Letter of Forty-Two

The Letter of Forty-Two (Russian: Письмо́ сорока́ двух) was an open letter signed by forty-two well-known Russian literati, aimed at Russian society, the president and government, in reaction to the events of September – October 1993. It was published in the newspaper Izvestiya on 5 October 1993 under the title "Writers demand decisive actions of the government."

The letter contains the following seven demands:

Communist Pravda reacted by publishing a letter of three renowned Soviet dissidents – Andrey Sinyavsky, Vladimir Maximov and Pyotr Abovin-Yegides – calling for Boris Yeltsin's immediate resignation. It said among other things:

...Let us not forget that this tragedy had been triggered by the President's decree. The question arises: was the head of the State so short-sighted as to fail to foresee this decree's consequenses when he chose to defy the very same law that had enabled him to become President? How much of short-sightedness is there in it, and how much calculation? And this calculation – shouldn't it be called provocation in real terms?

Nezavisimaya Gazeta's 2nd editor-in-chief Victoria Shokhina, mentioning Vasily Aksyonov's statement ("It was right those bastards had been bombarded. Should I've been in Moscow, I'd have signed [the letter] too"), on 3 October 2004, wondered how "all of those 'democratic' writers who were preaching humanism and denouncing capital punishment" all of a sudden "came to applaud mass execution without trial". According to Shokhina, writer Anatoly Rybakov, when asked, 'would he have signed it', harshly replied: "By no means. A writer can not endorse bloodshed". "But people like Rybakov are few and far between in our 'democratic' camp, and such people there are being disliked", Shokhina remarked.

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