COMMENTARY No 17 (December 1970)

No 17 : 31 December 1970

17.1 THE TRIAL OF AMALRIK AND UBOZHKO (AI)

  1. Amalrik’s “Letter to Anatoly Kuznetsov” (see 11.14 (1) ) was published on 10 August 1969 in The Daily Telegraph (London), printed in Survey (London, No. 74-75, 1970), and included in the British edition of Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? (1970).
  2. Parts of Amalrik’s TV interview with Bill Cole were not confiscated. They were shown on CBS in the USA on 28 July 1970 and in Britain on BBC 1 on 28 August 1970. (See text in Survey No. 77, 1970.)

17.2 THE TRIAL OF VALENTIN MOROZ (AI)

  1. On the case of Panakha see V. Chornovil, The Chornovil Papers, London, 1968, (pp. 117-130).
  2. The Ukrainian text of “Datan and Moses” is in Ukrainsky samostiynk, No. 158, October 1970 (Munich). “Among the Snows” is due to be published in Ukrainian in Suchasnist (Munich).
  3. An English translation of “Report from the Beria Reservation” is in Michael Browne (ed), Ferment in the Ukraine, London, 1971 (doc. 11).
  4. For an English version of Dzyuba’s statement, and an analysis of the circumstances surrounding it, see second edition of his Internationalism or Russification? London, 1970, (pp. 247-249).

17.4 THE COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

  1. Alexander Galich (1918-1977) was a successful screenwriter and playwright before  becoming a singer-songwriter, one of the Soviet Union’s first “bards” (see 16.7). He helped to establish a genre where words that mixed poetry, social comment and protest were sung, recited or declaimed to an often rudimentary guitar accompaniment. (See Galich, Songs and Poems , ed. and translated by Gerald S. Smith, Ann Arbor 1983, and Smith’s Songs for Seven Strings, Ann Arbor 1984.)

17.5 PUBLIC STATEMENTS REGARDING THE TRIAL OF PIMENOV, VAIL AND ZINOVIEVA (AI)

  1. Russian text in Novoye Russkoye Slovo, New York, 7 January 1971.
  2. The well-known Czechoslovak liberal manifesto of 1968. See Z. Zeman, Prague Spring, 1969, pp. 61-65.
  3. Russian text in Novoye Russkoye Slovo, New York. 22 December 1970, English in The Times (London) and The New York Times, 16 November 1970.

17.6 THE HIJACKERS’ TRIAL (LENINGRAD)

  1. A reference to Nehama Lifshits, a popular Jewish singer allowed to emigrate in 1969.

17.7 THE UNF TRIAL (AI)

  1. On this case see a translated Samizdat document in The Ukrainian Review, London, No. 2, 1969, pp. 9-11.
  2. In fact 19 April 1966. See Pravda, 20 April.
  3. In December 1969 the Chronicle reported all three (Kvetsko, Krasivsky and Dyak) as being in Vladimir Prison.

17.8 PERSECUTION OF JEWS WISHING TO EMIGRATE TO ISRAEL

  1. A samizdat Zionist journal, partially modelled on the Chronicle of Current Events. This material was taken, perhaps, from issue No 3.
  2. Annual remembrance day for the victims of the 1941 massacre. See Chronicle 16.11 (6).

17.12 NEWS IN BRIEF

  1. Simokaitis was sentenced to death, then reprieved and given 15 years, in January 1971.
  2. Feigin was released in January 1971, and allowed to emigrate on 10 February.
  3. The parents concerned are: Vyacheslav Aidov, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Ilya Gabai, Victor Krasin, Valery Ronkin, Ilya Burmistrovich, Pavel Litvinov, Genrikh Altunyan, Vladislav Nedobora, Vladimir Ponomaryov (Kharkov), Victor Kuznetsoy, Vladlen Pavelenkoy, Sergei Ponomaryov (Gorky), Revolt Pimenov and Boris Vail.