Trial of the Four
[1] Yury Galanskov was a second-year student at the Historical Archives Institute and worked at the State Literary Museum in Moscow.
Ginzburg put together a collection of materials on the case and trial of writers Sinyavsky and Daniel (later called White Book), and in November 1966 sent copies to deputies of the USSR Supreme Soviet and to the KGB.
[2]: 14–15 In February 1966, writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky were sentenced to labour camps on charges of Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda for having published their satirical writings abroad.
Ginzburg produced five typewritten copies of the collection and sent them signed with his own name to deputies of the USSR Supreme Soviet, and to the KGB.
[5] The case of the defendants was taken up by three prominent Moscow defence lawyers: Dina Kaminskaya, Sofiya Kalistratova, and Boris Zolotukhin.
[10] Students Vladimir Bukovsky, Vadim Delaunay, Victor Khaustov and Evgeny Kushev were arrested for organizing and taking part.
[6]: 74–75 Bukovsky attacked the legal conduct of the case in his final words, which circulated in samizdat and as part of materials about the demonstration compiled by Pavel Litvinov.
[6]: 151 The dissident periodical Chronicle of Current Events lists 91 names of people subject to extrajudicial reprisals in connection with protesting the trial.
[15] Dissident general Pyotr Grigorenko warned in an "Open Letter to the Budapest Conference of Communist Parties" that "the possibility of a renewal of Stalinism exists as long as there is no glasnost of the judicial process, which was not present in Stalinist times.".
[6]: 48 In November 1967, 116 Soviet intellectuals, including mathematician and initiator of the 1965 glasnost rally Alexander Esenin-Volpin, Larisa Bogoraz and Pavel Litvinov, signed an appeal to the Court in which they demanded to be able attend the trial as formally guaranteed by the constitution, and criticized the practice of admitting people according to special lists and passes.
[16]: 37 [6]: 48 The judicial trial of [Yuri] Galanskov, [Aleksandr] Ginzburg, [Aleksei] Dobrovolsky and [Vera] Lashkova, which is taking place at present in the Moscow City Court, is being carried out in violation of the most important principles of Soviet law.
As the trial was underway, physics teacher Pavel Litvinov and linguist Larisa Bogoraz issued a famous one-page "appeal to world public opinion".
In it, they protested against the closed hearings in which "the courtroom is filled with specially selected people, officials of the KGB and volunteer militia, who give the appearance of an open public trial".
[5] The document was signed with their full names and addresses and was transmitted on foreign radio stations broadcasting in the Soviet Union on 11 January 1968.
[5] Following the tradition of the convicted Ginzburg's White Book, a samizdat account of the "trial of the four" was in turn compiled by Pavel Litvinov.
