Yuri Galanskov
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Yuri Timofeyevich Galanskov Russian: Юрий Тимофеевич Галансков (June 19, 1939 - October 18, 1972, Mordovia) was a Russian poet, historian, human rights activist and dissident.
For his political activities, such as founding and editing samizdat almanac Phoenix, he was incarcerated in prisons, camps and forced treatment psychiatric hospitals. (See Psikhushka)
In 1967, he was sentenced to seven years of labor camp, where he died, allegedly after an unsuccessful surgical operation on ulcer.
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[edit] Early publications
Yuri Galanskov began his dissident activities in 1959, as a participant in the poetry readings in Mayakovsky Square. Several of his works were pusblished in the samizdat anthology Sintaksis. After Alexander Ginzburg was arrested in 1960 for publishing Sintaksis, Yuri Galanskov became the leader of dissident publishing in the Soviet Union. Galanskov’s first publication, Phoenix came in 1961, and contained direct criticism of the Soviet government, partly in the form of poetry. Phoenix published works by Boris Pasternak, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Ivan Kharabarov, and Yuri Galanskov himself.
As a punishment for publishing Phoenix, the Soviet authorities convicted Galanskov to several months in a psychiatric hospital. Following his release Galanskov formed a friendship with Alexander Ginzburg, and together the two publishers made arrangements to have their work published in the West.
[edit] The Daniel-Sinyavsky Trial
During the years of Khrushchev’s leadership, frustrations had been mounting in the Kremlin over the difficulty of suppressing the Samizdat literary movement. In an attempt to finally destroy dissident literature, the Soviets arrested Yuri Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky, two prominent samizdat writers. The show trail was made a media spectacle, with Pravda issuing passionate condemnations of the defendants. The trial did not, however, discourage the underground literary movement. Instead, it provoked the first intellectual protest to occur in the Soviet Union in 30 years. Moreover, the protest was held at the Red Square itself. Galanskov and Ginzburg took detailed notes of the trial and released their observations in four-hundred page report known as The White Book. This work was widely circulated among the dissident writers and was eventually smuggled out to the West.
[edit] Final Work
Shortly after the release of The White Book, Galanskov released the second edition of Phoenix, titled Phoenix '66. This issue featured works by Gorbanyevskaya, Yuri Stefanov, and Vladimir Batshev. It was generally regarded as being even more daring than the first issue. Publishing it was a brave act that would cost Galanskov his life. The KGB arrested him and four others in January 1967.
[edit] The Trial of the Four
In what came to be known as The Trial of the Four, The Soviet Union brought charges against Yuri Galanskov for publishing Phoenix. The prosecutors also charged Alexander Dobrovolsky with contributing to the magazine, Vera Lashkova with assisting the typing of the manuscript, and Alexander Ginzburg with collaborating with Galanskov on The White Book. Lashkova was sentenced to a year in prison. Dobrovolsky was sentenced to two years at hard labour, while Ginzburg received five years at hard labour. Galanskov was sentenced to seven years at a labor camp in Mordova.
[edit] Imprisonment
During his years in prison, Galanskov advocated the rights of prisoners. In collaboration with Ginzburg, he wrote a letter describing the poor conditions and creul guards of the gulag. The letter was smuggled out of Russia and published in the West.
After several years of hard labor, Galanskov developed a severe ulcer. The surgery was carried out at the prison by a doctor with no surgical qualifications. The operation was unsuccessful, resulting in Galanskov's death two weeks later, on 4 Novermber, 1972.
[edit] External links
Works by Yuri Galanskov
