The information bulletin Chronicle of Current Events was one of the longest-running and best-known samizdat

Samizdat

Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...

 periodicals in the USSR dedicated to the defense of human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

. 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

Gulag

The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...

", "News of Samizdat", "Persecution of Religion", "Persecution of Crimean Tatars

Crimean Tatars

Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic ethnic group that originally resided in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language...

", "Repressions in Ukraine", "Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

n 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

Natalya Gorbanevskaya

Natalya Yevgenyevna Gorbanevskaya is a Russian poet, translator of Polish literature and civil rights activist. She is also a citizen of Poland.- Life :Gorbanevskaya graduated from Leningrad University in 1964 and became a technical editor and translator...

, Yuri Shikhanovich, Pyotr Yakir, Victor Krasin

Victor Krasin

Victor Krasin is a Russian human rights activist, economist, a former Soviet dissident and a political prisoner. Krasin is currently a US citizen...

, Sergei Kovalev

Sergei Kovalev

Sergei Kovalev is a Russian human rights activist and politician and a former Soviet dissident and political prisoner.- Early career and arrest :...

, Alexander Lavut, Tatyana Velikanova, Kronid Lyubarsky

Kronid Lyubarsky

Kronid Arkadyevich Lyubarsky was a Russian journalist, dissident, human rights activist and political prisoner.-Early career and arrest:Born in the city of Pskov, Russia, on April 4, 1934, Lyubarsky graduated from Moscow University in 1956 and worked as an astrophysicist at the All-Union Institute...

 and Anatoly Yakobson among others.

External links

• Chronicle of Current Events Translated issues at Amnesty International
  Amnesty International
  Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
  
  
• Chronicle of Current Events overview at Everything Shii Knows Chronicle of Current Events Archive at Memorial
  Memorial (society)
  Memorial is an international historical and civil rights society that operates in a number of post-Soviet states. It focuses on recording and publicising the Soviet Union's totalitarian past, but also monitors human rights in post-Soviet states....
  
   http://grani-tv.ru/entries/233 – Song by Yuly Kim at the 40 years jubilee of Chronicle of Current Events