Alexander Ginzburg

Alexander (Alik) Ilyich Ginzburg (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ильи́ч Ги́нзбург, IPA: [ɐlʲɪˈksandr ɪlʲˈjitɕ ˈɡʲinzbʊrk] (listen); 21 November 1936, in Moscow – 19 July 2002, in Paris), was a Russian journalist, poet, human rights activist and dissident.

This article is about journalist. For the Russian bard, see Alexander Galich (writer).
Alexander Ilyich Ginzburg
Александр Ильич Гинзбург
Ginzburg at the Sakharov tribunal in The Hague on 4 September 1980
Born(1936-11-21)21 November 1936
Moscow
Died19 July 2002(2002-07-19) (aged 65)
Paris
NationalityJewish
Citizenship Soviet Union (1936–1991) →  Russian Federation (1991–2002)
Alma materMoscow State Historico-Archival Institute
Occupationhuman right activist, journalist
Known forhuman rights activism with participation in the Moscow Helsinki Group, cofounding Sintaksis and Phoenix
Notable work
The White Book, The Trial of the Four
Movementdissident movement in the Soviet Union
Spouse(s)Arina Sergeevna Zholkovskaya-Ginzburg
Childrentwo sons: Alexander and Alexey

Biography

During the Soviet period, Ginzburg cofounded and edited the samizdat poetry almanac Sintaksis.[1] At the end of 1959, he issued the first samizdat literary magazine Phoenix, with Yuri Galanskov.[1]

Between 1961 and 1969 he was sentenced three times to labor camps. In 1979, Ginzburg was released and expelled to the United States, along with four other political prisoners (Eduard Kuznetsov, Mark Dymshits, Valentin Moroz, and Georgy Vins) and their families, as part of a prisoner exchange.

Dissident work

In 1965, Alexander Ginzburg documented the trial of writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky (Sinyavsky–Daniel trial). Having obtained a copy of closed-door court proceedings from the court stenographer, he compiled a White Book documenting the trial. He then sent copies of the book with his address to the KGB and the Chief Prosecutor's Office.[2]:8 The book also circulated in samizdat and was smuggled to the West. Along with Yuri Galanskov, Ginzburg was arrested in 1967, charged with anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, and sentenced to five years of forced labor (Galanskov-Ginzburg trial).

After his release in 1972, Ginzburg along with Alexander Solzhenitsyn initiated the Fund for the Aid of Political Prisoners. Based on the royalties derived from Solzhenitsyn's book The Gulag Archipelago, it distributed funds and material support to political and religious prisoners across the Soviet Union throughout the 1970-s and 1980-s.[3]

In 1976, Ginzburg became a founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, which monitored breaches of the human rights guarantees the Soviet government signed up to in the 1975 Helsinki accords. Ginzburg was given the task of monitoring the State's persecution of the smaller Christian denominations, for which he was, again, arrested in 1978 and sentenced to an eight-year prison term. In April 1979, he was with four other dissidents deprived of his citizenship and exchanged for two Soviets who had been jailed for espionage.[3]

Throughout his career, Ginzburg advocated nonviolent resistance. He believed in exposing human rights abuses by the Soviet Union and pressuring the government to follow its own laws. He made an effort to smuggle his writings abroad in order to increase external pressure on the Soviets.

References
  1. "The Scene" (PDF). Digital Collections. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
  2. Litvinov, Pavel Mikhaĭlovich; Reddaway, Peter (1972). The Trial of the Four. A Collection of Materials on the Case of Galanskov, Ginzburg, Dobrovolsky and Lashkova 1967–78. London: Longman. ISBN 978-0-582-12605-3.
  3. "Alexander Ginsburg". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 1 December 2015.

Further reading

Bibliography


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