A CHRONICLE OF CURRENT EVENTS

“A CHRONICLE OF CURRENT EVENTS” (KhTS, Ukrainian: “Khronika potochnykh podiy”) was a typewritten informational bulletin that collected and recorded facts about political persecution and other human rights violations in the Soviet Union, and also informed readers about the struggle of Soviet citizens against the suppression of civil liberties. It was the first and main periodical of Soviet human rights defenders, a history of the human rights movement and dissident activity in the USSR.

The Chronicle was published for 15 years; the first issue of the bulletin is dated April 30, 1968; the last, No. 64, is dated June 30, 1982, but was actually prepared much later, in 1983. Additionally, by the fall of 1983, issue No. 65, dated December 31, 1982, was fully prepared but never published due to the arrest of its editor, Yuri Shikhanovich. Thus, over 15 years, a total of 63 issues of the Chronicle were released (excluding No. 65, which was never published, and No. 59, which was also not released; the materials for this issue were confiscated by the KGB in February 1981 during a search of the apartment of one of its compilers, Leonid Vul, and the editors decided to proceed directly to the next issue rather than recreating it).

The length of the “Chronicle of Current Events” issues varied from 10–20 pages of single-spaced typescript in its early days to 150–200 pages in its later years. The interval between issues also grew, from one and a half to two months in the late 1960s to half a year in the early 1970s. The gap between the actual release date of an issue and the date on its title page, which marked the cut-off point for events included, also widened.

The bulletin’s structure was established in its very first issues. The “Chronicle” was divided into two parts. The first contained a detailed account of the main events, in the compilers' view, that had occurred between the date of the previous issue and the date of the current one. The second part consisted of permanent sections, organized thematically and, to some extent, by genre: “Arrests, Searches, Interrogations,” “Extrajudicial Persecution,” “In Prisons and Camps,” “Samvydav News,” “Brief Reports,” and “Corrections and Additions.” The initial set of sections, of course, expanded and became more complex as new issues came to the attention of human rights defenders. Soon, sections such as “Persecution of Believers,” “Persecution of Crimean Tatars,” and “Repression in Ukraine” appeared. Later, in early 1972, the section “Persecution of Believers in Lithuania” emerged, which was renamed in the middle of that year to the more general and permanent title “Events in Lithuania.” In the future, other sections, both geographical and genre-thematic, were added.

The style of the “Chronicle”—factual, restrained, and non-judgmental—was also established in the first issue and remained unchanged until the end. The fundamental principles of the publication also remained constant: a commitment to maximum accuracy and completeness of information, and objectivity in its presentation.

Issues of the “Chronicle” were prepared in Moscow and distributed throughout the country via samvydav. Later, the “Chronicle” was reprinted abroad: first by the “Posev” publishing house, then issues 1 through 27 were published as a two-volume set by the Herzen Foundation in Amsterdam. Beginning in 1974, all new issues were regularly published in Russian and English by the New York-based publishing house Chronika Press, specially created for this purpose by Pavel Litvinov and Edward Kline. From the mid-1970s, these editions were secretly brought into the USSR, which, along with foreign radio broadcasts, significantly expanded the KhTS’s audience. However, the most important role in consolidating human rights activism around the “Chronicle” was played by its samvydav distribution method and, especially, the simultaneous functioning of its distribution chains in reverse—as channels for collecting and transmitting information to the “Chronicle.” The network of “Chronicle” distributors and correspondents became the core infrastructure of the human rights movement in the USSR. This fact influenced the nature of the movement itself and, given the special role of human rights defenders within the dissident community, all independent civic activism as a whole. For example, this explains the dominance of its monitoring and information-publishing component over other forms of activity.

In late 1972, the KGB used blackmail and threats to force the publication to cease; after the release of issue No. 27 (October 15, 1972), the “Chronicle” was not published for a year and a half. However, by the fall of 1973, work on the bulletin resumed, and on May 7, 1974, three prominent dissidents—Tatyana VELIKANOVA, Sergei KOVALYOV, and Tatyana Khodorovich—presented three new “retrospective” issues of the “Chronicle” to foreign journalists, the content of which covered the publication gap. In doing so, they declared that they were taking responsibility for the future publication of the “Chronicle.”

The names of those who prepared the issues were never announced. However, it was widely known that the founder and constant compiler (until her arrest in December 1969) of the Chronicle was Natalya Gorbanevskaya; she prepared the first ten issues of the bulletin almost single-handedly. Subsequently, a small team, or even several groups, whose composition frequently changed, usually worked on compiling the Chronicle. The decisive role in this “editorial team” was typically played by individuals who took on the function of “issue editor.” After GORBANEVSKAYA's arrest, these “issue editors” included (successively, and sometimes simultaneously) Anatoly Yakobson, Sergei KOVALYOV, Tatyana VELIKANOVA, Aleksandr Lavut, and Yuri Shikhanovich. It also happened, however, that the entire collective performed this function. Organizational tasks related to the preparation and distribution of the “Chronicle” were handled by T. VELIKANOVA from early 1970 until her arrest in November 1979.

Individuals involved in the publication of the “Chronicle,” its correspondents, and its distributors were systematically persecuted. For example, on charges of involvement in the production and/or distribution of the bulletin, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Yuri Shikhanovich, Pyotr Yakir, Viktor Krasin, Gavriel Superfin, Sergei KOVALYOV, Aleksandr Lavut, Tatyana VELIKANOVA, and (for a second time) Yuri Shikhanovich, as well as its Ukrainian correspondent Leonid PLYUSHCH, were arrested and convicted in different years.

“A Chronicle of Current Events” is the most complete and accurate collection of historical data on dissident activity and political persecution in the USSR from 1968 to 1982. The texts of all issues of the Chronicle are available on the website of the “Memorial” Society (www.memo.ru/history/diss/chr/index.htm); “Memorial” is also preparing a complete edition of the bulletin, furnished with a detailed reference apparatus.

Moscow “Memorial”