Soviet and human rights activist Alexander Ginzburg to speak at UCSD

September 23, 1988

Contact: Ruth Baily, University Events Office, 534-4090 or Alixandra Williams, Public Information Office, 534-3120

SOVIET DISSIDENT ALEXANDER GINZBURG TO SPEAK AT UCSD ON OCTOBER 18

Alexander Ginzburg, Soviet dissident and human rights activist, will speak at 8 p.m. October 18, in the Mandeville Auditorium at the University of California, San Diego.

Ginzburg spent nine years in Soviet hard labor camps for his illegal journalistic activities and political involvement supporting human rights.

In the late 1950s, Ginzburg left a career in theatre to become a journalist. After publishing a small literary journal, Syntaxis, which contained poems by young Moscow and Leningrad writers, he was arrested. In 1960, he was sentenced to two years at forced labor. After his release, Ginzburg was forbidden to resume his studies of journalism.

In 1966, Ginzburg compiled "White Book," a book documenting the trial of Soviet writers Andrei Sinyaysky and . In 1967, Ginzburg was arrested for his literary association with the publication and was sentenced to five years in a strict labor camp.

In 1972, he emerged from prison with stomach ulcers and ill health. He was forbidden to live in Moscow so he moved to , approximately 70 miles from the capitol. It was at this time that he met author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The two men created the Russian Social Fund, which aids Soviet prisoners and their families. Solzhenitsyn has donated to the fund all royalties from his famous book, "Gulag Archipelago."

Four years after his release, Ginzburg became one of the founding members of the Moscow Group, a citizen's organization committed to monitoring the 's adherence to the humanitarian provisions of the . The group issued a number of well-researched studies on Soviet human rights violations and Ginzburg helped prepare several of these, including an exhaustive study on living conditions in Soviet prisons and labor camps.

In 1977, Ginzburg was again arrested. It was at this time that he became an international cause celebre. However, in spite of protests from the International League for Human Rights, Amnesty International, the U.S.- based Alexander Ginzburg Defense Committee, and the personal intervention of Nobel Prize winner , Ginzburg was given an eight-year sentence to the harshest of all the USSR's prison camps.

It was during Ginzburg's third year at Mordovian Camp No. 1 that he was informed he was being stripped of his citizenship and was to be exiled to the West. In 1979, the Soviets exiled him with four other political prisoners in exchange for two convicted Soviet spies. He arrived in the in April of that year, and was followed 10 months later by his mother, wife and two sons. He currently lives in with his family and continues his campaign to educate Western audiences on the plight of Soviet Jewry and of those who are political prisoners in the U.S.S.R.

Tickets for this event are on sale at the UCSD Box Office and from TicketMaster outlets. General admission is $9, seniors, $8 and students $5. This event is sponsored by the University Events Office.

(September 23, 1988)