Alexander Ilyich Ginsburg

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Alexander Ginsburg (1980)

Alexander Ilyich Ginsburg ( Russian Александр Ильич Гинзбург, born November 21, 1936 in Moscow , † July 19, 2002 in Paris ) was a Russian journalist , writer, editor and civil rights activist .

Ginsburg is considered one of the leading dissidents in the Soviet Union and was the editor of the first important samizdat magazine. The authorities accused him of anti-communist propaganda . He was sentenced to labor camps three times : two years in 1960, five in 1968 and eight in 1978. In April 1979 he was expatriated and exchanged with four other prisoners for two Soviet spies . After almost a year and a half in the USA , he moved to Paris with his family.

Origin and education

Alexander Ginsburg was born in Moscow in 1936. His father Sergei Sergejewitsch Tschischow, who came from the Russian landed nobility, had studied architecture as a Soviet student with Le Corbusier in France in the 1930s ; In 1936 he was arrested in the course of the Great Terror and in 1937 he died in custody . His mother Lyudmila Ilyinichna Ginsburg worked in the planning department of a company after completing her commercial training. Alexander grew up without siblings. His mother arranged for her name to be entered on the birth certificate.

He attended Moscow School No. 12, which was attended by many children of Soviet cadres from the house on the quayside, as well as children of residents of the House of Writers . In 1952 he began an acting career. One of the first stations was the youth theater in Novosibirsk , where he also began directing.

Early journalistic activities and first samizdat

In 1956 he began studying journalism at Moscow University . As a young journalist, Ginsburg worked, among other things, in the editorial team of Moskovsky Komsomolets . He avoided working for the propaganda departments of newspapers and devoted himself ostensibly to non-political subjects such as sports or ballet .

The narrow limits that the censorship set for literary publications preoccupied Ginsburg and other artists in the non-official field. In 1959 he published the magazine Sintaksis (Russian: "Синтаксис") for the first time , named after a dog from a story by Anton Chekhov . The Sintaksis was the first samizdat magazine of the Soviet Union, which achieved greater circulation and was reprinted. It was also the first unofficial magazine to appear with the full name and the publisher's address, which made a big impression on readers. This was intended to demonstrate a normality of attribution. Human rights activist Yuri Nikolayevich Jarym-Agayev expressed the significance of this act in the following words:

“To publish an independent magazine in the Soviet Union was not only impossible, it was not part of the imagination. Afterwards it seemed so simple, but before that it had never been imagined and required real discovery. "

The poems published in the magazine came from unknown and well-known poets such as Bulat Okudschawa , Bella Achmadulina and Joseph Brodsky .

The Izvestia published 1960 on the Sintaksis a mocking article entitled The Loafers climb to Parnassus .

First imprisonment

During the preparation of the fourth edition of Sintaksis , which could no longer appear, the KGB arrested Ginsburg in July 1960 for possession of "anti-Soviet literature". The investigation went on for a long time with no tangible result. Ginsburg was finally accused of forging documents in 1960 - he had solved a written test for a friend about a year earlier - and sentenced to two years in prison; however, charges of possession of "anti-Soviet literature" were dropped. He was prohibited from continuing his distance learning at Moscow University. Ginsburg was serving his imprisonment in WjatLag in Kirov Oblast and had to do woodcutting work there. He was released on July 14, 1962.

White Paper and Second Detention

After his release, Ginsburg worked on the unofficial magazines Sphinx 65 and Phönix 61 .

On February 14, 1966, a Soviet court sentenced the writers Andrei Sinjawski and Juli Daniel for publishing non-conforming literature in the West under a pseudonym (“ Tamizdat ”). The West sharply criticized this show trial and the verdict. Against this background, Ginsburg, together with the wives of the convicted and some of their friends, put together a document that he presented to the KGB and announced that it would be published if the verdicts are not overturned. He also spoke to members of the Supreme Soviet . A copy of the manuscript made its way to the West, where its publication was announced. The Soviet authorities then arrested Ginsburg again and sentenced him to five years in a labor camp in 1968 for “propaganda against the state”.

