Chronicle of Current Events

Chronicle of Current Events
A Chronicle of Current Events No 11,
31 December 1968 (front cover)
Editor
List of editors
Categorieshuman rights movement in the Soviet Union, political repression in the Soviet Union, political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union, samizdat
FrequencyBimonthly / quarterly
PublisherSoviet human rights movement
Total circulation6 x 6 x 6 ?
Founded1968
Final issueAugust 1983 (June 1982)
CountrySoviet Union
Based inMoscow
LanguageRussian, English (translated since 1971)
WebsiteA Chronicle of Current Events English translation. Khronika tekushchikh sobytii Russian original.

A Chronicle of Current Events (Russian: Хро́ника теку́щих собы́тий, romanized: Khronika tekushchikh sobytiy)[1] was one of the longest running samizdat periodicals of the post-Stalinist Soviet Union. This unofficial newsletter reported violations of civil rights and judicial procedure by the Soviet government and responses to those violations by citizens across the Soviet Union. Appearing first in April 1968, it soon became the main voice of the Soviet human rights movement, inside the country and abroad.[2]

During the 15 years of its existence the Chronicle covered 424 political trials, in which 753 people were convicted. Not one of the accused was acquitted. In addition, 164 people were declared insane and sent for indefinite periods of compulsory treatment in psychiatric hospitals.[3] In 1973 the novelist and literary critic Lydia Chukovskaya wrote:[4]

... the persecution of samizdat, of A Chronicle of Current Events, of Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn, and hundreds of others cannot be called ideological struggle. It is an attempt once again to silence human voices through the use of prisons and camps.

Despite constant harassment by the Soviet authorities more than sixty issues of the Chronicle were compiled and published (circulated) between April 1968 and August 1983. One issue (No 59, November 1980) was confiscated by the KGB.[5] The last issue to appear (No 64, June 1982) was not put into circulation until the very end of August the following year.[c 1] Material was gathered and checked up to 31 December 1982 but issue No. 65 never went into circulation.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference bowring2008 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference reddaway1978 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference yeroshok2015 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ "Materials about Sakharov", A Chronicle of Current Events (30.12) 31 December 1973.
  5. ^ ""A lost and found issue of the Chronicle of Current Events: the recollections of Yury Shikhanovich", 22 April 2016, Memorial (in Russian)". Archived from the original on 5 December 2020. Retrieved 23 April 2017.


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