Chronicle of Current Events (samizdat)

The information bulletin Chronicle of Current Events (Russian: Хроника текущих событий) was one of the longest-running and best-known samizdat periodicals in the USSR dedicated to the defense of human rights. For fifteen years from 1968 to 1983, a total of 63 issues of the Chronicle were published.

The anonymous authors encouraged readers to utilize the same distribution channels in order to send feedback and local information to be published in subsequent issues. The Chronicle was known for its dry, concise style, its regular rubrics were titled "Arrests, Searches, Interrogations", "Out of Court Repressions", "In Prisons and Camps", "News of Samizdat", "Persecution of Religion", "Persecution of Crimean Tatars", "Repressions in Ukraine", "Lithuanian Events", etc. The authors maintained that according to the Soviet Constitution, the Chronicle was not an illegal publication, but the long list of people arrested in relation to it included Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Yuri Shikhanovich, Pyotr Yakir, Victor Krasin, Sergei Kovalev, Alexander Lavut, Tatyana Velikanova, Kronid Lyubarsky and Anatoly Yakobson among others.

External links

• Chronicle of Current Events Translated issues at Amnesty International
• Chronicle of Current Events overview at Everything Shii Knows
• (Russian) Chronicle of Current Events Archive at Memorial
• (Russian) http://grani-tv.ru/entries/233 – Song by Yuly Kim at the 40 years jubilee of Chronicle of Current Events