Preface
There are many kinds of private publications in the Soviet Union, and in order to avoid government crackdowns, they are generally circulated secretly among acquaintances, some may be a few pages of printed manuscripts, some may be programmatic documents of a certain organization, or copies of court judgments, and some are fixed periodicals that have been published for a long time, and at the same time, there are also a large number of books and periodicals that have been published regularly abroad and then privately transported back to the Soviet Union for reprinting or direct circulation.
Private publications, although they could circulate openly or semi-publicly in the Soviet Union, were not officially authorized and therefore illegal, and were constantly pursued by the Soviet authorities, while their dissemination depended solely on the enthusiasm of readers and participants in the dissident movement, and did not have a fixed pattern, which can be broadly divided into various types of periodicals; books by Soviet dissidents published in the West and circulated privately in the USSR; Various types of manuscripts, letters, and judicial documents in several forms.
Various types of journals
Politics: The Chronicle of Current Affairs, a regular publication of the "Soviet Dissident Movement for Rights", began to be published in 1968 and ceased publication in 1983, with a total of 64 issues. Western researchers believe that this journal is the ancestor of all unofficial publications.
Over the past 15 years, the journal has been ordered to stop publishing several times by the government, and its editors have been arrested, imprisoned, and even sent to psychiatric hospitals, but it has resumed publication soon after. Charlizer once printed in the United States and published foreign editions of "Current Affairs". The Soviet Dissident Movement for Rights also published private publications such as The Democrat and The Idea of Freedom.
Political Diary is a regular journal edited by the Medvedev brothers, dedicated to exposing the political insiders of the Soviet Union, and is known in the West as a representative publication of the "left" of the dissident movement. It began in 1964 and had 82 issues by the time it ceased publication in 1971, of which 19 issues had been published in the West.
Twentieth Century, a political journal published in the mid-70s, edited by Roy Medvedev. In his press statement, Medvedev wrote: "A group of people with common views, who were concerned with the construction of a socialist society and the development of socialist ideas in the Soviet Union, and who considered that the integration of socialism and democracy was our basic goal, began to publish the magazine...... The typewriter-typed magazine will be circulated every two months and will consider publishing articles by non-Marxists that the editorial board deems deserving of attention and discussion. ”
In addition, such publications include "The Bells", "The Sower", and in the mid-to-late 70s, a relatively large number of pages of private publications on literary and political theory in Moscow: "Exploration", "Remembrance" in Leningrad and Moscow at the same time, "Dawn" in Lithuania, "Golden Fleece" in Georgia, "Jews in the Soviet Union" in Riga, etc., some of which existed for a long time, and some were quickly banned by the government, and the editors were punished.
Ethnicity and Religion:
In 1970, a regular private publication on the information of the Ukrainian national cultural movement: the "Ukrainian Bulletin" began to appear, and since then it has been constantly publishing articles by ethnic Ukrainians against the Great Russian policy of the Soviet government, and has become a position for the Ukrainian nation to defend its rights. Despite several searches and arrests of editors by the KGB, the KGB continued to publish.
In 1974, the July and Eighth issues of the "Ukrainian Bulletin" published a long article, systematically analyzing the situation of the Soviet government's intensification of total Russification in Ukraine after the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from the aspects of Ukrainian demographics, cultural genocide of Ukraine, etc., which attracted the attention of many people.
B. Osipov's "Town Council" and "Land", as well as "Moscow Anthology", are Russian nationalist publications that share the belief that traditional Russian culture is being undermined.
Explaining why the name "Land" was chosen, Osipov said: "When we seriously criticize modern civilization, we are defending not only our Motherland, but also our land. The salvation of the Russian nation is unthinkable without the restoration of the social and moral strength of the peasantry. We express our allegiance to the existing and our support for the country in the face of foreign threats, while at the same time we reserve the right to appeal to the people of the motherland. ”
Books of Soviet dissidents published in the West and circulated privately in the USSR
Soviet dissidents who publicly published and distributed their own works in the West, and then returned to the Soviet Union in the form of banned books for direct distribution or reprinting and dissemination, this type of private publication cannot be called a private publication in the strict sense of the word, but because the government explicitly restricted the distribution of such works in the Soviet Union, in the end, these works could only be circulated privately in the hands of Soviet readers in an illegal form.
The main types of books of Soviet dissidents that were publicly distributed in the West and illegally and privately disseminated in the Soviet Union were as follows:
Dissidents dissect theoretical books on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and socialism in politics, economics, history, science and technology, literature and art.
There are many books on this subject, and they expose the dark side of Soviet society, criticize the Communist Party's one-party dictatorship, and restrict freedom of speech, while putting forward their own political ideas that are different from the official ones.
