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130-535: Samizdat (Russian: самиздат , pronounced [səmɨzˈdat] , lit.   ' self-publishing ' ) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual reproduction was widespread, because typewriters and printing devices required official registration and permission to access . This

260-530: A "human face" to socialism by expressing dissatisfaction with the system of censorship. Many socialists put faith in the potential for reform in the Soviet Union, especially because of the political liberalization which occurred under Dubček in Czechoslovakia. However, the Soviet Union invasion of a liberalizing Czechoslovakia, in the events of " Prague Spring ", crushed hopes for reform and stymied

390-549: A Philosophy doctorate, Pasternak decided against it. He returned to Moscow around the time of the outbreak of the First World War. In the aftermath of events, Pasternak proposed marriage to Ida. However, the Wissotzky family was disturbed by Pasternak's poor prospects and persuaded Ida to refuse him. She turned him down and he told of his love and rejection in the poem "Marburg" (1917): I quivered. I flared up, and then

520-653: A chemical factory in Vsevolodo-Vilva near Perm , which undoubtedly provided him with material for Dr. Zhivago many years later. Unlike the rest of his family and many of his closest friends, Pasternak chose not to leave Russia after the October Revolution of 1917. According to Max Hayward , Pasternak remained in Moscow throughout the Civil War (1918–1920), making no attempt to escape abroad or to

650-463: A common practice. That technique could be called the "medicalization" of dissidence or psychiatric terror, the now familiar form of repression applied in the Soviet Union to Leonid Plyushch , Pyotr Grigorenko , and many others. Finally, many persons at that time tended to believe that dissidents were abnormal people whose commitment to mental hospitals was quite justified. In the opinion of

780-671: A comrade", and put down the receiver. According to Pasternak, during the 1937 show trial of General Iona Yakir and Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky , the Union of Soviet Writers requested all members to add their names to a statement supporting the death penalty for the defendants. Pasternak refused to sign, even after leadership of the Union visited and threatened him. Soon after, Pasternak appealed directly to Stalin, describing his family's strong Tolstoyan convictions and putting his own life at Stalin's disposal; he said that he could not stand as

910-480: A concern for legality, the rejection of any 'underground' and violent struggle. Throughout the 1960s-1980s, those active in the civil and human rights movement engaged in a variety of activities: The documentation of political repression and rights violations in samizdat (unsanctioned press); individual and collective protest letters and petitions; unsanctioned demonstrations; mutual aid for prisoners of conscience; and, most prominently, civic watch groups appealing to

1040-560: A distinctive military-looking uniform particular to them as was the custom of the time in Eastern Europe and Russia. Boyhood friends, they parted in 1908, friendly but with different politics, never to see each other again. Pasternak went to the Moscow Conservatory to study music (and later to Germany to study philosophy), and Minchakievich went to Lvov University to study history and philosophy. The good dimension of

1170-679: A drawing of Tolstoy on his deathbed." Regular visitors to the Pasternaks' home also included Sergei Rachmaninoff , Alexander Scriabin , Lev Shestov , and Rainer Maria Rilke . Pasternak aspired first to be a musician. Inspired by Scriabin, Pasternak briefly was a student at the Moscow Conservatory . In 1910, he abruptly left for the University of Marburg in Germany , where he studied under neo-Kantian philosophers Hermann Cohen , Nicolai Hartmann , and Paul Natorp . In 1910 Pasternak

1300-525: A girl from a notable Moscow Jewish family of tea merchants , whose company Wissotzky Tea was the largest tea company in the world. Pasternak had tutored her in the final class of high school. He helped her prepare for finals. They met in Marburg during the summer of 1912 when Boris' father, Leonid Pasternak , painted her portrait. Although Professor Cohen encouraged him to remain in Germany and to pursue

1430-462: A good deal in 1947 and 1948, when I first came to know you. Thank you for your help. I was translating both of you." Ivinskaya would later describe the Petőfi translations as "a first declaration of love". According to Ivinskaya, Zinaida Pasternak was infuriated by her husband's infidelity. Once, when his younger son Leonid fell seriously ill, Zinaida extracted a promise from her husband, as they stood by

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1560-493: A key role in the existence of the samizdat phenomenon. For instance, the USSR's refusal to publish Boris Pasternak's epic novel, Doctor Zhivago led to the novel's subsequent underground publication. Likewise, the circulation of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's famous work about the gulag system, The Gulag Archipelago , promoted a samizdat revival during the mid-1970s. However, because samizdat by definition placed itself in opposition to

1690-455: A letter expressing his support for the latter's stance on human rights. In the wake of Carter's letter to Sakharov, the USSR cautioned against attempts "to interfere' in its affairs under "a thought-up pretext of 'defending human rights.'" Because of Carter's open show of support for Soviet dissidents, the KGB was able to link dissent with American imperialism through suggesting that such protest

1820-419: A poet. His poems circulated in samizdat, with only four judged as suitable for official Soviet anthologies. In the mid-1960s an unofficial literary group known as SMOG (a word meaning variously one was able , I did it , etc.; as an acronym the name also bore a range of interpretations) issued an almanac titled The Sphinxes ( Sfinksy ) and collections of prose and poetry. Some of their writings were close to

1950-485: A point. It seems to me that I've reached that point. By 1932, Pasternak had strikingly reshaped his style to make it more understandable to the general public and printed the new collection of poems, aptly titled The Second Birth . Although its Caucasian pieces were as brilliant as the earlier efforts, the book alienated the core of Pasternak's refined audience abroad, which was largely composed of anti-communist émigrés. In 1932, Pasternak fell in love with Zinaida Neuhaus,

2080-469: A present of this square?' he would ask." She gave him the phone number of her neighbour Olga Volkova who resided below. In the evenings, Pasternak would phone and Volkova would signal by Olga banging on the water pipe which connected their apartments. When they first met, Pasternak was translating the verse of the Hungarian national poet , Sándor Petőfi . Pasternak gave his lover a book of Petőfi with

2210-537: A psychiatric hospital. According to Soviet dissidents and Western critics, the KGB had routinely sent dissenters to psychiatrists for diagnosing to avoid embarrassing public trials and to discredit dissidence as the product of ill minds. On the grounds that political dissenters in the Soviet Union were psychotic and deluded, they were locked away in psychiatric hospitals and treated with neuroleptics . Confinement of political dissenters in psychiatric institutions had become