The compiled by Ginsburg process documentation was published in 1966 in Germany in Russian under the title «Белая книга» по делу писателей Андрея Синявского и Юлия Даниэля and 1967 in German translation as a White Paper in terms of Sinyavsky-Daniel in the anti-communist exile organization Federation of Russian Solidarists operated Possev -Publishing company.

Ginsburg spent the first part of his imprisonment in the Mordovian labor camp Potma. In the summer of 1969, with the help of hunger strikes, he managed to get married to his fiancée Irina Sokolovskaya, a university lecturer. The authorities set the wedding date on August 21, 1969, the first anniversary of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops . Ginsburg and fellow prisoners repeatedly succeeded in smuggling manuscripts and audio recordings out of the Potma camp, which were later published or broadcast in the West. The authorities punished him for this by transferring him to Vladimirovka .

Human rights work and third imprisonment

After his release from prison in January 1972, Ginsburg was not allowed to return to Moscow to live with his wife and two children. He then moved to Tarussa, around 100 kilometers away . He was now considered one of the leading dissidents . He became Andrei Sakharov's secretary , and Alexander Solzhenitsyn , the Nobel laureate for literature , contacted him. After his expulsion in February 1974, Ginsburg took over the administration of the Russian Society Fund to support the persecuted and their families (also: Solzhenitsyn Fund ), which received the income from Solzhenitsyn's work The Archipelago Gulag and donations from Soviet citizens. The fund supported political prisoners of the Soviet Union and their families. 1976 Ginsburg was one of the founding members of the Moscow Helsinki group on compliance with the 1975 negotiated human rights provisions of the Helsinki Final Act monitored.

The Soviet authorities arrested him again on February 3, 1977. This time they accused him of foreign currency offenses. By decree of Leonid Brezhnev , the statutory maximum period of twelve months in custody was exceeded. The trial against Ginsburg began in July 1978 and again attracted international attention. According to his wife, who was prosecuting the case, Ginsburg was being treated with high doses of neuroleptics and was therefore barely able to follow the trial. The Kaluga court sentenced him to eight years in a camp. The Supreme Court of the Soviet Union rejected an appeal .

Expatriation and Exile

Shortly after the third arrest, Ginsburg's mother asked President Jimmy Carter's mother to stand up for her son. At the urging of the American President and his security advisor Zbigniew Brzeziński , secret negotiations began with representatives of the USSR. The negotiators of the Soviet Union and the USA finally agreed to exchange two spies from the USSR for five prisoners from the USSR. Wladik Enger and Rudolf Tschernjajew, who had been sentenced to long prison terms in the USA, were exchanged for Ginsburg, Valentin Moroz, Eduard Kusznezow , Georgi Vins and Mark Dimtschiz.

On April 27, 1979, Ginsburg was expatriated and flown to the USA, which Irina Ginsburg only found out about from a radio broadcast on the Voice of America . At the beginning of 1980 she was able to follow with her two biological children to the USA, the 19-year-old unofficially adopted son Sergei Schibatew was not allowed to leave the country. Ginsburg was initially a guest at Solzhenitsyn in Cavendish and gave a number of lectures in the USA. He also continued to participate in the administration of the Solzhenitsyn Fund.

In the summer of 1980, Ginsburg moved to Paris with his family. There he took over the management of the Russian cultural center and worked as a journalist, primarily for the emigrant magazine Russkaja Mysl (German: "Russian thought"), and as a lobbyist for the Soviet dissident movement.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ginsburg commented critically on the human rights situation in Chechnya, for example . He viewed the chances of a democratic-liberal development in Russia with skepticism . After 18 years of effort, he finally received French citizenship in 1998, supported by public protests .

