Andrey Alekseyevich Amalrik

Andrey Alekseyevich Amalrik (born May 12, 1938, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.—died November 11, 1980, near Guadalajara, Spain) was a Soviet-born historian, playwright, and political dissident who was twice exiled to Siberia and was imprisoned in a labour camp before being granted an exit visa in 1976.

Amalrik first came into conflict with the authorities as a student; his university thesis was rejected because it contravened official teaching on early Russian history. Two years later, in 1965, he was sentenced to exile in Siberia for “parasitism”; he described his experiences in a book (Involuntary Journey to Siberia) published outside the U.S.S.R. His strength lay both in his ability to see the ludicrous side of Soviet life and in his appeals to rights theoretically granted under the Soviet constitution. That and the publication abroad in 1969 of his well-argued essay “Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?” were especially provoking to the authorities, and he was sentenced in 1970 to three years in a labour camp. In July 1973 he was sentenced to a further three years; that sentence was commuted to exile in Siberia. Amalrik was released in May 1975 and returned to Moscow, but he was subject to continual harassment by the authorities. The following year he reluctantly accepted an exit visa and went into exile in the Netherlands, eventually settling in France, where he continued to campaign for human rights. He died in a car crash while traveling to meetings associated with the review conference of the Helsinki Accords.