2340-428: A revolutionary nature because of its claim that a fundamental shift in political structure was necessary to reform the state, unlike socialists, who hoped to work within the same basic political framework to achieve change. Despite the revolutionary nature of the democratic samizdat authors, most democrats advocated moderate strategies for change. Most democrats believed in an evolutionary approach to achieving democracy in

2470-473: A self-appointed judge of life and death. Pasternak was certain that he would be arrested, but instead Stalin is said to have crossed Pasternak's name off an execution list, reportedly declaring, "Do not touch this cloud dweller" (or, in another version, "Leave that holy fool alone!"). Pasternak's close friend Titsian Tabidze did fall victim to the Great Purge. In an autobiographical essay published in

2600-437: A significant role in providing a common language for Soviet dissidents with varying concerns, and became a common cause for social groups in the dissident milieu ranging from activists in the youth subculture to academics such as Andrei Sakharov . Due to the contacts with Western journalists as well as the political focus during détente ( Helsinki Accords ), those active in the human rights movement were among those most visible in

2730-659: A student at the Art Institute. The following year their son Yevgeny was born. Evidence of Pasternak's support of still-revolutionary members of the leadership of the Communist Party as late as 1926 is indicated by his poem "In Memory of Reissner" presumably written upon the premature death from typhus of Bolshevik leader Larissa Reissner aged 30 in February of that year. By 1927, Pasternak's close friends Vladimir Mayakovsky and Nikolai Aseyev were advocating

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2860-544: A variety of materials such as detective novels, adventure stories, and science fiction in addition to dissident texts, resulting in the underground publication of samizdat covering a wide range of topics. Though most samizdat authors directed their works towards the intelligentsia, samizdat included lowbrow genres in addition to scholarly works. Hyung-Min Joo carried out a detailed analysis of an archive of samizdat (Архив Самиздата, Arkhiv Samizdata ) by Radio Liberty , sponsored by

2990-849: A verbal battle amongst several members of the groups, fighting for recognition as the first, truest Russian Futurists; these included the Cubo-Futurists , who were by that time already notorious for their scandalous behaviour. Pasternak's first and second books of poetry were published shortly after these events. Another failed love affair in 1917 inspired the poems in his third and first major book, My Sister, Life . His early verse cleverly dissimulates his preoccupation with Immanuel Kant 's philosophy. Its fabric includes striking alliterations, wild rhythmic combinations, day-to-day vocabulary, and hidden allusions to his favourite poets such as Rilke , Lermontov , Pushkin and German-language Romantic poets. During World War I, Pasternak taught and worked at

3120-460: A version of the term as a pun in the 1940s when he typed copies of his poems and included the note Samsebyaizdat (Самсебяиздат, "Myself by Myself Publishers") on the front page. Tamizdat refers to literature published abroad (там, tam 'there'), often from smuggled manuscripts. The Polish term for this phenomenon coined around 1980 was drugi obieg , or the "second circuit" of publishing. Sergo Anastasi Mikoyan claimed that decades prior to

3250-533: A wider audience. When it finally was published in 1922, Pasternak's My Sister, Life revolutionised Russian poetry. It made Pasternak the model for younger poets, and decisively changed the poetry of Osip Mandelshtam , Marina Tsvetayeva and others. Following My Sister, Life , Pasternak produced some hermetic pieces of uneven quality, including his masterpiece, the lyric cycle Rupture (1921). Both Pro-Soviet writers and their White émigré equivalents applauded Pasternak's poetry as pure, unbridled inspiration. In

3380-619: Is "completely eliminated." Whether talking to about one hundred dissidents in a broadcast to the Soviet people or at the U.S. Embassy, Reagan's agenda was one of freedom to travel, freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Andrei Sakharov said, "Everyone wants to have a job, be married, have children, be happy, but dissidents must be prepared to see their lives destroyed and those dear to them hurt. When I look at my situation and my family's situation and that of my country, I realize that things are getting steadily worse." Fellow dissident and one of

3510-759: Is a cover for American espionage in the Soviet Union . The KGB head Yuri Andropov determined, "The need has thus emerged to terminate the actions of Orlov , fellow Helsinki monitor Ginzburg and others once and for all, on the basis of existing law." According to Dmitri Volkogonov and Harold Shukman , it was Andropov who approved the numerous trials of human rights activists such as Andrei Amalrik , Vladimir Bukovsky , Vyacheslav Chornovil , Zviad Gamsakhurdia , Alexander Ginzburg , Natalya Gorbanevskaya , Pyotr Grigorenko , Anatoly Shcharansky , and others: If we accept human rights violations as just "their way" of doing things, then we are all guilty. ( Andrei Sakharov ) Voluntary and involuntary emigration allowed

3640-529: Is at the root of my distinctiveness. Most intensely of all my mind was occupied by Christianity in the years 1910–12, when the main foundations of this distinctiveness—my way of seeing things, the world, life—were taking shape... Shortly after his birth, Pasternak's parents had joined the Tolstoyan Movement. Novelist Leo Tolstoy was a close family friend, as Pasternak recalled, "my father illustrated his books, went to see him, revered him, and [...]

3770-518: Is for me to understand—a modern sophist might say that these last years have actually demanded a reduction in conscience and feeling in the name of greater intelligibility. Yet now the very spirit of the times demands great, courageous purity. And these men are ruled by trivial routine. Subjectively, they're sincere and conscientious. But I find it increasingly difficult to take into account the personal aspect of their convictions. I'm not out on my own—people treat me well. But all that only holds good up to

3900-533: The Baltic states prior to their annexation in 1940 and descendants of the eighteenth-century Volga German settlers also formed a movement to leave the Soviet Union. In 1972, the West German government entered an agreement with the Soviet authorities which permitted between 6,000 and 8,000 people to emigrate to West Germany every year for the rest of the decade. As a result, almost 70,000 ethnic Germans had left

4030-562: The Chronicle ' s production and distribution. The periodical's typist and first editor Natalya Gorbanevskaya was arrested and put in a psychiatric hospital for taking part in the August 1968 Red Square protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1974, two of the periodical's close associates (Pyotr Yakir and Victor Krasin ) were persuaded to denounce their fellow editors and the Chronicle on Soviet television. This put an end to

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4160-631: The Communist bloc that restrict freedom of emigration and other human rights . The eight member countries of the Warsaw Pact signed the Helsinki Final Act in August 1975. The "third basket" of the Act included extensive human rights clauses. When Jimmy Carter entered office in 1976, he broadened his advisory circle to include critics of US–Soviet détente . He voiced support for

