after the trial, the Chronicle mentions reports in two Moscow newspapers.
There were no responses from Pravda, Izvestiya or other Soviet big-circulation national dailies (e.g., Trud, Komsomolskaya pravda). The aim was to localise and play down the event, obscuring its significance.
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