Publications

  • White Paper on Sinyavsky-Daniel. Possev, Frankfurt am Main, 1967.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ginsburg's information about his father in: Witness from the GULag (director: Laurène L'Allinec), part 1, 1:44 min. To 4:30 min., Broadcast on ARTE on December 7, 2011.
  2. ↑ Ginsburg's information about his mother and his family situation in: witness from the GULag (director: Laurène L'Allinec), part 1, 4:31 min. To 7:12 min., Broadcast on ARTE on December 7, 2011. To the For parents, see also the obituary for Alexander Ginsburg in the magazine Kontinent , 2002, No. 113 (accessed on December 12, 2011). See also the entry about Alexander Ginsburg in the Munzinger archive , as of December 14, 2011.
  3. ↑ Ginsburg's information on his school and theater days in: witness from the GULag (director: Laurène L'Allinec), part 1, 7:28 min. To 9:40 min., Broadcast on ARTE on December 7, 2011. See also Entry about Alexander Ginsburg in the Munzinger archive , as of December 14, 2011.
  4. ↑ Ginsburg's information on his beginnings as a journalist in: witnesses from the GULag (director: Laurène L'Allinec), part 1.15: 05 min. To 16:10 min., Broadcast on ARTE on December 7, 2011.
  5. ^ Memorial via the magazine, accessed December 18, 2011.
  6. ^ To publish an independent magazine in the Soviet Union was not only impossible but also unimaginable. It seems so simple afterwards, but before it was unimaginable and required real discovery. Interview in FrontPage magazine on August 6, 2002, accessed on December 18, 2011. ( Memento of the original from January 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / archive.frontpagemag.com
  7. ↑ Ginsburg's information about Sintaksis in: witness from the GULag (director: Laurène L'Allinec), part 1, 4:10 pm to 9:02 pm, broadcast on ARTE on December 7, 2011.
  8. ↑ Ju. Ivashchenko : Bezdel'niki karabkajutsja na Parnas. Photocopy 1 and photocopy 2 of the Izvestia article , September 2, 1960.
  9. ↑ Ginsburg's information about his arrest, the investigation, his conviction and first imprisonment in: Witness from the GULag (director: Laurène L'Allinec), part 1, 21:20 min. To 32:26 min., Broadcast on ARTE on 7 December 2011.
  10. ↑ a b c Obituary for Ginsburg in The Telegraph , July 22, 2002, (accessed December 10, 2011).
  11. ↑ a b c d e f g h Alexander Ginsburg in the Munzinger archive , accessed on December 14, 2011 ( beginning of article freely available)
  12. ^ Ginsburg's information on the white paper in: witness from the GULag (director: Laurène L'Allinec), part 1, 39:18 min. To 48:57 min., Broadcast on ARTE on December 7, 2011.
  13. ↑ Ginsburg's information on imprisonment in Mordovia and Vladimir : Testimony from the GULag (director: Laurène L'Allinec), part 1, 49:08 min. To 54:00 min., Broadcast on ARTE on December 7, 2011.
  14. ^ Announcement about the marriage , in Der Spiegel , 37/1969 of September 8, 1969, (accessed on December 14).
  15. ↑ Ginsburg's information about the contact to Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn in: witness from the GULag (director: Laurène L'Allinec), part 2, 10:08 min. To 23:27 min. And 29.25 min. To 38.00 min., Broadcast on ARTE on December 7, 2011.
  16. ↑ Quoted from Anna Politkowskaja : In Putins Russland , DuMont Literatur und Kunstverlag, 3rd ed. 2006, p. 126.
  17. ↑ Information by Irina Ginsburg about the American efforts in: Witness from the GULag (director: Laurène L'Allinec), part 2, 38:52 min. To 39:00 min., Broadcast on ARTE on December 7, 2011.
  18. ↑ Information from the Ginsburgs about expatriation and expulsion in: Witness from the GULag (Director: Laurène L'Allinec), Part 2, 38:18 min. To 45:22 min., Broadcast on ARTE on December 7, 2011.
  19. ↑ Famous agent barter trade between Russia and the USA ( Memento of the original from January 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Accessed on December 18, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.russland.ru
personal data
SURNAME Ginsburg, Alexander Ilyich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ginsburg, Alik (nickname); Гинзбург, Александр Ильич
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian journalist, writer, editor and civil rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow
DATE OF DEATH July 19, 2002
Place of death Paris