4290-680: The Crimean Tatars aimed to return to Crimea , the Meskhetian Turks to South Georgia and ethnic Germans aimed to resettle along the Volga River near Saratov . The Crimean Tatar movement takes a prominent place among the movement of deported nations. The Tatars had been refused the right to return to the Crimea, even though the laws justifying their deportation had been overturned. Their first collective letter calling for

4420-616: The Ford Foundation . Founded after the example of the Moscow Helsinki Group and similar watch groups in the Soviet bloc, it also aimed to monitor compliance with the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Accords and to provide moral support for those struggling for that objective inside the Soviet bloc. It acted as a conduit for information on repression in the Soviet Union, and lobbied policy-makers in

4550-715: The Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR (1969) and the Committee on Human Rights in the USSR (1970). The signing of the Helsinki Accords (1975) containing human rights clauses provided rights campaigners with a new hope to use international instruments. This led to the creation of dedicated Helsinki Watch Groups in Moscow ( Moscow Helsinki Group ), Kiev ( Ukrainian Helsinki Group ), Vilnius ( Lithuanian Helsinki Group ), Tbilisi, and Erevan (1976–77). The civil and human rights initiatives played

4680-782: The Moscow Helsinki Group chairwoman Lyudmila Alexeyeva , the attribution of a mental illness to a prominent figure who came out with a political declaration or action is the most significant factor in the assessment of psychiatry during the 1960–1980s. At that time Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky wrote A New Mental Illness in the USSR: The Opposition published in French, German, Italian, Spanish and (coauthored with Semyon Gluzman ) A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissidents published in Russian, English, French, Italian, German, Danish. In 1977–1979 and again in 1980–1982,

4810-544: The Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture . His mother was Rosa Kaufman , a concert pianist and the daughter of Odessa industrialist Isadore Kaufman and his wife. Pasternak had a younger brother, Alex, and two sisters, Lydia and Josephine. The family claimed descent on the paternal line from Isaac Abarbanel , the famous 15th-century Sephardic Jewish philosopher , Bible commentator , and treasurer of Portugal . From 1904 to 1907, Boris Pasternak

4940-626: The Russian avant-garde of the 1910s and 1920s. The 1965 show trial of writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky , charged with anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, and the subsequent increased repression, marked the demise of the Thaw and the beginning of harsher times for samizdat authors. The trial was carefully documented in a samizdat collection called The White Book (1966), compiled by Yuri Galanskov and Alexander Ginzburg. Both writers were among those later arrested and sentenced to prison in what

5070-586: The US Congress and launched in the 1960s, and reported that of its 6,607 items, 1% were literary, 17% nationalist, 20% religious, and 62% political, noting that as a rule, literary works were not collected there, so their 1% (only 73 texts) are not representative of their real share of circulation. In its early years, samizdat defined itself as a primarily literary phenomenon that included the distribution of poetry, classic unpublished Russian literature, and famous 20th century foreign literature. Literature played

5200-652: The Volga Germans to emigrate to West Germany. Soviet Jews were routinely denied permission to emigrate by the authorities of the former Soviet Union and other countries of the Eastern bloc . A movement for the right to emigrate formed in the 1960s, which also gave rise to a revival of interest in Jewish culture. The refusenik cause gathered considerable attention in the West. Citizens of German origin who lived in

5330-593: The White-occupied south, as a number of other Russian writers did at the time. No doubt, like Yuri Zhivago, he was momentarily impressed by the "splendid surgery" of the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, but—again to judge by the evidence of the novel, and despite a personal admiration for Vladimir Lenin , whom he saw at the 9th Congress of Soviets in 1921—he soon began to harbor profound doubts about

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5460-413: The mental hospital , or the labor camp . Anti-Soviet political behavior, in particular, being outspoken in opposition to the authorities, demonstrating for reform, writing books critical of the USSR were defined in some persons as being simultaneously a criminal act (e.g. violation of Articles 70 or 190-1), a symptom (e.g. "delusion of reformism"), and a diagnosis (e.g. " sluggish schizophrenia "). In

5590-520: The "Persecution of the Crimean Tatars", "Persecution and Harassment in Ukraine", "Lithuanian Events", and so on. The Chronicle editors maintained that, according to the 1936 Soviet Constitution , then in force, their publication was not illegal. The authorities did not accept the argument. Many people were harassed, arrested, imprisoned, or forced to leave the country for their involvement in

5720-688: The "Second Culture". Other groups included the Socialists, the movements for socioeconomic rights (especially the independent unions), as well as women's, environmental, and peace movements. Responding to the issue of refuseniks in the Soviet Union, the United States Congress passed the Jackson–Vanik amendment in 1974. The provision in United States federal law intended to affect U.S. trade relations with countries of

5850-550: The 1950s, Pasternak described the execution of Tabidze and the suicides of Marina Tsvetaeva and Paolo Iashvili . Ivinskaya wrote, "I believe that between Stalin and Pasternak there was an incredible, silent duel ." When the Luftwaffe began bombing Moscow, Pasternak immediately began to serve as a fire warden on the roof of the writer's building on Lavrushinski Street. According to Ivinskaya, he repeatedly helped to dispose of German bombs which fell on it. In 1943, Pasternak

5980-555: The 1950s, Soviet dissidents started leaking criticism to the West by sending documents and statements to foreign diplomatic missions in Moscow . In the 1960s, Soviet dissidents frequently declared that the rights the government of the Soviet Union denied them were universal rights, possessed by everyone regardless of race, religion and nationality. In August 1969, for instance, the Initiating Group for Defense of Civil Rights in

6110-676: The 1960s was the Ukrainian movement. Its aspiration was to resist the Russification of Ukraine and to insist on equal rights and democratization for the republic. In Lithuania, the national movement of the 1970s was closely linked to the Catholic movement. Several landmark examples of dissenting writers played a significant role for the wider dissident movement. These include the persecutions of Osip Mandelshtam , Boris Pasternak , Mikhail Bulgakov , and Joseph Brodsky , as well as

6240-476: The 1960s, the early years of the Brezhnev stagnation , dissidents in the Soviet Union increasingly turned their attention towards civil and eventually human rights concerns. The fight for civil and human rights focused on issues of freedom of expression , freedom of conscience , freedom to emigrate , punitive psychiatry , and the plight of political prisoners . It was characterized by a new openness of dissent,

6370-630: The Crimea", thus legitimizing our banishment from our home country and liquidating us as a nation. Since 1959 more than two hundred of the most active and courageous representatives have been sentenced to terms of up to seven years although they had always acted within the limits of the Soviet Constitution. – Appeal by Crimean Tatars to World Public Opinion, Chronicle of Current Events Issue No 2 (30 June 1968) Several national or ethnic groups who had been deported under Stalin formed movements to return to their homelands. In particular,

