A Chronicle of Current Events () was one of the longest running samizdat periodicals of the post-Stalinist Soviet Union. This unofficial newsletter reported violations of civil rights and judicial procedure by the Soviet government and responses to those violations by citizens across the Soviet Union. Appearing first in April 1968, it soon became the main voice of the Soviet human rights movement, inside the country and abroad.
During the 15 years of its existence the Chronicle covered 424 political trials, in which 753 people were convicted. Not one of the accused was acquitted. In addition, 164 people were declared insane and sent for indefinite periods of compulsory treatment in psychiatric hospitals. In 1973 the novelist and literary critic Lydia Chukovskaya wrote:"Materials about Sakharov", A Chronicle of Current Events (30.12) 31 December 1973.
Despite constant harassment by the Soviet authorities, more than sixty issues of the Chronicle were compiled and published (circulated) between April 1968 and August 1983. One issue (No 59, November 1980) was confiscated by the KGB. The last issue to appear (No 64, June 1982) was not put into circulation until the very end of August the following year. Material was gathered and checked up to 31 December 1982 but issue No. 65 never went into circulation.
Origins – the background to CCE No. 1 By the mid-1960s critically minded adults and youngsters in Moscow (later they would be known as dissidents) were confronted by a growing range of information about ongoing political repressions in the Soviet Union. For example, in letters home from the prison camps the writers Yuli Daniel and Andrey Sinyavsky, sentenced and imprisoned in 1966, told of far greater numbers of political prisoners than they and others had previously believed to exist.
For the circle of future editors, this picture was amplified by Anatoly Marchenko's My Testimony, a seminal text which began circulating in samizdat in December 1967. It provided a detailed account of his time in labor camps and Soviet prisons (1960–1965), as well as describing the conditions there. Through other contacts and friends, sometimes during prison or camp visits, older and younger generations in Moscow began to learn of the repressive measures being used in Ukraine and the Russian provinces.
This growth in the unofficial, alternative and uncensored circulation of information led a group including poet and translator Natalya Gorbanevskaya, writer Ilya Gabay and physicist Pavel Litvinov to consider organising a regular information bulletin. Rather than follow previous samizdat genres, the literary almanac (e.g. Phoenix, Syntaxis) or collections documenting a single trial (e.g. The White Book), the new periodical would process the steady flow of information by circulating regular reports and updates about searches, arrests, trials, conditions in prisons and camps and extrajudicial measures against protest and dissent—at least for the duration of 1968. That year marked the 20th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and Nos. 1–5 are titled Human Rights Year in the Soviet Union: until 1969 A Chronicle of Current Events was the sub-title of the periodical.
A prototype already existed in bulletins by repressed groups that had recently begun publication in samizdat, such as a Baptist periodical, published since 1965. An example for the Chronicle first editorial group was the informational bulletin of the Crimean Tatars, established in 1964. Unlike these single-issue periodicals, which mainly circulated among their respective groups, the editors and contributors to the new publication aimed to cover a broader spectrum of political repression and appeal to a wider audience.
A turning point for the young dissident movement came in 1967 when Yuri Galanskov, Alexander Dobrovolsky and Vera Lashkova were arrested in Moscow for producing literary samizdat magazines. At the same moment Alexander Ginzburg was detained for collaborating with Galanskov on the White Book, a volume of documents about the trial of writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel. The Galanskov-Ginzburg trial, delayed until January 1968, and the public protests before and after the accused were convicted, formed the main subject of the first issue of the Chronicle, circulated in Moscow in June 1968. Issue No. 1 detailed the repressive measures taken by the authorities against individuals who signed the numerous petitions and collective letters concerning the trial.CCE 1, 30 April 1968 — 1.1 "The Trial", 1.2 "Protests about the Trial", and 1.3 "Repressive Measures in Response to the Protests"
Publication process and legality
The Chronicle was compiled in Moscow by anonymous editors, drawing on a network of informants throughout the Soviet Union. Known for its dry, concise style, it documented the extrajudicial harassment and persecution, the arrests and trials of those who opposed the regime for its denial of their rights; it carried further reports about their subsequent treatment in prisons, labor camps, and mental asylums.
The periodical adopted standard samizdat techniques, whereby typewritten texts were retyped by recipients and passed along in chain-letter fashion. An initial "circulation run" of 10 to 12 copies (also known as nulevaya zakladka, roughly, "zero generation manuscript") thus spread throughout the country in hundreds of typewritten copies.
The authors encouraged readers to utilize the same distribution channels in order to send feedback and local information: "Simply tell it to the person from whom you received the Chronicle, and he will tell the person from whom he received the Chronicle, and so on." This advice came with a warning: "But do not try to trace back the whole chain of communication yourself, or else you will be taken for a police informer."
The date of each issue reflected the latest information it included, not the moment when it was first circulated or "published" in Moscow. As the size of the successive issues grew, and disruption by the Soviet authorities of its wider circulation increased, the gap grew between these two dates from a few months to many. Issue 63, for instance, contained 230 typescript pages and while it bore the date 31 December 1981, it did not appear in Moscow until March 1983.
