November 21 1936 years
Alexander Ginzburg, a journalist and dissident, was born in Moscow.
And then I got eight years in a special regime prison. And I received the highest title—especially dangerous state criminal. Especially dangerous repeat offender.
He jokingly called himself a "third-generation prisoner": his grandfather died during the "Red Terror," his grandmother served two years in Lubyanka, and his father died two months after his son's birth, while under arrest on a trumped-up charge.
At the age of 24, while still a student, he began publishing poetry almanac "Syntax". Distributed among acquaintances, published Brodsky, Okudzhava, Akhmadulina and other poets.
I'd sit down at the typewriter and load it with just enough copy paper so it wouldn't break. When the paper was thin, I'd print 8 copies with carbon paper. Then my friends would do the same. And then my friends' friends. And when 200 copies of an issue appeared, we'd consider the magazine published.
In July 1960, he was imprisoned for two years for anti-Soviet activities. He then worked in the Moscow sewer system and prepared a collection, "The White Book," about the criminal case against the writers Sinyavsky and Daniel.
The wives who sat in court scribbled constantly, sometimes on paper, sometimes just on their laps. Afterwards, they went to friends and recounted the entire trial. This was used to compile the court transcript.
He personally went to the KGB, offering to exchange a copy of the book for the early release of the convicts. He received a five-year sentence.
Upon his release, he became Solzhenitsyn's assistant and one of the founders of the Moscow Helsinki Group. He received an additional eight years, but served less than a year. In 1979, he was deported to the United States along with four other political prisoners in exchange for two Soviet spies.
He returned to Russia in 1991 as a journalist for a French publication.
Why hasn't anything really happened since August? People have been straining to fight the monster, standing outside the White House, and watching as the monster's nose began to swell. A certain relaxation has set in, after which the monster, seemingly no longer a monster, calmly continues to rule over everyone.
He died in Paris in July 2002.