6500-597: The Czech dissident movement known as Charter 77 , and publicly expressed concern about the Soviet treatment of dissidents Aleksandr Ginzburg and Andrei Sakharov . In 1977, Carter received prominent dissident Vladimir Bukovsky in the White House, asserting that he did not intend "to be timid" in his support of human rights. In 1979, the US Helsinki Watch Committee was established, funded by

6630-533: The Democratic Union formed in May 1988), Levyi povorot ("Left turn", edited by Boris Kagarlitsky ), Otkrytaya zona ("Open zone") of Club Perestroika, Merkurii ("Mercury", edited by Elena Zelinskaya) and Khronograph ("Chronograph", put out by a number of Moscow activists). Not all samizdat trends were liberal or clearly opposed to the Soviet regime and the literary establishment. "The Russian Party ...

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6760-583: The Futurist movement as a whole reached its peak when, in 1914, he published a satirical article in Rukonog , which attacked the jealous leader of the "Mezzanine of Poetry", Vadim Shershenevich , who was criticizing Lirika and the Ego-Futurists because Shershenevich himself was barred from collaborating with Centrifuge, the reason being that he was such a talentless poet. The action eventually caused

6890-410: The Jewish and German dissident movements, many in the independent Pentecostal movement pursued emigration. The national movements included the Russian national dissidents as well as dissident movements from Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, and Armenia. Among the nations that lived in their own territories with the status of republics within the Soviet Union, the first movement to emerge in

7020-575: The KGB reacted to the Helsinki Watch Groups in Moscow, Kiev, Vilnius, Tbilisi, and Erevan by launching large-scale arrests and sentencing its members to in prison, labor camp, internal exile and psychiatric imprisonment. From the members of the Moscow Helsinki Group , 1978 saw its members Yuri Orlov , Vladimir Slepak and Anatoly Shcharansky sentenced to lengthy labor camp terms and internal exile for " anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" and treason. Another wave of arrests followed in

7150-874: The Life of Ivan Denisovich was widely distributed via samizdat. At the outset of the Khrushchev Thaw in the mid-1950s USSR poetry became very popular. Writings of a wide variety of poets circulated among the Soviet intelligentsia: known, prohibited, repressed writers as well as those young and unknown. A number of samizdat publications carried unofficial poetry, among them the Moscow magazine Sintaksis (1959–1960) by writer Alexander Ginzburg , Vladimir Osipov 's Boomerang (1960), and Phoenix (1961), produced by Yuri Galanskov and Alexander Ginzburg . The editors of these magazines were regulars at impromptu public poetry readings between 1958 and 1961 on Mayakovsky Square in Moscow. The gatherings did not last long, for soon

7280-491: The Soviet Union by the mid-1980s. Similarly, Armenians achieved a small emigration. By the mid-1980s, over 15,000 Armenians had emigrated. Russia has changed in the recent years largely in the social, economic, and political spheres. Migrations from Russian have become less forceful and primarily a result of free will that is expressed by the individual. The religious movements in the USSR included Russian Orthodox , Catholic , and Protestant movements. They focused on

7410-529: The Soviet Union was informing society (both inside the USSR and in foreign countries) about violation of laws and human rights and organizing in defense of those rights. Over time, the dissident movement created vivid awareness of Soviet Communist abuses. Soviet dissidents who criticized the state in most cases faced legal sanctions under the Soviet Criminal Code and the choice between exile abroad (with revocation of their Soviet citizenship),

7540-543: The USSR appealed to the United Nations Committee on Human Rights to defend the human rights being trampled on by Soviet authorities in a number of trials. Some of the major milestones of the dissident movement of the 1960s included: Our history shows that most of the people can be fooled for a very long time. But now all this idiocy is coming into clear contradiction with the fact that we have some level of openness. ( Vladimir Voinovich ) The heyday of

7670-473: The USSR ), founded and edited by Alexander Voronel and, after his imprisonment, by Mark Azbel and Alexander Luntz. The late 1980s, which were marked by an increase in informal organizations, saw a renewed wave of samizdat periodicals in the Soviet Union. Publications that were active during that time included Glasnost (edited by Sergei Grigoryants ), Ekspress-khronika ( Express-Chronicle, edited by Alexander Podrabinek ), Svobodnoye slovo ("Free word", by

7800-469: The USSR began to admire these qualities for their own sake, the ragged appearance of samizdat contrasting sharply with the smooth, well-produced appearance of texts passed by the censor's office for publication by the State. The form samizdat took gained precedence over the ideas it expressed and became a potent symbol of the resourcefulness and rebellious spirit of the inhabitants of the Soviet Union. In effect,

7930-423: The USSR to inculcate Jewish consciousness and culture, writing in periodicals centered on cultural-literary information. Crimean Tatars , Volga Germans , and Meskhetian Turks also created samizdat literature, protesting the state's refusal to allow them to return to their homelands following Stalin's death. Descriptions in the samizdat literature of Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans, and Meskhetian Turks documenting

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8060-470: The USSR, and they focused on advancing their cause along open, public routes, rather than underground routes. In opposition to both democratic and socialist samizdat, Slavophile samizdat grouped democracy and socialism together as Western ideals that were unsuited to the Eastern European mentality. Slavophile samizdat brought a nationalistic Russian perspective to the political debate and espoused

8190-618: The Ukrainian Helsinki Group had 37 members, of whom 22 were in prison camps, 5 were in exile, 6 emigrated to the West, 3 were released and were living in Ukraine, 1 ( Mykhailo Melnyk ) committed suicide. The Lithuanian Helsinki Group saw its members subjected to two waves of imprisonment for anti-Soviet activities and "organization of religious processions": Viktoras Petkus was sentenced in 1978; others followed in 1980–1981: Algirdas Statkevičius, Vytautas Skuodys, Mečislovas Jurevičius, and Vytautas Vaičiūnas. Starting in

8320-522: The United States to continue to press the issue with Soviet leaders. US President Ronald Reagan attributed to the view that the "brutal treatment of Soviet dissidents was due to bureaucratic inertia." On 14 November 1988, he held a meeting with Andrei Sakharov at the White House and said that Soviet human rights abuses are impeding progress and would continue to do so until the problem

