A HISTORY of PUSHKIN SQUARE: 1967 to 2021

In Moscow, last Saturday, an estimated 15,000 demonstrators gathered in and around Pushkin Square in the city centre, where clashes with police broke out and demonstrators were roughly dragged off by helmeted riot officers to police buses and detention trucks. Some were beaten with batons.

Navalny’s wife Yulia was among those arrested. Police eventually pushed demonstrators out of the square. Thousands then regrouped along a wide boulevard about a kilometer (half-mile) away, many of them throwing snowballs at the police before dispersing.

Some later went to protest near the jail where Navalny is held. Police made an undetermined number of arrests there.

Perhaps it would bee helpful if we compare what is happening now under Vladimir Putin today with what took place in Pushkin Square in 1967 in the Soviet Communist Era when a demo took place in protesting the arrests of some then political dissidents and the use of Article 70 of the then Criminal Code with regard to its use conflicting with the constitution.

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OVER 50 years ago on the 22nd, January, 1967 at 6p.m., a group of twenty to thirty young people gathhered in Pushkin Square carrying banners calling for the release of four prisoners and calling for the revision of Article 70 of the Criminal Code. As they unfolded their banners men in plain clothes rushed up from all sides of the square, seized the banners and arrested several people. Most of the others scattered, and among the small group remaining one shouted 'Down with the dictatorship! Release Dobrovolsky!' All the prisoners were taken to the HQ of the Komsomol. After some hours' questioning, two were released (Gabay and Delaunay) and two others (Kushev and Khaustov) taken to the KGB investigation centre* at Lefortovo prison.

Later on the 25th and 26th of January 1967, Gabay and Delaunay were re-arrested and another demonstrator was taken into custody. The houses of all the prisoners were carefully searched; the police were particularly interested in samizdat manuscipts** and confistcated most of them. Some hundred witnesses were questioned by the Prosecutor's Office and the KGB.

SPEECH FOR THE PROSECUTION ***

'Comrade Judges! This year is a great date for us - it is the 50th year of the Soviet Regime. The struggle for the maintenance of public order continues throughout the country. In Moscow, the maintenance of public order is particularly important. We have largely been sussessful in this respect. Imagine, in the circumstances, the astonishment and indignation of the citizens who witnessed what occurred in Pushkin Square on the 22nd, of January 1967. The place which these self-syled demonstrators chose for their activities - the vicinity of a great poet's monument - is a placewhich everyon holds sacred. Their gathering might have attracted large crowds - not, of course, of like-minded citizen but of curious onlookers. Had the Druzhinniki not put a stop to it straight away, it might have led to a large disturbance.'

* * KGB: translated in English as the Committee for State Security, was the secret police force that was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 1954 until 6 November 1991, when it split into the Federal Security Service and the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation.

** samizdat manuscipts: The remarkably viable underground press in the Soviet Union is called samizdat: The word is a play on Gosizdat, which is a telescoping of Gosudarstvennoye Izdatelstvo, the name of the monopoly‐wielding State Publish ing House. The sam part of the new word means “self.” The whole samizdat—translates as: “We publish ourselves”—that is, not the state, but we, the people.

*** The Demonstration in Pushkin Square by Pavel Litvinov (1968).