User talk:Nkrita/Workpages/Soviet human rights movement

Hi, Nkrita!

Just looking at the beginning of your article I'd say that the human rights movement formally began in the 1960s, not the 1970s, with the "glasnost" rally on Pushkin Square on 10 December 1965. It was followed by a series of demonstrations and rallies. It was preceded by the gatherings on Mayakovsky Square from the moment the statue to the poet was erected there: many of the same people took part in both.

The next stage was the persistent gathering and distributing of material over 15 years concerning human rights abuses in all parts of the USSR by the anonymous group of editors who issued the Chronicle of Current Events. The first issue appeared in April 1968 and was specifically linked to the 20th anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), a document Soviet representatives helped to draft but then, with other Soviet-bloc countries, declined to ratify ...

After the Helsinki Final Act was signed in August 1975 by all the countries of Europe and North America (including the USSR and all the Soviet bloc) Monitoring Groups emerged in Moscow, Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia and Armenia.

More could be said on each - and is documented on Wikipedia (very badly as concerns the Helsinki Groups). Hope this is of some help and look forward to reading updates.

John Crowfoot (talk) 16:21, 11 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Hey John Crowfoot, thanks for stopping by. Your comments are much appreciated! This article initially started as an expansion of the section Human_rights_in_the_Soviet_Union, with more context and details.


 * I am aware of the landmarks you mention, and from what I know I agree with your periodization. However, I feel there is an issue with terminology. I think we both agree that within the broad category "dissidents", there is this movement that started with the Glasnost Meeting in 1965. The Russian word is pravozashchitniki, "defenders of rights", and they were rooted in the radical "legal" approach first described by Esenin-Volpin. The Russian Wikipedia has a separate article on them:.


 * This is where my doubts come in: Do you feel "human rights movement" is an appropriate translation for this entire movement? At the moment, my impression is this:


 * Initially, the pravozashchitniki current of dissidents was centered around glasnost' and the observance of the existing Russian laws. This includes Esenin-Volpin's ideas and writings, the glasnost meeting, and even the Chronicle itself, not counting the organization later set up by some of its editors. For these activities, in English, I think "civil rights movement" would be more precise.


 * At the end of the 1960s, some or all of these dissidents explicitly began to argue using the Soviet Union's international obligations, and began connecting with the international community. There is a shift towards thinking and arguing in terms of international human rights obligations, apparently after the mid-late 1960s crackdown showed the futility of staying internal (this is something I picked up from historian Benjamin Nathans). The "Appeal to Public Opinion" by Larisa Bogoraz and Pavel Litvinov would be a first impulse of that, and the Initiative & Committee for Human Rights with their appeals to the UN, followed by the Helsinki groups, would then be what I would say was the human rights movement in the narrow term. So technically, I would say this is when "human rights movement" proper would begin.


 * The Chronicle of Current Events is of course, somewhere in all of this. It has the UDHR preamble, but it was concerned primarily with legality within the framework of the Soviet law.


 * I have begun to sketch these things out in User:Nkrita/Soviet_dissident_movement


 * Perhaps I am over-analyzing it. At this point I am unsure myself. A few options:


 * 1) Rename this article to something like "Civil and human rights movement in the Soviet Union" and include both the glasnost'/Esenin-Volpin beginnings and the Committees in full length
 * 2) Follow Lyudmila Alexyeva and refer to everything from glasnost'/Esenin-Volpin beginnings onwards as "Soviet human rights movement"
 * 3) Leave this article as dedicated "Human rights movement", and only give as context a a shortened version of glasnost meeting/Volpin/early Chronicle with preceding Mayakovsky readings. – Some day "Soviet dissidents" might become a decent overview article pointing to all these concepts and events.


 * At the moment, I was planning on 3). But in any case: the First/Context section is just an unstructured information dump at the moment and needs to be significantly rewritten. I was not expecting anyone to read it at this stage! :-)


 * PS.: Since you seem to have a good grasp of the topic, perhaps you'd be interested in taking a look at the current state of Chronicle of Current Events, which I have expanded significantly over the past few days.


 * Nkrita (talk) 17:41, 11 August 2015 (UTC)