The main books of this category include Roy Medvedev's On Socialist Democracy, published in Amsterdam and Paris in 1972, and Let History Judge: The Origins of Stalinism and Its Consequences, published in New York, USA, in 1974.
Jores Medvedev's "The Rise and Fall of Lysenko" was published in the West in the late 60s, and "Soviet Science" was published in the United States in 1978.
Gegogorenko's "The Mind of a Madman", Sakharov's "On the Fatherland and the World", Amalilik's "Can the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?", Sofalevich's "Socialism as a World Historical Phenomenon", Turchin's "The Inertia of Fear: Socialism and Totalitarianism", Doseyev's "The Trap - Man and Socialism", V. Belozelkovsky's "Freedom, Power and Ownership" are all books of this genre.
Books that expose high-level Soviet officials, defend democracy and human rights, and expose the persecution and repression of dissidents by the Soviet authorities.
Representative works that reveal the contents of the top leadership of the Soviet Union, the KGB, or the army include "Twenty Letters to a Friend" and "Just One Year" published in the United States by Stalin's daughter Aliluyeva: Avtorkhanov, who once worked in the Central Committee of the CPSU, published in the West "The Science of Power", "Brezhnev's Strength and Weakness", Miagkov's "Inside the KGB", and Pogolepov's "Revenge for Madlet: Memories of the Victims of the Cold War", and so on.
Books criticizing the Soviet government for pursuing the nationalist policy of Great Russia, taking advantage of the predominance of Russian culture to consciously eliminate the culture and language of ethnic minorities, Russifying them, persecuting the lower parts of ethnic minorities, and the struggle of ethnic minorities against the government.
In 1970, Ivan Dzyuba published the book Internationalism or Russification?, which systematically exposed the ethnic policy of the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, and criticized the government's policy of brutal national oppression, assimilation, and persecution of dissident ethnic groups in Ukraine. Nekritsch's work on the struggle of the Tatar peoples for their return to their homeland, "The Punished People", and Nekrasov's "Essays of a Spectator", are also representative works in this regard.
Explores the history and current state of the dissident movement in the Soviet Union, as well as the dissidents' own experiences in the Soviet Union.
In 1982, Alekseeva published in the United States The History of Soviet Dissidents, which was the most famous monograph on the study of the dissident movement that circulated privately in the Soviet Union at that time. The triple identity of being a dissident, a researcher, and an exile at the same time allows the author to analyze in depth the content of various aspects of the Soviet dissident movement from personal experience.
Bukovsky, who was sentenced by the government in the early 60s for disseminating private publications, published in the West with the book "The Wind Is Back", tells a different story about the early days of the dissident movement in the Soviet Union.
Roy Medvedev's 1980 book "On the Dissidents of the Soviet Union" published in the United States, as well as Osipov's "Three Attitudes to Russia", Podjapolsky's "About the Times and Myself", Shrakin's "Spiritual Revolt", Perriman's "Abandoned Russia", Kuznetsova-Budanova's "I Used to Have a Homeland", and Levitin's "Lovely Freedom: The Democratic Movement" all belong to this genre.
The private publications of the type called "concentration camp literature" in the West are not only numerous, but also extremely rich in content, and the main representative work in this regard is Solzhenitsyn's novels. For example, Solzhenitsyn's "The First Circle", "Cancer Ward", and "The Gulag Archipelago" are generally officially published in the West, and then secretly circulated in the Soviet Union. Writings such as E. Ginzburg's The Steep Journey and B. Grossman's The Passage of Things also fall into this category.
Various types of manuscripts and letters
In addition to the various types of publications mentioned above, as well as books published in the West and then illegally disseminated in the Soviet Union, many dissident manuscripts, open letters, petitions, and programmatic documents circulated privately in the Soviet Union.
For example, "Time does not wait--- our country is at a turning point in history", which is known as the Leningrad Theses in the West; Sakharov's "Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Freedom of Thought": "Varga's Last Words" by Ye Varga, a veteran member of the CPSU and economist: "What is Democratic Communism" by Po Yegorov; Solzhenitsyn's "Letter to the Fourth Congress of the All-Union Writers' Association" and "Letter to the Soviet Leader"; Roy Medvedev, "On Some Social and Political Currents in the Mainland"; The 2,000-word manifesto of Czech intellectuals: Kapitsa's Science and Modern Society, etc.
Some of these manuscripts were disseminated under the author's real name, and some were proliferated under pseudonyms, but these typewritten manuscripts were widely disseminated in Soviet society and had a huge impact. They gave an all-round view of Soviet society in terms of politics, economy, culture, ethnicity, and so on, and proposed a reform program in the Soviet Union that would establish political democracy, freedom of speech, public ownership and allow private ownership to compete with each other, and a multi-party state that was different from what the government advocated.