8450-535: The West (next to refuseniks ). In 1944 THE WHOLE OF OUR PEOPLE was slanderously accused of betraying the Soviet Мotherland and was forcibly deported from the Crimea. [...] [O]n 5 September 1967, there appeared a Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet which cleared us of the charge of treason but described us not as Crimean Tatars but as "citizens of Tatar nationality formerly resident in

8580-468: The West. The longest-running and best-known samizdat periodical was A Chronicle of Current Events (Хроника текущих событий). It was dedicated to defending human rights by providing accurate information about events in the USSR. Over 15 years, from April 1968 to December 1982, 65 issues were published, all but two appearing in English translation. The anonymous editors encouraged the readers to utilize

8710-498: The arrest of Mandelstam? ' " Flustered, Pasternak denied that there was any discussion or that there were any literary circles left in Soviet Russia. Stalin went on to ask him for his own opinion of Mandelstam. In an "eager fumbling manner" Pasternak explained that he and Mandelstam each had a completely different philosophy about poetry. Stalin finally said, in a mocking tone of voice: "I see, you just aren't able to stick up for

8840-412: The authorities began clamping down on them. In the summer of 1961, several meeting regulars were arrested and charged with " anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda " (Article 70 of the RSFSR Penal Code ), putting an end to most of the magazines. Not everything published in samizdat had political overtones. In 1963, Joseph Brodsky was charged with " social parasitism " and convicted for being nothing but

8970-493: The authorities to rid themselves of many political active intellectuals including writers Valentin Turchin , Georgi Vladimov , Vladimir Voinovich , Lev Kopelev , Vladimir Maximov, Naum Korzhavin , Vasily Aksyonov , psychiatrist Marina Voikhanskaya and others. A Chronicle of Current Events covered 424 political trials, in which 753 people were convicted, and no one of the accused was acquitted; in addition, 164 people were declared insane and sent to compulsory treatment in

9100-582: The behavior of the ruling group internally. Attempts from within are suppressed through repression, necessitating international human rights organizations and foreign governments to exert external pressure for change. Boris Pasternak Composed in 1917, Pasternak's first book of poems, My Sister, Life , was published in Berlin in 1922 and soon became an important collection in the Russian language . Pasternak's translations of stage plays by Goethe , Schiller , Calderón de la Barca and Shakespeare remain very popular with Russian audiences. Pasternak

9230-423: The boy's sickbed, that he would end his affair with Ivinskaya. Pasternak asked Luisa Popova, a mutual friend, to tell Ivinskaya about his promise. Popova told him that he must do it himself. Soon after, Ivinskaya happened to be ill at Popova's apartment, when suddenly Zinaida Pasternak arrived and confronted her. Ivinskaya later recalled, But I became so ill through loss of blood that she and Luisa had to get me to

9360-679: The character Strelnikov in Dr. Zhivago is based upon Peter Minchakievich. Several of Pasternak's characters are composites. After World War One and the Revolution, fighting for the Provisional or Republican government under Kerensky, and then escaping a Communist jail and execution, Minchakievich trekked across Siberia in 1917 and became an American citizen. Pasternak stayed in Russia. In a 1959 letter to Jacqueline de Proyart, Pasternak recalled: I

9490-462: The claims and credentials of the regime, not to mention its style of rule. The terrible shortages of food and fuel, and the depredations of the Red Terror , made life very precarious in those years, particularly for the " bourgeois " intelligentsia . In a letter written to Pasternak from abroad in the twenties, Marina Tsvetayeva reminded him of how she had run into him in the street in 1919 as he

9620-515: The complete subordination of the arts to the needs of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . In a letter to his sister Josephine, Pasternak wrote of his intentions to "break off relations" with both of them. Although he expressed that it would be deeply painful, Pasternak explained that it could not be prevented. He explained: They don't in any way measure up to their exalted calling. In fact, they've fallen short of it but—difficult as it

9750-445: The country. Their content was Western rock and roll , jazz , mambo , and other music, and music by banned emigres, such as Pyotr Leshchenko and Alexander Vertinsky . They were sold and traded on the black market . Each disc is a thin, flexible plastic sheet recorded with a spiral groove on one side, playable on a normal phonograph turntable at 78 RPM. They were made from an inexpensive, available material: used X-ray film (hence

9880-524: The dissenters as a presence in the Western public life was the 1970s. The Helsinki Accords inspired dissidents in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia , Hungary , and Poland to openly protest human rights failures by their own governments. The Soviet dissidents demanded that the Soviet authorities implement their own commitments proceeding from the Helsinki Agreement with the same zeal and in

10010-460: The early 1960s, offices and stores had to submit papers with examples of their typewriters' typeface to local KGB branches so that any printed text could be traced back to the source, to prosecute those who had used the typewriter to produce material deemed illegal. With the introduction of photocopying machines, the KGB's Fifth Directorate and Agitprop Department required individuals to get authorization to use printing office photocopiers to prevent

10140-973: The early 1980s: Malva Landa, Viktor Nekipelov , Leonard Ternovsky, Feliks Serebrov, Tatiana Osipova, Anatoly Marchenko , and Ivan Kovalev. Soviet authorities offered some activists the "opportunity" to emigrate. Lyudmila Alexeyeva emigrated in 1977. The Moscow Helsinki Group founding members Mikhail Bernshtam, Alexander Korchak, Vitaly Rubin also emigrated, and Pyotr Grigorenko was stripped of his Soviet citizenship while seeking medical treatment abroad. The Ukrainian Helsinki Group suffered severe repressions throughout 1977–1982, with at times multiple labor camp sentences handed out to Mykola Rudenko , Oleksy Tykhy, Myroslav Marynovych , Mykola Matusevych, Levko Lukyanenko , Oles Berdnyk , Mykola Horbal , Zinovy Krasivsky, Vitaly Kalynychenko, Vyacheslav Chornovil , Olha Heyko, Vasyl Stus , Oksana Meshko, Ivan Sokulsky, Ivan Kandyba , Petro Rozumny, Vasyl Striltsiv, Yaroslav Lesiv , Vasyl Sichko, Yuri Lytvyn, Petro Sichko. By 1983

10270-430: The early Soviet Union, non-conforming academics were exiled via so-called Philosophers' ships . Later, figures such as cultural theorist Grigori Pomerants were among active dissidents. Other intersections of cultural and literary nonconformism with dissidents include the underground poetry and the wide field of Soviet Nonconformist Art , such as the painters of the underground Lianozovo group, and artists active in

