SOVIET UNDERGROUND PERIODICALS TELL HOW IT [ ]

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000300600066-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 19, 2006
• Sequence Number: 66
• Publication Date: September 18, 1970
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2006/12/19: CI'A-RDP88-01314R
GERI5`Lt ar SCIE1 CIr laomu' a
18 SE 1970
.,t,et 7
eL
Written for The Christian Science Monitor
The most startling phenomenon in Soviet
underground literature, "samizdat," is the
publication of the periodical Chronicle of
Current: Events. This informative political
publication has appeared regularly on the
,last day of every second month since April,
j1968.
At least one copy of every issue has
reached the West. In the fall an English
/translation of at least a dozen issues will
V be published by Professor Peter Reddaway
of. the London School of Economics.
The Chronicle has remained strictly fac-
tual. If some of its data on illegal arrests,
political trials, conditions in labor camps
or-asy-ltims run by the secret police turn out
to be erroneous, The Chronicle publishes
corCcctions. This is something new' in the
usually impassioned and doctrinaire Rus-
sian political literature.
Second woIk appears
Recently another underground period!-
f/ ca] has come out. It is called Exodus and
is published by Soviet Zionists.
. In format and presentation it is similar
to the Chronicle. But whereas the Chroni-
cle carries an extract from the United Na-
tions' Declaration of the Rights of Man,
Exodus carries two verses from the 137th
Psalm:
0 "By the rivers of Babylon, there we
sat down, yea, we wept when we remem-
bered Zion."
V "If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let
my right hand forget her cunning." It also
carries the paragraph of the Declaration
'of the Rights of Man about the right to
emigrate.
One issue so far
Galanskov and others.
Small illegal periodicals in the form of
news sheets are published from time to time
in certain schools and institutes, but there
is little reliable information about them.
Approved For Release 2006/12/19 :.CIA-RDP88-01314R000300600066-5
All we know from many witnesses is that
"samizdat" gets around and that quite a
few Soviet intellectuals know about the
Chronicle.
Copies of the Chronicle and of the recent
Zionist publication which have reached the
West consist of 20 to 30 typewritten pages.
on thin copy paper, 7 to 10 inches in format.
Sometimes there are appendixes.
Photos copies also have come out, but
since they often are 'made from third or
fourth carbon copies they are not very
clear. -
The political significance of the under.
ground literature is a moot question. The
relative indifference of the regime toward
it seems to indicate that the Kremlin does
not believe "samizdat" to be very danger-
ous. But the fact that "samizdat"' and its
political periodicals can appear point to the
split consciousness of part of the Soviet in-
telligentsia.
Exodus too is strictly factual; it contains
collective letters of Soviet Jews addressed
to the authorities, statements by individual
Jews, and extracts from Soviet laws re-
garding travel to the West. All letters are
signed and give the profession and the full
address of the writer.
The editors plan to issue another periodi-
cal which is to be a forum of discussion.
So far only one issue of Exodus, and that
one undated, has appeared.
In the vast field of Soviet, underground
.literature there are other periodicals. The
first of these, mainly literary, appeared in
the 1950's. One of the more famous ones t/
was the revue Phoenix published by Yuri
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