The Chronicle of Current Events played a historic role in the beginnings of independent public opinion in the Soviet Union.
The Chronicle of Current Events was an important milestone in the periodical tradition of samizdat. If you don’t count Aleksander Ginzburg’s journal Sintaksis of
1959-60 and a few of the SMOG (an unofficial artistic youth group)
journals of the early 1960s. Sintaksis and the SMOG publications were
poetic collections and cannot be considered a source of “mass
information” in the strict sense of the word. Consequently, it was the
Chronicle that marked the beginning of (underground) free press in Russia in the
second half of the twentieth century. +++ Radiohttp://www.memo.ru/history/diss/chr/engabout.html
Through such media organs as Radio Liberty, Voice of America, the BBC, and the Deutsche Welle, samizdat
materials offered to and published by Western correspondents were
rebroadcast into the Soviet Union and became available to segments of
the Soviet population who had no other means of learning about the
movement.[8]: 171 [9]: 914
The Chronicle played an important role in the consolidation of civil and human rights activity in the USSR. Its method of dissemination and, in particular, its mechanism for collecting information resulted in the creation of a unified information field that included all the significant manifestations of dissident and, in several cases, non-dissident, public activity. (national, religious)http://www.memo.ru/history/diss/chr/engabout.html
In this capacity, the Chronicle facilitated the emergence of a dedicated Soviet human rights movement. This movement included figures such as Valery_Chalidze, Yuri Orlov, and Lyudmila Alexeyeva. Special groups were founded such as the Action Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR (1969), the Committee_on_Human_Rights_in_the_USSR (1970) and the Helsinki Watch Groups in Moscow, Kiev, Vilnius, Tbilisi, and Erevan (1976–77).[10]: 159–194 With the appearance of these human rights organizations, the approach of the Chronicle ceased to be unique. However, it never lost its importance as a record of the dissident movement even after the appearance of the Helsinki movement.
At the present time, researchers have at their disposal several basic sources for studying the history of Soviet dissidence and the human rights movement in the USSR, for example, the Radio Liberty Samizdat Archive, which publishes the limited-circulation “Collection of Samizdat Documents” and “Samizdat Materials.” Another important source is the bulletin News from the USSR published since 1978 by Kronid Lyubarsky in Munich. But the Chronicle of Current Events remains for researchers the
first and most important source. It is precisely for this reason that
the scholarly-informational and educational organization Memorial made
the decision to make the Chronicle maximally available, placing its
texts on the Internet for all of those interested.
The purpose of our group is reflected in our name: the defence of human rights in the USSR. In calling ourselves the Initiative Group we also wish to make another point: To underline our right to freedom of association. The Initiative Group has no set program, no bylaws, and no defined structure. Each of us has the right to abstain from signing a document of the Group, and each of us has complete freedom when acting in his or her own name.
The members of the Initiative Group have been brought together by certain common views. All of us - believers and atheists, optimists and sceptics, those who believe in communism and those who don't - are united by our sense of personal responsibility for everything that is happening in our country and by our conviction that recognition of the individual's innate value forms the basis for any normal life of a society. That is why we have adopted the cause of human rights. We understand social progress to mean an increase of freedom above all. We are also united in our determination to act openly, in the spirit of the law, regardless of our personal opinion of particular legislative acts. The Initiative Group does not get involved in politics. We don't lobby for any specific government measures. We only say: don't violate your own laws. While we don't engage in politics, we have no intention of becoming reconciled to the punitive measures directed against dissenters. Resistance to illegality, to the abuse of power, these are the tasks of the Initiative Group. The Initiative Group does not believe that it is attacking the state when it criticizes specific actions of the authorities. Some people, in the belief that protests harden the government's attitude and lead to more severe repression, criticize - while inwardly sympathizing with their views - those who speak out openly against illegality in our country. In fact, non-resistance, the humiliating submission to authority which implicitly sanctions violations of our rights, provides a fertile field for repression. Silence encourages evil and corrupts people, breeding hypocrisy and cynicism. Society needs glasnost. Publicity inhibits tendencies toward extremism and violence of both rulers and ruled. In our country it is common to reproach anyone who appeals to foreigners. Unfortunately, no other means exist to publicize the violations of rights taking place in the USSR other than informing people abroad about them. News from abroad, even if only a little bit of it, reaches some Soviet citizens. And besides, we can always hope that our leaders will take International public opinion into account. We have appealed to the UN Human Rights Commission five times. The Commission has tailed to respond to our appeals. Perhaps there exist reasons for this, which are unknown to us. In this letter we wanted to explain why we nevertheless do not consider our appeals to have been made in vain.