10400-539: The founders of the Moscow Helsinki Group Lyudmila Alexeyeva wrote: What would happen if citizens acted on the assumption that they have rights? If one person did it, he would become a martyr; if two people did it, they would be labeled an enemy organization; if thousands of people did it, the state would have to become less oppressive. According to Soviet dissident Victor Davydoff, totalitarian systems lack mechanisms to change

10530-613: The founding of the Chronicle of Current Events in April 1968. The unofficial newsletter reported violations of civil rights and judicial procedure by the Soviet government and responses to those violations by citizens across the USSR. During the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, the rights-based strategy of dissent incorporated human rights ideas and rhetoric. The movement included figures such as Valery Chalidze , Yuri Orlov , and Lyudmila Alexeyeva . Special groups were founded such as

10660-659: The freedom to practice their faith and resistance to interference by the state in their internal affairs. The Russian Orthodox movement remained relatively small. The Catholic movement in Lithuania was part of the larger Lithuanian national movement. Protestant groups which opposed the anti-religious state directives included the Baptists , the Seventh-day Adventists , and the Pentecostals . Similar to

10790-490: The government's handling of events. No unified political thought existed within samizdat; rather, authors debated from a variety of perspectives. Samizdat written from socialist, democratic and Slavophile perspectives dominated the debates. Socialist authors compared the current state of the government to the Marxist ideals of socialism and appealed to the state to fulfil its promises. Socialist samizdat writers hoped to give

10920-471: The hospital, and I no longer remember exactly what passed between me and this heavily built, strong-minded woman, who kept repeating how she didn't give a damn for our love and that, although she no longer loved [Boris Leonidovich] herself, she would not allow her family to be broken up. After my return from the hospital, Boris came to visit me, as though nothing had happened, and touchingly made his peace with my mother, telling her how much he loved me. By now she

11050-406: The ideas and debates that it helped spread to a wider audience but also by its physical form. The hand-typed, often blurry and wrinkled pages with numerous typographical errors and nondescript covers helped to separate and elevate Russian samizdat from Western literature. The physical form of samizdat arose from a simple lack of resources and the necessity to be inconspicuous. In time, dissidents in

11180-562: The importance of cultural diversity and the uniqueness of Slavic cultures. Samizdat written from the Slavophile perspective attempted to unite the USSR under a vision of a shared glorious history of Russian autocracy and Orthodoxy . Consequently, the fact that the USSR encompassed a diverse range of nationalities and lacked a singular Russian history hindered the Slavophile movement. By espousing frequently racist and anti-Semitic views of Russian superiority, through either purity of blood or

11310-423: The inscription, "Petőfi served as a code in May and June 1947, and my close translations of his lyrics are an expression, adapted to the requirements of the text, of my feelings and thoughts for you and about you. In memory of it all, B.P., 13 May 1948." Pasternak later noted on a photograph of himself: "Petőfi is magnificent with his descriptive lyrics and picture of nature, but you are better still. I worked on him

11440-525: The international community. Repercussions for these activities ranged from dismissal from work and studies to many years of imprisonment in labor camps and being subjected to punitive psychiatry . Dissidents active in the movement in the 1960s introduced a "legalist" approach of avoiding moral and political commentary in favor of close attention to legal and procedural issues. Following several landmark political trials, coverage of arrests and trials in samizdat became more common. This activity eventually led to

11570-539: The large percentage of Muslims who resided in the USSR. Jewish samizdat advocated for the end of repression of Jews in the USSR and some expressed a desire for aliyah , the ability to leave Russia for an Israeli homeland. The aliyah movement also broached broader topics of human rights and freedoms of Soviet citizens. However, a divide existed within Jewish samizdat between more militant authors who advocated Jewish emigration and wrote mostly in politically-focused periodicals, and those who argued that Jews should remain in

11700-733: The late 1920s, he also participated in the much celebrated tripartite correspondence with Rilke and Tsvetayeva . As the 1920s wore on, however, Pasternak increasingly felt that his colourful style was at odds with a less educated readership. He attempted to make his poetry more comprehensible by reworking his earlier pieces and starting two lengthy poems on the Russian Revolution of 1905 . He also turned to prose and wrote several autobiographical stories, notably "The Childhood of Luvers" and "Safe Conduct". (The collection Zhenia's Childhood and Other Stories would be published in 1982.) In 1922 Pasternak married Evgeniya Lurye (Евгения Лурье),

11830-522: The mass production of unapproved material, though restrictions could be bypassed by bribing employees. Privately owned typewriters were considered the most practical means of reproducing samizdat during this time due to these copy machine restrictions. Usually, multiple copies of a single text would be simultaneously made on carbon paper or tissue paper , which were inexpensive and relatively easy to conceal. Copies would then be passed around within trusted networks. Samizdat distinguishes itself not only by

11960-515: The name roentgenizdat ). Each large rectangular sheet was trimmed into a circle and individually recorded using an improvised recording lathe . The discs and their limited sound quality resemble the mass-produced flexi discs and may have been inspired by it. Magnitizdat ( magnit- from magnitofon , the Russian word for tape recorder ) is the distribution of sound recordings on audio tape, often of bards , Western artists, and underground music groups. Magnitizdat replaced roentgenizdat , as it

12090-416: The periodical's activities, until Sergei Kovalev , Tatyana Khodorovich and Tatyana Velikanova openly announced their readiness to resume publication. After being arrested and imprisoned, they were replaced, in turn, by others. Another notable and long-running (about 20 issues in the period of 1972–1980) publication was the refusenik political and literary magazine "Евреи в СССР" (Yevrei v SSSR, Jews in

12220-431: The physical form of samizdat itself elevated the reading of samizdat to a prized clandestine act. Samizdat originated from the dissident movement of the Russian intelligentsia , and most samizdat directed itself to a readership of Russian elites. While circulation of samizdat was relatively low, at around 200,000 readers on average, many of these readers possessed positions of cultural power and authority. Furthermore, with

12350-520: The political injustices borne by those peoples are dominated by references to "genocide" and "concentration camps". Ukrainian samizdat opposed the assumed superiority of Russian culture over the Ukrainian and condemned the forced assimilation of Ukrainians to the Russian language. Ribs , "music on the ribs", "bone records", or roentgenizdat ( roentgen- from the Russian term for X-ray, named for Wilhelm Röntgen ) were homemade phonograph records , copied from forbidden recordings that were smuggled into

12480-423: The power of the socialist viewpoint. Because the state proved itself unwilling to reform, samizdat began to focus on alternative political systems. In Czechoslovakia itself, it became central to the underground counter-culture emerging under the normalization regime that followed the invasion. Within samizdat, several works focused on the possibility of a democratic political system. Democratic samizdat possessed

