Word: russias
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Soviet newspapers almost never mention the acts of protest against government policy that have become commonplace in Russia during the past few years. Scarcely ever do they speak of the arrests and other reprisals against dissenters that are now taking place with increasing frequency in the Soviet Union...
Despite the blanket of official silence, there is one publication in Russia that records the protests and persecution of the country's dissenters. It is a small, often tattered, clandestine newsletter called Chronicle of Current Events. Despite constant KGB (secret police) efforts to stamp it out, the Chronicle, which usually runs no more than 40 typescript pages, circulates among intellectuals in major Soviet cities with the speed of a brush fire...
Ominous Forecast. In instances where Western specialists could check the veracity of the Chronicle reports, they have proved to be accurate. That only makes the newsletter's prediction about Stalin seem more significant. Issue No. 10, which has just begun to circulate in Russia, reports that the Soviet leaders are planning a major campaign to "rehabilitate" Stalin on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of his birth next Dec. 21. Major articles in Pravda and Izvestia are in preparation, together with a four-volume edition of his works. Posters and a statue are also being made ready...
Dispassionate Tones. Along with foreign short-wave broadcasts, the Chronicle has become a main source of information for Soviet intellectuals. It broke the news of the arrest of three naval officers for having drafted an appeal for free speech (TIME, Oct. 31). It was the only publication in Russia to re port on such historical documents as Alexander Solzhenitsyn's letters to the Writers Union about the banning of his works. The Chronicle regularly offers listings of the latest officially forbidden books by both Western and Russian authors circulating in samizdat editions in the Soviet Union...
Even in the face of official Soviet persecution, Russia's greatest living writer remains true to his credo. Last week the clandestine texts became available of Solzhenitsyn's statements before a committee of literary bureaucrats who sought to expel him from the local branch of the Soviet Writers Union in the town of Ryazan, 115 miles southeast of Moscow. "I am ready to accept even death, not only expulsion from the union," he told his accusers, who charge him with allowing his books to be published in the West. "Vote! You can vote. You are in the majority...