WIDE
SYMPATHY IN SOVIET UNION FOR TRIAL VICTIMS
By George Saunders
One of the most significant aspects of the case involving Aleksandr Ginzburg, Yuri Galanskov, Aleksei Dobrovolsky and Vera Lashkova is the substantial support the defendants received from other Soviet citizens. Here is one more instance of the shattering of the Stalinist monolith, this time from within.
Two petitions on behalf of Ginzburg and the others were addressed to Soviet judicial authorities and Izvestia in the months preceding the trial. The first was sent in October by more than 100 intellectuals, asking assurances that the trial be public. The second was issued in early December by forty-four persons. It stressed the illegality of holding the accused longer than ten months.
A third appeal, on the eve of the trial, was sent to the court where the case would be tried, with copies to Brezhnev, Kosygin, and Podgorny. Signed by thirty-one personalities, including young novelist Vasily Aksyonov, poetess Bella Akhmadullina, and Lenin Prize winning mathematician Igor Shafarevich, the appeal urged full press coverage and inpartial selection of witnesses.
The third appeal argued that conpilation of material on the Sinyavsky- Daniel case should not be grounds for prosecution. It added that the trial could not "contribute to an improvement of the atmosphere of a society that not long ago was witness to mass rehabilitations of people who were condemned on false charges."
In a perhaps related development there was also news, on the eve of the trial, of a petition signed by some 180 Moscow intellectuals, including novelist Veniamin Kaverin. This petition urged the Supreme Soviet, the highest legal body, to enforce the constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press by abolishing press censorship.
During the trial itself there was a significant turnout of sympathizers of the defendants each day at the courtroom, although few could gain admittance. Several attempted to act as witnesses for the defense, in spite of extreme pressures against them for doing so.
Prominent among sympathizers were historian Pavel Yakir, son of the General Yakir who was shot along with Tukhachevsky and others in Stalin's 1937 purge of the Red Army high command. Also prominent was ex-Major General Pyotr Grigorenko, former professor of cybernetics at the Frunze Military Acadeny.
Grigorenko had reportedly been
removed from his post in 1961 because
of a dispute with then Premier Khrush-
chev. In 1964 he had been stripped of
his commission and put in a mental in-
stitution, a frequently used method of
reprisal against dissident elements.
Released in 1966, he is said to have
allied himself with oppositional writ-
ers. One report was that his difficul-
ties began when he sent Khrushchev a
letter protesting discrimination against
Jews in the Soviet army.
Most prominent in support of the
defendants, of course, were Mrs.