The Solzhenitsyn Aid Fund (officially Russian Public Fund to Aid Political Prisoners and their Families, also Fund for the Aid of Political Prisoners, Public Aid Fund) was a charity foundation and support network set up by

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repress ...

and

Alexander Ginzburg Alexander "Alik" Ilyich Ginzburg ( rus, Алекса́ндр Ильи́ч Ги́нзбург, p=ɐlʲɪkˈsandr ɨˈlʲjidʑ ˈɡʲinzbʊrk, a=Alyeksandr Il'yich Ginzburg.ru.vorb.oga; 21 November 1936 – 19 July 2002), was a Russian journalist ...

that distributed funds and material support to

political Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...

and religious prisoners across the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Founding

The fund was formed on the initiative of writer and

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although n ...

Alexander Ginzburg. Families of arrested

dissidents A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 20th ...

often suffered repercussions such as the loss of jobs and opportunities to study. During his time in

labor camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...

s, Ginzburg managed to coordinate relatives and friends to help other inmates and their families. This included support such as donating household goods for those in exile, helping relatives who faced expulsion from work, or offering places to stay in Moscow for wives who journeyed to visit their husbands in remote Siberian camps. After his release in 1972, Ginzburg consulted with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on how to continue this informal support. Solzhenitsyn offered a quarter of his

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

award for the cause. After Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the USSR in 1974 following the publication of ''

The Gulag Archipelago ''The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation'' (russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ, ''Arkhipelag GULAG'') is a three-volume non-fiction text written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr So ...

'', he set up a fund in Switzerland, donating all present and future international royalties for the book to it. The funds were from then on brought into the USSR and distributed through a network of volunteers.

Activities

A first goal of the fund was to help

gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...

inmates and their families to survive. For this, groups of people, unknown to one another, collected information on the existence and whereabouts of political prisoners across the Soviet Union and distributed funds and other material support to them and their families. Other charitable organizations, such as Christian Orthodox organizations that collected clothing and other items, passed those donations onto the Aid Fund for redistribution. The Aid Fund also contributed funds for the support of political prisoners who were sent to

psychiatric imprisonment Involuntary commitment, civil commitment, or involuntary hospitalization/hospitalisation is a legal process through which an individual who is deemed by a qualified agent to have symptoms of severe mental disorder is detained in a psychiatric hos ...

. It paid for the travel expenses of those who traveled to distant trials to support the political dissenters. A second goal of the fund was the support of cultural initiatives, such as a series of memoirs of emigrants. The administrators of the fund ensured that the money was sent legally to banks in Moscow; after the state had taken one third in tax, what remained was distributed in roubles. When the authorities found out about the fund, the receiving of the money was blocked. Instead, donations were sent to friends and sympathisers. The

KGB The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...

then attempted to halt its distribution by telling the families of political prisoners that, if money were accepted, their loved ones would endure even worse conditions in the camps. According to Solzhenitsyn's wife Natalya, the fund counted up to 120 volunteers.

Post-Soviet Russia

The Aid Fund was revived in the 1990s. It supports impoverished former dissenters. It also instituted a support program for Russian libraries.

References

Bibliography

External links