Yuri Galanskov - The Daniel-Sinyavsky Trial

The Daniel-Sinyavsky Trial

During the years of Nikita Khrushchev’s leadership, frustrations had been mounting in the Kremlin over the difficulty of suppressing the Samizdat literary movement. In an attempt to finally destroy dissident literature, the Soviets arrested Yuri Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky, two prominent samizdat writers. The show trial was made a media spectacle, with Pravda issuing passionate condemnations of the defendants. The trial did not, however, discourage the underground literary movement. Instead, it provoked the first intellectual protest to occur in the Soviet Union in 30 years. Moreover, the protest was held at the Red Square itself. Galanskov and Ginzburg took detailed notes of the trial and released their observations in four-hundred page report known as The White Book. This work was widely circulated among the dissident writers and was eventually smuggled out to the West.