Fund for the Aid to Political Prisoners
С радостью публикуем перевод поста о Фонде помощи политзаключенным ( memo-projects.livejournal.com/5977.html). Большое спасибо Марии Фокиной, автору перевода!
Archive of the International Memorial Society is compiling materials on the history of Russian charitable work in the second half of the 20th century.
In 1974, Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn founded the Russian Public Fund for the Aid to Political Prisoners and their Families (hereafter - Fund for the Aid to Political Prisoners, Fund). To this Fund the writer gave all the royalties from the publication of “The Gulag Archipelag”.
The long-standing Russian tradition of aid to political prisoners was renewed in the middle of 1960s and the Fund became its main organizational and financial support.
Now it is difficult to believe that charity work could not only be frowned upon but actively persecuted by the government! The administrators of the Fund (Fund managers in the USSR) and their deputies were continuously subjected to both judicial and extra-judicial persecution. In February 1977 the first administrator of the Fund, Alexander Ginzburg, was arrested. His successors were no less fortunate in receiving the “attention” of the authorities: in July, Malva Landa was deported, in October/November, Kronid Lyubarsky and Tatyana Khodorovich where forced to emigrate. In December 1981, the administrator of the Fund’s affiliate in Leningrad, Valery Repin, was arrested and coerced into “repenting” on public television. In Moscow, Leningrad, in the Baltic and in Ukraine numerous wives and mothers of political prisoners were interrogated.
In April 1983, with the arrest of Sergei Khodorovich, the Fund once again lost its leader. By early 1984, after Andrey Kistyakovsky, who replaced Khodorovich, became seriously ill, political pressure and internal conflicts resulted in the Fund’s work within the USSR becoming virtually paralyzed. In spite of this, between 1984 and 1988, a group of the Fund’s activists tacitly continued to help political prisoners and their families.
The Fund became one of a few independent public initiatives that did not fade away in the late-Soviet and post-Soviet eras and has continued its work after 1991. Currently, the primary task of the Fund is providing support to former prisoners of Stalin’s forced labor camps.
This year, in honor of the Funds 35th anniversary, we have compiled, and intend to publish for the first time, all the known names of those whose compassion towards the prisoners was not smothered by state propaganda. Despite the risk of losing their freedom, they continued the long-standing Russian tradition of aid to victims of political persecution.
We managed to identify more than 200 names, although there is no doubt that the actual numbers are higher. Shortly this entire list will be placed on the “Memorial” website and we greatly hope that the publication of it will help us to extend it.
In case that already now this announcement comes to the attention of the Fund’s members and those who helped political prisoners before its formation, we would like to ask them to share their stories with us.
Today we are publishing the first part of the list, which primarily consists of profiles with very limited information about people of whom we, unfortunately, know very little.
These profiles are in desperate need of more detailed and supplementary information. It would be great if the photographs of these people could also be located.
This project is realized by volunteers and we will be extremely grateful for any comments, contributions or support.
Coordinator: Gennadij
Contact: boriss948@gmail.com (Boris)