Sinyavsky–Daniel trial

The Sinyavsky-Daniel trial (Russian: Процесс Синявского и Даниэля) was a trial against Russian writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, which took place in the Supreme Court of the RSFSR in Moscow between September 1965 and February 1966. This show trial is widely considered to mark the end of the period of Khruschev's liberalism and was a major starting impulse for the modern Soviet dissident movement.[1][2]

Contents

The Trial

In September 1965, well-known literary writer and critic Andrei Sinyavsky and writer and translator Yuly Daniel were arrested and accused of having published anti-Soviet material in foreign editorials using the respective pseudonyms Abram Tertz and Nikolai Arzhak.

The hearings, held in Moscow between February 10 and 14, 1966 under chairman of the court Lev Smirnov, were not open to the public or foreign observers, and only fragments of the proceedings reached the outside world. The affair was accompanied by a harsh propaganda campaign in the media.[3]

Sinyavsky and Daniel were convicted on February 14 under Article 70 of the RSFSR Criminal code, anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, which deals with "propaganda conducted for the purpose of undermining the state". The article was applied to fiction for the first time in this case. Unusual in the USSR, both writers entered a plea of not guilty. Daniel was sentenced to five, Sinyavsky to seven years of strict-regime labor camps in Mordovia, east of Moscow.

Daniel served his full term. After his release he lived in Kaluga and Moscow until his death in 1988. Sinyavsky served six years. After his release he emigrated to Paris in 1973.

In 1991, the Supreme Court of the RSFSR rescinded the verdict and sentence and ordered the case closed for lack of the elements of a crime.[4]

Significance and Legacy

Reaction Abroad

Although the trial was closed to the Western press, the defendants' wives smuggled out their own handwritten transcripts, which were published abroad in France and the United States. The trial was universally condemned in the Western media, including Socialist and Communist publications, and drew criticism from public figures from around the world.[5][6]

Internal Reaction

The proceedings were framed by denunciations in the media, headed by the newspapers Pravda, Izvestia and Literaturnaya Gazeta, which also published collective condemnation letters by Soviet citizens. Then-recent Nobel laureate Mikhail Sholokhov expressed his wishes that the defendants be executed.[7][4]

Nonetheless the trial provoked protests. A group of Soviet luminaries sent petitions to Leonid Brezhnev asking not to rehabilitate Stalinism. Among them were the academicians Andrei Sakharov, Vitaly Ginzburg, Yakov Zeldovich, Mikhail Leontovich, Igor Tamm, Lev Artsimovich, Pyotr Kapitsa and Ivan Maysky, writers Konstantin Paustovsky and Viktor Nekrasov, composer Dmitri Shostakovich, actors Innokenty Smoktunovsky, Maya Plisetskaya, Oleg Yefremov and others.

Another letter, which became known as the "Letter of the 63", was signed by members of the USSR Union of Writers and addressed to the presidium of the Twenty-Third Congress of the Communist Party. It called for the release of the writers on bail and argued that the trial itself did more harm than the works of the writers. Among the signatories were Korney Chukovsky, Ilya Ehrenburg, Viktor Shklovsky, Venyamin Kaverin, Bella Akhmadulina, Bulat Okudzhava and Arseny Tarkovsky.[8]

Several people, including Larisa Bogoraz, sent independent letters in support of Sinyavsky and Daniel.

Dissident Movement

For many members of the intelligentsia, the Sinyavsky–Daniel case marked a return to the show trials of the 1930s, a sign that the Brezhnev Politburo was preparing to reverse the gains of Khrushchev's de-Stalinization. Critics of the trial protested the harsh sentences meted out to Sinyavsky and Daniel and continued to emphasize issues of creative freedom and the historical role of the writer in Russian society.

