Hoover Institution
acquires papers of Russian writer and right activist,
Siniavski
The Hoover Institution has
acquired the papers of the Russian writer and human
rights activist Andrei Siniavski. Siniavski's writings
and his trial for allegedly publishing anti-Soviet
slander in foreign countries are considered key in
mobilizing the human rights movement that contributed in
significant ways to the forces that discredited and
toppled the Soviet system. "Siniavski was a writer
whose fiction provoked the regime to frenzy and
galvanized the movement that eventually brought it
down," said Hoover Institution Senior Research
Fellow Robert Conquest after hearing about the
acquisition.
Beginning in the 1950s,
Siniavski sent abroad writings under the pseudonym Abram
Tertz that he could not publish legally in the Soviet
Union. He was arrested in 1965, tried in 1966 and
sentenced to forced labor.
Demonstrations against the
trial galvanized young intellectuals, among them Vladimir
Bukovsky and Alexander Ginzburg, and inducted them into
the human rights movement. In response to international
protests at Siniavski's mistreatment, the regime allowed
him to emigrate to France in 1973.
Siniavski's wife, Maria
Rozanova, also publicized her husband's plight and
refused to leave the Soviet Union without his papers.
Authorities relented in order to dispatch her abroad, and
she was able to save the record of her husband's life and
work.
Once in the west,
Siniavski taught at the Sorbonne, served as a visiting
professor at Stanford and received an honorary doctorate
from Harvard. He died in 1977.
The collection contains
biographical information on Siniavski and his father, who
was arrested for political activity; unpublished
manuscripts and correspondence from before his arrest;
materials on smuggling his manuscripts abroad, including
secret codes he used; evidence of his influence on
students at Moscow University; evidence of people spying
on him; materials on his arrest and trial; a copy of the
KGB interrogation files, notes on the search of his home
and photographs from the early days of the human rights
movement; papers from the emigration and continuing human
rights activities abroad, including broadcasts for Radio
Liberty and tapes of complete interviews and sections not
broadcast; and papers on emigre politics.
The collection is expected
to be available for research by spring 1999. For more
information, contact Hoover Institution archivist Elena
Danielson at 723-3563 or danielson@hoover. SR
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