Commentary No 16 (October 1970)

No 16 : 31 October 1970

16.2 THE TRIAL OF PIMENOV AND VAIL

Makeyev is the deputy head of the department of housing and communal services [ZhKU], and not, as the Chronicle stated, the head of the department of buildings and works [ZhSU],

16.6 RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION

English texts of many of these documents may be found in M. Bourdeaux, Religious Ferment in Russia: Protestant Opposition to Soviet Religious Policy (London and New York 1968), Rosemary Harris and X. Howard-Johnston, Christian Appeals from Russia (London 1969), and M. Bourdeaux’s forthcoming Faith on Trial in Russia (London 1971).

16.7 FOLLOWING UP REPORTS IN THE PRESS

The persecution of Mikhail Makarenko (Novosibirsk-Moscow)

  1. For the 1968 letter of protest about the Galanskov-Ginzburg trial and the beginning of Makarenko’s problems in Novosibirsk, see CCE 2.2 and Commentary 2.
  2. The “Festival of Bards” – an annual gathering of singer-songwriters that included the nationally famous such as Alexander Galich, Yu. Klyachkin and Vladimir Vysotsky as well as local performers. “Illicit” recordings made at such festivals circulated as magnitizdat, the taped equivalent of samizdat.
  3. The work of all three artists – Pavel Filonov (1883-1941), Robert Falk (1886-1958) and El Lissitsky (1890-1941) – enjoyed a revival after the death of Stalin.
  4. Makarenko’s letter to the February 1968 Budapest Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties may be contrasted to the “Appeal” sent from Moscow by Kostyorin, Bogoraz, Litvinov and others (CCE 1.4),

For the subsequent treatment of Mikhail Makarenko (1931-2007), see CCE 33.5 (In the Perm camps), CCE 46.10 (Vladimir Prison) and CCE 48.13 (“After Release“).

16.12 OBITUARY OF Yu.G. OKSMAN

  1. Published in Possev, Frankfurt, 5 July 1963.
  2. Ya. E. Elsberg is referred to in the “Extra-judicial persecution” section of CCE 14.10 as “the well-known informer and witness at the secret trials of the thirties and forties”.
  3. R. M. Samarin, Professor of Foreign Literature at the Institute of World Literature was a critic in 1958 of the journal Foreign Literature for its careless selection of material for translation), and in 1969 of vol. 5 of the Concise Literary Encyclopedia for its excessive liberalism.
  4. N. V. Lesyuchevsky, chairman of the board of the Sovetsky Pisatel publishing house is said in the Soviet Union to have denounced the poets B.K. Livshits, B.P. Kornilov and N. Zabolotsky, and the prose-writer Yelena Tager.