[11][12]: 92–94
http://www.memo.ru/2008/05/05/40_XTC.htm
http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2176103
Politics/HR
Jimmy Carter began his incumbency with several human rights declarations. Six days after his inauguration, the State Department protested publicly against the persecution of the Charter 77 human rights group in Czechoslovakia, a group ot intellectuals, which demanded compliance with "basket three" of
the Helsinki final act. One day later the State Department published a second declaration, in which Washington openly took the side of a Soviet dissident: "All attempts on the part of Soviet authorities to intimidate Mr. Sakharov will not silence legitimate criticism within the Soviet Union and stand in contradiction to internationally recog nized norms of behavior."
A short time later, in Moscow, Andrei Sakharov published a letter from President Carter which contained a promise of future efforts toward the release of political prisoners: "Human rights," wrote Carter, "are a central concern of my administration." Henceforth the entire world showed intense interest in the fate of Sakharov and his colleagues.
http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/Human-Rights/friedbert-pflueger/U.S.-Human-Rights-Policy-Friedbert-Pfluegers-Lecture-and-Lessons-at-the-Kings-College-in-London
Washington began to lodge complaints with the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. On March 1, 1977, Carter met with the exiled Russian Vladimir Bukovsky in the White house.
Leading Foreign Minister Gromyko to speak of a "poisoned atmosphere".
Sakharov-memoirs!
www.memo.ru/history/diss/carter_engindex.html
Sentences include only those specifically relating to charges concerning the Chronicle.[1] Issues 59 and 65 of the Chronicle were confiscated during searches and were not put into wider circulation.[1]
Larisa Bogoraz, Vladimir Golycin and Sergej Kovalev, “Politi eskaja bor’ba ili zaž ita prav? Dvadcatiletnij opyt nezavisimogo dviženija v SSSR: 1965-1985,” in Pogruženie v trjasinu. Anatomija zastoja, ed. T. A. Notkina (Moscow, 1991): 501-544; translated in: Wawra, Ernst (2010). "The Helsinki Final Act and the Civil and Human Rights Movement in the Soviet Union". Human Rights And History: A Challenge for Education. Berlin: Stiftung "Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft". pp. 130–141. ISBN 978-3-9810631-9-6.: 140 Feldbrugge, F. J. M. (1975). Samizdat and Political Dissent in the Soviet Union. Leyden: A. W. Sijthoff.
The break with traditional practice was emphasized by its founder Yuri Orlov in a 1989 interview, in which he denied that the movement's basic principle was 'observe your own laws': "I did not have such an approach. For me, laws were international agreements about human rights. It seems that the rights-defenders movement did not have such a common slogan."58 Ekspress-Khronika, 1989, No. 25.
Puddington, Arch. Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2000
Walker, Barbara. "Moscow Human Rights Defenders Look West: Attitudes toward U.S. Journalists in the 1960s and 1970s." Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 9, no 4 (2008): 905-927.
Thomas, Daniel C. (2001). The Helsinki effect: international norms, human rights, and the demise of communism. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691048584. “Otkrytoe pis’mo” o tselyakh i metodakh raboty IG, adresovannoe APN i agenstvu Reiter, Initiative Group Document No.6, May 1970, available at http://www.memo.ru/history/diss/ig/docs/igdocs.html.
Council of Europe; Commissioner for Human Rights (2010). Andrei Sakharov and Human Rights. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Pub. ISBN 978-92-871-6947-1.