12610-404: The prize. In 1989, Pasternak's son Yevgeny finally accepted the award on his father's behalf. Doctor Zhivago has been part of the main Russian school curriculum since 2003. Pasternak was born in Moscow on 10 February (Gregorian), 1890 (29 January, Julian) into a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family. His father was the post-Impressionist painter Leonid Pasternak , who taught as a professor at

12740-674: The publication of The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn . In literary world, there were dozens of literati who participated in dissident movement, including Vasily Aksyonov , Yury Aikhenvald, Arkadiy Belinkov , Leonid Borodin , Joseph Brodsky , Yuli Daniel , David Dar, Aleksandr Galich , Anatoly Gladilin , Yuliy Kim , Lev Kopelev , Naum Korzhavin , Konstantin Kuzminsky , Vladimir Maksimov , Viktor Nekrasov , Varlam Shalamov , Andrei Sinyavsky , Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , Kari Unksova, Georgi Vladimov , Vladimir Voinovich , Venedikt Yerofeyev , and Alexander Zinoviev . In

12870-427: The remainder of Pasternak's life. Ivinskaya later recalled, "He phoned almost every day and, instinctively fearing to meet or talk with him, yet dying of happiness, I would stammer out that I was 'busy today.' But almost every afternoon, toward the end of working hours, he came in person to the office and often walked with me through the streets, boulevards, and squares all the way home to Potapov Street. 'Shall I make you

13000-457: The restoration dates to 1957. In the early 1960s, the Crimean Tatars had begun to establish initiative groups in the places where they had been forcibly resettled. Led by Mustafa Dzhemilev , they founded their own democratic and decentralized organization, considered unique in the history of independent movements in the Soviet Union. The emigration movements in the Soviet Union included the movement of Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel and of

13130-450: The same distribution channels in order to send feedback and local information to be published in subsequent issues. The Chronicle was distinguished by its dry, concise style and punctilious correction of even the smallest error. Its regular rubrics were "Arrests, Searches, Interrogations", "Extra-judicial Persecution", "In Prisons and Camps", "Samizdat update", "News in brief", and "Persecution of Religion". Over time, sections were added on

13260-481: The same way as formerly the outspoken legalists expected the Soviet authorities to adhere strictly to the letter of their constitution. Dissident Russian and East European intellectuals who urged compliance with the Helsinki accords have been subjected to official repression. According to Soviet dissident Leonid Plyushch , Moscow has taken advantage of the Helsinki security pact to improve its economy while increasing

13390-400: The simultaneous censorship of information and necessity of absorbing information to know how to censor it, many government officials became readers of samizdat. Although the general public at times came into contact with samizdat, most of the public lacked access to the few expensive samizdat texts in circulation and expressed discontent with the highly censored reading material made available by

13520-403: The sketches met the journal deadline, train conductors were enlisted to personally collect the illustrations. Pasternak wrote, My childish imagination was struck by the sight of a train conductor in his formal railway uniform, standing waiting at the door of the kitchen as if he were standing on a railway platform at the door of a compartment that was just about to leave the station. Joiner's glue

13650-407: The state, samizdat works became increasingly focused on the state's violation of human rights, before shifting towards politics. The majority of samizdat texts were politically focused. Most of the political texts were personal statements, appeals, protests, or information on arrests and trials. Other political samizdat included analyses of various crises within the USSR, and suggested alternatives to

13780-459: The state. The purpose and methods of samizdat may contrast with the purpose of the concept of copyright. Self-published and self-distributed literature has a long history in Russia. Samizdat is unique to the post-Stalin USSR and other countries with similar systems. Faced with the state's powers of censorship, society turned to underground literature for self-analysis and self-expression. The first full-length book to be distributed as samizdat

13910-428: The strength of Russian Orthodoxy, the Slavophile movement in samizdat alienated readers and created divisions within the opposition. Predominantly Orthodox, Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostalist, and Adventist groups authored religious samizdat texts. Though a diversity of religious samizdat circulated, including three Buddhist texts, no known Islamic samizdat texts exist. The lack of Islamic samizdat appears incongruous with

14040-530: The suppression of political dissenters. 50 members of Soviet Helsinki Groups were imprisoned. Cases of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union were divulged by Amnesty International in 1975 and by The Committee for the Defense of Soviet Political Prisoners in 1975 and 1976. US President Jimmy Carter in his inaugural address on 20 January 1977 announced that human rights would be central to foreign policy during his administration. In February, Carter sent Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov

14170-573: The telephone rang in Pasternak's Moscow apartment. A voice from the Kremlin said, "Comrade Stalin wishes to speak with you." According to Ivinskaya, Pasternak was struck dumb. "He was totally unprepared for such a conversation. But then he heard his voice, the voice of Stalin, coming over the line. The Leader addressed him in a rather bluff uncouth fashion, using the familiar thou form: 'Tell me, what are they saying in your literary circles about

14300-433: The term came to refer to an individual whose non-conformism was perceived to be for the good of a society. The most influential subset of the dissidents is known as the Soviet human rights movement. Political opposition in the USSR was barely visible, and apart from rare exceptions, it had little consequence, primarily because it was instantly crushed with brute force. Instead, an important element of dissident activity in

14430-474: The term samizdat was used for the dissemination of needed and hard to obtain documents or information. Soviet dissidents Soviet dissidents were people who disagreed with certain features of Soviet ideology or with its entirety and who were willing to speak out against them. The term dissident was used in the Soviet Union (USSR) in the period from the mid-1960s until the Fall of Communism . It

14560-455: The walls have ears and perhaps even these benches on the boulevard here may be able to listen and tell tales. So let's make out that I heard nothing." On the night of 14 May 1934, Mandelstam was arrested at his home based on a warrant signed by NKVD boss Genrikh Yagoda . Devastated, Pasternak went immediately to the offices of Izvestia and begged Nikolai Bukharin to intercede on Mandelstam's behalf. Soon after his meeting with Bukharin,

14690-606: The war in favour of our allies , civilized countries with democratic traditions, would have meant a hundred times less suffering for our people than that which Stalin again inflicted on it after his victory." In October 1946, the twice-married Pasternak met Olga Ivinskaya , a 34 year old single mother employed by Novy Mir . Deeply moved by her resemblance to his first love Ida Vysotskaya, Pasternak gave Ivinskaya several volumes of his poetry and literary translations. Although Pasternak never left his wife Zinaida, he started an extramarital relationship with Ivinskaya that would last for