Legality and the Constitution
According to the 1936 Soviet Constitution then in force, the Chronicle was not an illegal publication, or so the editors maintained: The authorities thought otherwise, as is reflected in the list of people harassed, detained and imprisoned for their part in the periodical's production and circulation (see Section The Editors). Some were given camp sentences—Sergei Kovalev, Alexander Lavut, Tatyana Velikanova and Yury Shikhanovich; some were sent to psychiatric hospitals—Natalya Gorbanevskaya. Others were persuaded to leave the country—Anatoly Yakobson, Tatyana Khodorovich.
Publication history
Beginnings: issues 1–27 (1968–72) In honor of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations declared 1968 as the "International Year for Human Rights". In April Natalya Gorbanevskaya compiled the first issue of the Chronicle of Current Events. Its cover (dated 30 April 1968) carried the title: "The International Year for Human Rights in the Soviet Union" and, like every subsequent issue of the Chronicle, quoted the text of Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
The issue reported on the trial of the Social Christian Union in Leningrad and already carried information from the camps. Its main focus, however, was the trial of Galanskov and Ginzburg in Moscow.
As the first compiler of the Chronicle and its typist, Gorbanevskaya produced the "zero-generation" copy based on information from her friends in Moscow, using a typewriter purchased on the semi-legal grey market. She made six copies which were then secretly distributed to friends, who made further carbon copies on their own typewriters, passing them on, in turn, to friends and trusted acquaintances.
Gorbanevskaya was arrested on 24 December 1969, while compiling issue 11. She managed to hide the source papers, which had handwriting which could identify other authors, in her desk, and additional information was hidden in her coat. The KGB missed both of these hiding places. Issue 11 was released on schedule and included a report on Gorbanevskaya's arrest. She was released, but again arrested in 1970 and put on trial. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Gorbanevskaya was held in a Soviet psychiatric prison until February 1972. Eventually she was allowed to return to Moscow and in 1975 she emigrated to France.
Following Gorbanevskaya's arrest, her work was taken over by literary critic Anatoly Yakobson. He collated the material for issues 11–27 of the Chronicle until the end of 1972, after which he emigrated from the USSR.
Disruption: Case 24 (1972–73) By 1972, the Chronicle was being run by biologist Sergei Kovalev, mathematician Tatyana Velikanova and linguist Tatyana Khodorovich. Kovalev acted as chief editor, while Velikanova was responsible for collating material and organizing apartments for meetings, with Khodorovich serving as a major conduit for information.
In June 1972, the KGB arrested Pyotr Yakir, followed by Victor Krasin in September. Numerous witnesses were summoned and cross-examined over the following months (Bukovsky, for example, was brought from Vladimir Prison) as part of Case No. 24.CCE 28, 31 December 1972 — 28.3 "A Chronicle of Case No. 24"; CCE 29, 30 June 1973 — 29.8 "A Chronicle of Case No 24 (II)"; (3) CCE 30, 31 December 1973 — 30.1 "The Trial of P. Yakir and V. Krasin. (Statement by the Action Group on Human Rights)." Under pressure from KGB General Yaroslav Karpov, Yakir and Krasin agreed to appear on Soviet television, recant their past activities, and urge their fellow activists to stop the publication of the Chronicle. They also passed on the KGB threat that, for every issue published after the broadcast, there would be an arrest.
The editors of the Chronicle suspended publication after Issue 27 (15 October 1972). This did not prevent the arrest in January 1973 of Irina Belogorodskaya, who occasionally assisted in typing up manuscripts for the journal. As a reaction to the new situation, the Chronicle editors prefaced Issue 28 (31 December 1972) with a declaration stating that they had decided to resume publication because they found the KGB ultimatum to be "incompatible" with "justice, morality and human dignity". This declaration would not be made public for another 16 months, however.
After some discussion those closely involved in the production of the journal decided to change the periodical's established policy of anonymity, to the extent of naming themselves as distributors: they did not then or subsequently admit to being authors and editors of the Chronicle.
To undermine the blackmailing tactics of the KGB they agreed to circulate a declaration acknowledging their personal responsibility for the periodical's circulation when they issued the delayed issues of the Chronicle: No. 28 (31 December 1972), No. 29 (31 July 1973), and No. 30 (31 December 1973). Unlike other groups, for example, the dissident Action Group on Human Rights in the USSR, previous editors of the Chronicle had never openly linked their names to the samizdat text. In taking this step, Kovalyov, Velikanova and Khodorovich hoped to make it more difficult for the authorities to implicate others.
On 7 May 1974, they invited foreign correspondents to a press conference at which issue Nos. 28, 29 and 30 were openly distributed. At the same event Kovalyov, Velikanova and Khodorovich issued a press release. It was signed by all three of them and consisted of a few short sentences:
Publication resumes: issues 28–65 (1974–82)