Intellectuals in Communist Countries

Archive Report

State Authority vs. Intellectual Power

Purging of Intellectuals in the Soviet Union

The soviet government continues to press its three-year-old purge of intellectuals in an effort to counter the spread among writers, artists, and other educated persons of rebellion against Communist thought control. The current purge began in 1965–66, with the arrest, conviction, and sentencing to hard labor of two dissident writers, Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky, who had arranged for publication abroad of books of theirs banned by the Soviet censors.

A new crackdown on Communist intellectuals was launched this year, when the Kremlin decided to put an end to the rapidly growing freedom of expression exercised by film makers, journalists, and novelists in Czechoslovakia. The culmination of this operation, Soviet military intervention in Czechoslovakia on ...

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