[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 52 (Wednesday, April 21, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E588]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     THE PASSING OF LARISA BOGORAZ

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 21, 2004

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, on April 6 of this year, one of 
the true giants of the Soviet and Russian human rights movements, 
Larisa Bogoraz, passed away.
  Born in eastern Ukraine, Larisa Iosifnova Bogoraz was by profession a 
linguist. In 1950, she married the writer Yuli Daniel who, together 
with Andrei Sinyavsky, was subsequently arrested by Soviet authorities 
in 1965 for publishing their stories abroad. This trial, marking the 
first prosecution of Soviet writers for their literary activities since 
the time of Stalin, gained international attention and laid the 
groundwork for the Soviet human rights movement.
  Daniel and Sinyavsky were convicted by a kangaroo court and sentenced 
to long terms in a Soviet labor camp in the Mordovia region. Traveling 
to visit her incarcerated husband, Larisa Bogoraz met relatives of 
other political prisoners. Soon she was deeply involved in drafting and 
distributing petitions calling upon the Soviet Government to observe 
the basic civil liberties enumerated in the 1936 Soviet constitution.
  In early 1968, Larisa Bogoraz joined Pavel Litvinov to produce a 
petition addressed to the international community and protesting the 
trial of dissident Alexandr Ginzburg, who had compiled the well-known 
``White Book'' on the trial of Daniel and Sinyavsky. In August of that 
year, when, as Ludmilla Alexeyeva wrote so eloquently, ``the Politburo 
decided to `strengthen peace' by invading a sovereign country,'' Larisa 
and six other brave souls met on Red Square and unfurled banners in 
defense of Czechoslovakia and condemnation of the crushing of ``Prague 
Spring.'' For their noble efforts, they were arrested by the KGB, 
tried, and convicted of ``slander'' against the Soviet Union. Bogoraz 
was sentenced to 4 years of internal exile in the Irkutsk region of 
eastern Siberia, where she worked in a wood-processing factory. In a 
show of solidarity and respect for her, Larisa's dissident friends 
combined their resources and bought her a house to live in while she 
served her exile term. When she completed her sentence, she sold the 
house and gave the proceeds to a fund for political prisoners.
  By 1976, she was back in Moscow actively involved in the compilation 
of the ``samizdat'' publication ``Memory'' dedicated to chronicling the 
repressions of the Stalin era.
  Meanwhile, personal tragedy struck. Lansa's second husband, Moscow 
Helsinki Group member and political prisoner Anatoly Marchenko, died of 
a hunger strike in Chistopol Prison in December 1986. The Helsinki 
Commission, which I am proud to chair, had raised the Marchenko case on 
several occasions, and the late Warren Christopher, our head of 
delegation at the CSCE meeting in Vienna, led a moment of silence in 
memory of Mr. Marchenko. The Soviet and East German delegations walked 
out in protest, but a few weeks later Dr. Andrei Sakharov was released 
from his Gorky exile, and in February 1987 General Secretary Gorbachev 
initiated the wholesale release of Soviet political prisoners.
  After the fall of the Soviet Union, Larisa Bogoraz continued her 
involvement in human rights activity, working with her colleagues from 
days past as well as a new generation of activists from Russia and the 
newly independent countries of the former Soviet Union.
  Mr. Speaker, in its eulogy to this dissident heroine, the Ryazan 
Memorial Society writes, ``. . . texts that were signed `L. Bogoraz 
still remain,' and our children will learn from them.''
  So might we all.

                          ____________________