14820-474: The whole house was imbued with his spirit." In a 1956 essay, Pasternak recalled his father's feverish work creating illustrations for Tolstoy's novel Resurrection . The novel was serialized in the journal Niva by the publisher Fyodor Marx , based in St Petersburg. The sketches were drawn from observations in such places as courtrooms, prisons and on trains, in a spirit of realism. To ensure that

14950-597: The wife of the Russian pianist Heinrich Neuhaus . They both got divorces and married two years later. Pasternak continued to change his poetry, simplifying his style and language through the years, as expressed in his next book, Early Trains (1943). In April 1934 Osip Mandelstam recited his " Stalin Epigram " to Pasternak. After listening, Pasternak told Mandelstam: "I didn't hear this, you didn't recite it to me, because, you know, very strange and terrible things are happening now: they've begun to pick people up. I'm afraid

15080-541: Was Boris Pasternak 's 1957 novel Doctor Zhivago . Although the literary magazine Novy Mir had published ten poems from the book in 1954, a year later the full text was judged unsuitable for publication and entered samizdat circulation. Certain works, though published legally by the State-controlled media, were practically impossible to find in bookshops and libraries, and found their way into samizdat: for example Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 's novel One Day in

15210-443: Was a grassroots practice used to evade official Soviet censorship . Etymologically, the word samizdat derives from sam ( сам 'self, by oneself') and izdat ( издат , an abbreviation of издательство , izdatel′stvo 'publishing house'), and thus means 'self-published'. Ukrainian has a similar term: samvydav (самвидав), from sam 'self' and vydavnytstvo 'publishing house'. The Russian poet Nikolay Glazkov coined

15340-516: Was a rare sort of closeness, as if we two, you and I, were in love with something that was utterly indifferent to both of us, something that remained aloof from us by virtue of its extraordinary inability to adapt to the other side of life. The cousins' initial passion developed into a lifelong close friendship. From 1910 Pasternak and Freidenberg exchanged frequent letters, and their correspondence lasted over 40 years until 1954. The cousins last met in 1936. Pasternak fell in love with Ida Wissotzkaya,

15470-498: Was a very strange element of the political landscape of Leonid Brezhnev 's era—feeling themselves practically dissidents, members of the Russian Party with rare exceptions took quite prestigious official positions in the world of writers or journalists," wrote Oleg Kashin in 2009. Samizdat covered a large range of topics, mainly including literature and works focused on religion, nationality, and politics. The state censored

15600-447: Was baptized as a child by my nanny , but because of the restrictions imposed on Jews, particularly in the case of a family which was exempt from them and enjoyed a certain reputation in view of my father's standing as an artist, there was something a little complicated about this, and it was always felt to be half-secret and intimate, a source of rare and exceptional inspiration rather than being calmly taken for granted. I believe that this

15730-456: Was boiling on the stove. The illustrations were hurriedly wiped dry, fixed, glued on pieces of cardboard, rolled up, tied up. The parcels, once ready, were sealed with sealing wax and handed to the conductor. According to Max Hayward , "In November 1910, when Tolstoy fled from his home and died in the stationmaster's house at Astapovo , Leonid Pasternak was informed by telegram and he went there immediately, taking his son Boris with him, and made

15860-475: Was cheaper and more efficient method of reproduction that resulted in higher quality copies. After Bell Labs changed its UNIX licence in 1979 to make dissemination of the source code illegal, the 1976 Lions book which contained the source code had to be withdrawn, but illegal copies of it circulated for years. The act of copying the Lions book was often referred to as samizdat. In hacker and computer jargon,

15990-519: Was extinguished. I shook. I had made a proposal—but late, Too late. I was scared, and she had refused me. I pity her tears, am more blessed than a saint. Around this time, when he was back in Russia, he joined the Russian Futurist group Centrifuge (Tsentrifuga) as a pianist; poetry was still only a hobby for him at that time. It was in their group journal, Lirika , where some of his earliest poems were published. His involvement with

16120-487: Was finally granted permission to visit the soldiers at the front. He bore it well, considering the hardships of the journey (he had a weak leg from an old injury), and he wanted to go to the most dangerous places. He read his poetry and talked extensively with the active and injured troops. Pasternak later said, "If, in a bad dream, we had seen all the horrors in store for us after the war, we should not have been sorry to see Stalin fall, together with Hitler . Then, an end to

16250-587: Was known as Trial of the Four . In the following years some samizdat content became more politicized and played an important role in the dissident movement in the Soviet Union . The earliest samizdat periodicals were short-lived and mainly literary in focus: Sintaksis (1959–1960), Boomerang (1960), and Phoenix (1961). From 1964 to 1970, communist historian Roy Medvedev regularly published The Political Journal (Политический дневник, or political diary), which contained analytical materials that later appeared in

16380-447: Was on the way to sell some valuable books from his library in order to buy bread. He continued to write original work and to translate, but after about the middle of 1918 it became almost impossible to publish. The only way to make one's work known was to declaim it in the several "literary" cafes which then sprang up, or—anticipating samizdat —to circulate it in manuscript. It was in this way that My Sister, Life first became available to

16510-613: Was reunited with his cousin Olga Freidenberg (1890–1955). They had shared the same nursery but had been separated when the Freidenberg family moved to Saint Petersburg . They fell in love immediately but were never lovers. The romance, however, is made clear from their letters, Pasternak writing: You do not know how my tormenting feeling grew and grew until it became obvious to me and to others. As you walked beside me with complete detachment, I could not express it to you. It

16640-671: Was the author of Doctor Zhivago (1957), a novel that takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War. Doctor Zhivago was rejected for publication in the USSR , but the manuscript was smuggled to Italy and was first published there in 1957. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958, an event that enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , which forced him to decline

16770-715: Was the cloister-mate of Peter Minchakievich (1890–1963) in Holy Dormition Pochayev Lavra (now in Ukraine). Minchakievich came from an Orthodox Ukrainian family and Pasternak came from a Jewish family. Some confusion has arisen as to Pasternak attending a military academy in his boyhood years. The uniforms of their monastery Cadet Corp were only similar to those of The Czar Alexander the Third Military Academy, as Pasternak and Minchakievich never attended any military academy. Most schools used

16900-416: Was used to refer to small groups of marginalized intellectuals whose challenges, from modest to radical to the Soviet regime, met protection and encouragement from correspondents, and typically criminal prosecution or other forms of silencing by the authorities. Following the etymology of the term, a dissident is considered to "sit apart" from the regime. As dissenters began self-identifying as dissidents ,

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