«Я решил говорить»: последнее слово обвиняемого как заключительный аккорд политических процессов в СССР 1960-х гг.

Abstract

The author considers materials of the social and political samizdat in its context of dissident activity of the 1960s that is known in Soviet history as an early period of human rights protection. The analysis is made with reference to the final statements of dissidents at political trials that have not been examined from the point of view of source study as an self-standing historical source on the history of the dissident movement in the USSR. The author’s attention is focused on the ‘elevated’ or ‘classical’ samizdat, i.e. materials connected with the most notable dissident events. The article deals with the highly popular samizdat works, such as the last statement of Yu. Daniel, A. Sinyavsky, whose political trial was the beginning of human rights protection activities in the USSR. Additionally, the author studies the last statement of V. Bukovsky, demonstration organizer, founder and distributor of samizdat; the participants of the demonstration in Red Square in August, 1968, a protest against the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia among which are the statements of K. Babitsky, L. Bogoraz, V. Delone, V. Dremlyuga, and P. Litvinov. Alongside this, the author analyzes the definition of samizdat in terms of the cultural, sociological and source study discourse. Referring to a number of source study approaches, the article considers the pragmatic aspect in the formation of samizdat texts based on the materials of political trials of dissidents. One of the main purposes of the paper is to define the problem of the Soviet dissidents’ last statement introduction into research as sources that can help shed light on the personal, psychological, moral, and ideological makeup of the dissident movement in the USSR.