The Birth of the Human Rights Movement
1968 in the Soviet Union
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
In Moscow, 1968 began with a sensational trial against Aleksandr Ginzburg and three other writers who were critical of the system. Numerous Soviet citizens protested on their behalf. If such appeals had previously been addressed only to Soviet institutions, now, for the first time, Soviet citizens called on world public to condemn this political trial. As a part of these protests, the first samizdat newspaper was created, and a network of dissidents formed as a result of its distribution. The Soviet human rights movement was born.
(Osteuropa 7/2008, pp. 47–56)