4 Jan 2023 | Czech Republic, News and features, Russia, Slovakia
The prominent Soviet-era Russian dissident Viktor Fainberg died this week at the age of 91. Fainberg, who was a philologist, was one of the eight people who protested in Red Square, Moscow on 25 August 1968 against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, alongside Pavel Litvinov and the late poet Natalya Gorbanyevskaya, among others. Despite the protest lasting only five minutes, all were arrested by the Soviet authorities.
All these people were instrumental in the founding of Index, as Jo-Ann Mort’s interview with Pavel Litvinov, published here, shows.
On Fainberg specifically, after his arrest he was brutally assaulted by the police to the point where he could not physically stand trial. Fainberg was examined, then sent to a Leningrad psychiatric hospital for over four years with no evidence of mental illness – details of which he shared with the translator Richard McKane who he met at an Index on Censorship party in the 1970s. He was then diagnosed with schizophrenia, which was a common tactic during the Khrushchev era to repress dissenters and silence voices of criticism in the Soviet Union, which continued into the Brezhnev era.
In the spring of 1971, Fainberg staged an 81-day hunger strike against conditions in the psychiatric hospital, and was eventually released in February 1973.
Fainberg founded the Campaign Against Psychiatric Abuse in April 1975, an organisation which campaigned against the abuse of human rights through misuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union. The country withdrew from the World Psychiatric Association in 1983.
After his release, Fainberg, born into a Jewish family in Kharkiv, Ukraine on 26 November 1931, initially moved to Israel before settling in France in later life.
Index patron Tom Stoppard’s play Every Good Boy Deserves Favour was jointly dedicated to Fainberg, and Stoppard himself joined Index’s advisory board in 1978 after writing about Fainberg’s incarceration.
In 2014, Fainberg received the Medal of the President of the Slovak Republic for his actions in 1968, and in 2018 received the Gratias Agit award from the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs for promoting the good name of the Czech Republic.
He kept up his activism to the end, shifting his focus to Ukraine. Years before the recent invasion, Fainberg spoke out against the Kremlin’s Ukrainian political prisoners. He also warned of the “shadow of Munich hanging over Europe”.
In his 2015 letter to abducted Ukrainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko, who was on hunger strike in a Russian prison, he wrote “I was born in Ukraine, in Kharkiv. The first nature that I saw, the first songs that I heard, were the nature and the songs of Mother Ukraine”. At the end of the letter, Fainberg told Savchenko that he was joining her hunger strike (which she later agreed to end). Fainberg also attended many protests in Paris, demanding the release of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov.
On news of his death Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian businessmen who was himself jailed for falling foul of the Putin regime, said:
“He was an amazing, remarkable man who felt other people’s pain as if it were his own. The world is a different place without him – even less human, even colder.”
22 Dec 2022 | Magazine, Magazine Contents, Volume 51.04 Winter 2022
The winter issue of Index takes as its central theme the censorship of British royal history.
With the recent death of Queen Elizabeth II putting the UK under increased global scrutiny, Index looked at the battle to access royal archives.
Index spoke to historians, academics, and writers, and were surprised at the number of historic files on the Royal Family which are unavailable, and the absurdity of the reasons for denying access to some of them. We have one simple request: end this secretive culture by opening up official archives related to the Royal Family.
Up front
Royal secrecy has no place in a democracy by Jemimah Steinfeld: We need an end to the UK tradition of keeping royal archives secret.
The Index by Mark Frary: The latest news from the free speech frontlines. Big impact elections, stirring words from the sister of a jailed British-Egyptian activist and a note on billionaire social media takeovers
Features
Mexico’s truth stares down barrel of a gun, by Chris Havler-Barrett: An overreaching military tightens its firm grip in a country mired by violence.
The war the world forgot, by Jemimah Steinfeld: Inside the book exposing the raw truth of the ongoing war in Yemen.
A dissident hero, by Jo-Ann Mort: A journey back to the dissident foundations of Index, through Pavel Litvinov’s memories.
The truth is in the telling, by Kaya Genç: Who decides the limits of disinformation? In Turkey, the government wields the power.
Reaching for an emotional flak jacket, by Rachael Jolley: Trauma takes its toll on journalists, whose mental health is swept under the rug. But are times changing?
Bad seeds, by Vandana Shiva: In seed banks in India, farmers claw back control and give a voice to nature.
Singapore’s elastic band of a Public Order Act, by Kirsten Han: A threat of prison for peaceful protesters, unless you’re in with the right people.
Hong Kong’s valiants with a message for the world, by Yeung Willie Sau: Even in in the face of totalitarianism, the activist chronicling protesters’ journeys refuses to be silenced
Press under pressure, by Alessio Perrone: A new government threatens further erasure of media freedom in Italy – just don’t call them right-wing.
Radical timelines, by Lili Rutai, Mehran Bhat, and Muqeet Shah and Andrew Mambondiyani: A round-the-world tour of social media’s power to both platform and silence.
Tapestry of tyranny, by Katie Dancey-Downs: The embroidery collective stitching stories of Belarus’s political prisoners.
Special Report: Crown confidential
Crown confidential, by Martin Bright: An exclusive Index investigation into the extent Britain’s royals want to control their own story.
Secrets, lies and a costly legal battle, by Andrew Lownie: One historian’s hard fight to reveal the truth about the Mountbattens.
A royal reckoning, by Jenny Hocking: The Queen meddled in an Australian election and then meddled in the history.
Comment
Down with a disclaimer, by Marc Nash: The crowning glory of the argument against labelling art in the case of The Crown.
The Satanic Verses is the rude contrary of the authoritarian lie, Hanif Kureishi: A celebration of Salman Rushdie’s work and an unwavering stand against the spectre of fascism.
Jamaica needs to be a republic – now, by Roselea Hamilton: Support for the monarchy is fading on this commonwealth island.
Report first, talk later…, by Richard Sambrook: Has pressing emotional buttons become the driving force of news?
UK law risks criminalising the innocent, by Danny Shaw: The most draconian piece of legislation in years will kill protest.
Crowning glory, by Ben Jennings: Announcing the birth of a right royal cartoon.
Challenge the gatekeepers, by Ruth Anderson: We need a conversation about where lines are drawn and by whom.
Culture
Russia’s exiled author writes back: by Martin Bright and Zinovy Zinik: An exclusive new story from an author who escaped under the Iron Curtain.
The Unbeaten, by Jemimah Steinfeld: Unpacking samizdat success, writing from Ukraine and keeping creative spirit alive, over coffee with Andrey Kurkov.
The smile that says a thousand words, by Katie Dancey-Downs and Danson Kahyana: A Ugandan poet turns the trauma of an attack into an act of bravery.
Truth, down under, by Francis Clarke and Diane Fahey: Falling for fake news like lemmings off a cliff.
Last word, by Masih Alinejad: The Iranian activist on the growing protest movement and what book she’d read in prison.
