Alexander Ginzburg

Alexander Ilyich Ginzburg
Ginzburg at the Sakharov tribunal in The Hague on 4 September 1980
Native name	Александр Ильич Гинзбург
Born	(1936-11-21)November 21, 1936 Moscow
Died	July 19, 2002(2002-07-19) (aged 65) Paris
Nationality	Russian
Citizenship	Soviet Union (1936–1991) →  Russian Federation (1991–2002)
Alma mater	Moscow State Historico-Archival Institute
Occupation	human right activist, journalist
Known for	human rights activism with participation in the Moscow Helsinki Group, cofounding Sintaksis and Phoenix
Notable work	The White Book, The Trial of the Four
Movement	dissident movement in the Soviet Union
Spouse(s)	Arina Sergeevna Zholkovskaya-Ginzburg
Children	two sons: Alexander and Alexey

Alexander (Alik) Ilyich Ginzburg (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ильи́ч Ги́нзбург; IPA: [ɐlʲɪˈksandr ɪlʲˈjitɕ ˈɡʲinzbʊrk]; 21 November 1936, Moscow – 19 July 2002, Paris), was a Russian journalist, poet, human rights activist and dissident.

During the Soviet period, Ginzburg cofounded and edited the samizdat poetry almanac Sintaksis. At the end of 1959, he issued the first samizdat literary magazine Phoenix, with Yuri Galanskov.

Between 1961 and 1969 he was sentenced three times to labor camps. In 1979, Ginzburg was released and expelled to the United States, along with four other political prisoners (Eduard Kuznetsov, Mark Dymshits, Valentin Moroz, and Georgy Vins) and their families, as part of a prisoner exchange.

In 1965, Alexander Ginzburg documented the trial of writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky (Sinyavsky–Daniel trial). Having obtained a copy of closed-door court proceedings from the court stenographer, he compiled a White Book documenting the trial. He then sent copies of the book with his address to the KGB and the Chief Prosecutor's Office. The book also circulated in samizdat and was smuggled to the West. Along with Yuri Galanskov, Ginzburg was arrested in 1967, charged with anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, and sentenced to five years of forced labor (Galanskov-Ginzburg trial).