| Collection | University of Kent Archive |
| Description | Interview with Alexander Ginzburg by Philip Boobbyer.
Alexander Ginzburg grew up in Moscow in a non-communist family. In 1960, he co-edited the samizdat publication, Phoenix, after which he was arrested. He was a defendant in the ‘trial of the four’ in 1967. After Solzhenitsyn was exiled in 1974, he helped to set up the Solzhenitsyn Aid Fund to help political prisoners. He subsequently worked for a time as a secretary to Andrei Sakharov. He was sent into exile in 1979 as part of a prisoner release, and eventually settled in Paris.
Subjects include: the Moscow Helsinki Group; upbringing in central Moscow; father was an architect killed by the KGB; mother from a Jewish intelligentsia family; baptism in the Orthodox church; family influences; arrested because of defying censorship; the nature of conscience; how he became a journalist; much depends on what milieu you are brought up in; never had Soviet or communist views; the moral and non-political character of the dissident movement; different personalities of Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov; working for Sakharov; why he likes Pasternak; best not to enter into conversation with interrogators; important not to live a life of pretence; lies will be found out; how the dissidents became influential in the 1990s.
Place and date of interview: Paris, March 1997.
The interview runs to 47:27 on side A and 36:40 on side B. |
| Admin history | Created by Philip Boobbyer in the process of his research in 1996/97. Interviews were conducted in Moscow and Paris.
Philip contacted Special Collections and Archives in 2022 to request digitisation of the tapes and to offer digital copies for the University of Kent archive. This was in light of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Additional tapes were digitised in late 2022 and early 2023 as part of Dr Boobbyer's research project on 'Interviews on conscience and Soviet dissent' with the charitable trust Anglo-Nordic Productions Trust..
Digital audio files will be made publically available by Philip using Soundcloud (link to be added to this record when live). |