Others were troubled by the claims of the court that the trial was in full adherence to existing law and the human rights guaranteed in the Soviet constitution. These concerns motivated the first public political demonstration in the Soviet Union after the Second World War, when on Soviet Constitution Day, December 5, 1965, friends of Sinyavsky and Daniel organized a protest on Moscow's Pushkin Square with the call for a fair and open trial. Among the demonstrators were Alexander Esenin-Volpin, Yuri Galanskov and Vladimir Bukovsky. Many of the participants were arrested on site, but released shortly, as their banners merely called for adherence to the rights formally guaranteed by the law. The demonstration became known as the Glasnost Meeting (Russian: Митинг гласности).[9] It became an annual event in Moscow, eventually attracting luminaries such as Andrei Sakharov.[10]

The demonstration was soon followed by an increase in open protest and samizdat. In 1967, journalist Alexander Ginzburg was arrested for compiling a report on the trial known as The White Book, which he sent to the Communist Party Central Committee as well as to publishers abroad. He was sentenced to five years in a labor camp. His trial in 1968 in itself became a landmark in the Soviet human rights movement.

Underground coverage of these and similar events ultimately led to the appearance of the Chronicle of Current Events in April 1968.

Political and Legal Consequences

The trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel brought to the end the period of Khrushchev's liberalism (Khrushchev Thaw), and helped to initiate the retrenchment associated with the Brezhnev's epoch (Brezhnev Stagnation). The further restrictions were achieved by an increase in arrests and persecutions as well as changes in the legal code itself. Shortly after the trial, in which the prosecution had found it difficult to prove the intent to do harm that was required by article 70, the Soviet legislature introduced amendments to Articles 142 and 190 of the RSFSR Criminal code. The changes made the "dissemination of known falsehoods that defame the Soviet political and social system" a criminal offense and did not stipulate any intention at all.[11] As a direct response to the group demonstrations in support of Sinyavsky and Daniel, amendments were introduced that prohibited "violations of the public order by a group".[12][13]

See Also

References

  1. ^ "Historians now have no difficulty pinpointing the birth of the modern Soviet dissident movement. It began in February 1966 with the trial of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, two Russian writers who ridiculed the Communist regime in satires smuggled abroad and published under pen names [...] Little did they realize at the time that they were starting a movement that would help end Communist rule." Coleman, Fred: The Decline and Fall of Soviet Empire: Forty Years That Shook The World, From Stalin to Yeltsin, St. Martin's Griffin, 1997; p. 95. ISBN 978-0312168162
  2. ^ (Russian) http://www.igrunov.ru/vin/vchk-vin-dissid/smysl/articl_diss/vchk-vin-dissid-dem_mov-speech_92.html — Речь В.В. Игрунова на Международной научной конференции "Диссидентское Движение в СССР. 1950-е — 1980-е."
  3. ^ Kolonosky, Walter, Literary Insinuations: Sorting out Sinyavsky's Irreverence, Lexington Books, 2003; pp. 19-21. ISBN 978-0739104880
  4. ^ a b "The Siniavsky–Daniel Trial", in: Donald D. Barry, Yuri Feofanov, Politics and Justice in Russia: Major Trials of the Post-Stalin Era, New York, M. E. Sharpe, 1996; pp. 38-49. ISBN 1-56324-344-X
  5. ^ Russia: A Bit of Fear, Time magazine, Friday, Feb. 25, 1966
  6. ^ Labedz, Leopold; Lasky, Melvin: The Use and Abuse of Sovietology, New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1989; pp. 15-16. ISBN 0-88738-252-5
  7. ^ Obituary: Andrei Sinyavsky, The Independent, February 27, 1997
  8. ^ Hayward, Max: On Trial: the Soviet State versus "Abram Tertz" and "Nikolai Arzhak", Harper & Row, 1967; p. 185f. OCLC 358400
  9. ^ Zubok, Vladislav: Zhivago's Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009; pp. 263-264. ISBN 978-0674033443
  10. ^ Nathans, Benjamin: "Alexander Volpin and the Origins of the Soviet Human Rights Movement", Seattle, WA: The National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, 2007. [1]
  11. ^ Labedz, The Use and Abuse of Sovietology, p. 20
  12. ^ Berman, Harold: Soviet Criminal Law and Procedure: The RSFSR Codes, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1972; pp. 81-83. ISBN 978-0674826366
  13. ^ Elst, Michiel: Copyright, Freedom of Speech, and Cultural Policy in the Russian Federation, Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden/Boston, 2005; pp. 50-51. ISBN 9-004-14087-5

Bibliography

External Links

Trial transcripts and documents

Coverage of the trial

Other