Sinyavsky-Daniel trial
| Native name | Процесс Синявского и Даниэля |
|---|---|
| Date | February 10–13, 1966 |
| Location | Moscow |
| Cause | satires smuggled abroad and published under pen names |
| Participants | Andrei Sinyavsky, Yuli Daniel |
| Charges | anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda (Article 70 of the RSFSR Criminal Code) |
| Verdict | Sinyavsky was sentenced to seven years in strict-regime labor camp, Yuli Daniel was sentenced to five years |
The Sinyavsky–Daniel trial (Russian: Проце́сс Синя́вского и Даниэ́ля) was a trial against Russian writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel which took place in Moscow in February 1966. Sinyavsky and Daniel were convicted under the offense of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda for publishing their satirical writings abroad. They were sentenced to seven and five years in strict regime labor camps, respectively.
The trial was the first Soviet show trial during which writers were openly convicted solely for their literary work. Uncommonly for a political charge in the Soviet Union, the defendants plead not guilty. While the trial was accompanied by harsh denunciations of the writers in Soviet media, it also provoked appeals by many Soviet intellectuals in defense of the writers, and lead to a widespread critical response from public figures outside the Soviet Union.
The Sinyavsky-Daniel case is widely considered to mark the end of the period of Khruschev's liberalism and was a major starting impulse for the Soviet dissident movement.
In September 1965, well-known literary writer and critic Andrei Sinyavsky and writer and translator Yuli Daniel were arrested for having published in foreign editorials under the respective pseudonyms Abram Tertz and Nikolai Arzhak. The prosecution argued that their literary work was consciously intended to subvert and weaken the Soviet system and amounted to the criminal offense of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.
Andrei Sinyavsky, using the pseudonym Abram Tertz, had begun sending his work to be published in the West, initially in Paris, in 1959. His friend Yuli Daniel, employing the alias "Nikolai Arzhak", began publishing in 1961.
The publication of Daniel's This is Moscow Speaking and Sinyavsky's The Trial Begins in the West between 1959 and 1962 caught the attention of the KGB. Although KGB was not familiar with the authors, it was soon discovered that Arzhak, the author of This is Moscow Speaking, was the pen-name of Yuli Daniel, and that Tertz was the pseudonym of his friend Andrei Sinyavsky. Both were placed under round-the-clock surveillance and their apartments were secretly searched. Information was also gathered from Sinyavsky and Daniel's colleagues acting as informants as well as KGB officials posing as neighbors' relatives.
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