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Interviews on conscience and dissent in the USSR (Интервью о совести и инакомыслии в СССР)
No full textInterviews on conscience and dissent in the USSR
Interviews conducted by Dr Philip Boobbyer (University of Kent)
These interviews, all of them in Russian, were conducted by Dr Boobbyer for a research project on the role of ‘conscience’ in undermining communism in the late Soviet era. Material from the interviews was used in the book Conscience, Dissent and Reform in Soviet Russia (London: Routledge, 2005), published in Russian as Sovest’, dissidentstvo i reformy v Sovetskoi Rossii (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2010). The interviews, which were conducted in a semi-structured way, focussed on how dissidents became disenchanted with Soviet socialism, and the extent to which moral and spiritual motivations were present in their ideas and activities.
Larisa Bogoraz (1926-2004). Larisa Bogoraz was born in Kharkiv, to a family loyal to the Communist Party. She was an active Komsomol member in her youth. She started to question the Soviet regime in the 1950s. She participated in the demonstration on Red Square against the invasion of Czechoslovakia on 25 August 1968, after which she was sentenced to four years in internal exile in Siberia. She remained active in human rights work throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Place and date of interview: Moscow, April 1996. Transcript provided in Russian.
Aleksandr Ginzburg (1936-2002). Aleksandr Ginzburg grew up in Moscow in a non-communist family. In 1960, he co-edited the samizdat publication, Phoenix, after which he was arrested. He was a defendant in the ‘trial of the four’ in 1967. After Solzhenitsyn was exiled in 1974, he helped to set up the Solzhenitsyn Aid Fund to help political prisoners. He subsequently worked for a time as a secretary to Andrei Sakharov. He was sent into exile in 1979 as part of a prisoner release, and eventually settled in Paris. Place and date of interview: Paris, March 1997. Short summary of contents available (see below).
Natalya Gorbanevskaya (1936-2013). Natalya Gorbanevskaya was a poet. She launched the samizdat journal Chronicle of Current Events in April 1968. She participated in the demonstration on Red Square against the invasion of Czechoslovakia on 25 August 1968. She published a book on the trial which followed the demonstration, Red Square at Noon (London: 1972). In 1969, she was a founder member of the Initiative Group for the Defence of Human Rights in the USSR. She was confined in a psychiatric hospital in the years 1970-72. Place and date of interview: Paris, March 1997. Transcript provided in Russian.
Tatyana Khodorovich (1921-2015). Tatyana Khodorovich was a teacher by profession, but she became disillusioned with the ideological nature of the school curriculum. She was a founder member of the Initiative Group for the Defence of Human Rights in the USSR. For a time in the mid-1970s she oversaw the work of the Solzhenitsyn Aid Fund. She lived in Paris after leaving the Soviet Union in 1977. Place and date of interview: Paris, March 1997. Transcript provided in Russian.
Leonid Plyushch (1938-2015). Leonid Plyushch was a Ukrainian mathematician who was for a time involved in the Soviet space programme. He was a founder member of the Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR. After being put on trial in 1972, he was confined for a time in a psychiatric hospital. After exile to the West in 1976, he lived in Paris. He joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group in 1977. He wrote a memoir, History’s Carnival (London: 1979). Place and date of interview: Paris, March 1997. Short summary of contents provided (see below).
Tatyana Velikanova (1932-2002). Tatyana Velikanova was a mathematician. Her husband, Konstantin Babitsky, was involved in the demonstration on Red Square on 25 August 1968, and she became active in the dissident movement after that. She was a founder member of the Initiative Group for the Defence of Human Rights in the USSR. She played an important organisational role in the dissident movement, notably as editor of the Chronicle of Current Events for much of its existence (1968-83). Place and date of interview: Moscow, January 1998. Transcript available in Russian.
Summary of contents
Aleksandr Ginzburg: Subjects include: the Moscow Helsinki Group; upbringing in central Moscow; father was an architect killed by the KGB; mother from a Jewish intelligentsia family; baptism in the Orthodox church; family influences; arrested because of defying censorship; the nature of conscience; how he became a journalist; much depends on what milieu you are brought up in; never had Soviet or communist views; the moral and non-political character of the dissident movement; different personalities of Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov; working for Sakharov; why he likes Pasternak; best not to enter into conversation with interrogators; important not to live a life of pretence; lies will be found out; how the dissidents became influential in the 1990s.
Leonid Plyushch: Subjects covered include: his commitment to revolutionary ideals; disillusionment with Stalinism; crisis following 20th Party Congress; wish to avoid being manipulated; long-term adherence to Marxism; atheism; decision to do scientific work; why he was wary of joining the Communist Party; experience of cooperation with the KGB at university; being in psychiatric hospital; stirrings of religious belief in prison; the nature of fanaticism; why it is important to avoid bitterness; the nature of personality; matters connected to Ukraine and Ukrainian identity; the nature of the dissident movement; having irrational fears; lying, dishonesty and truthfulness; how dishonesty in private life can lead to dishonesty in public life; the need to avoid self-deception; turning bad things into good
Interviews on ethics, conscience and dissent in the USSR (Беседы об этике, совести и инакомыслии в СССР)
Full text linkInterviews on ethics, conscience and dissent in the USSR
These interviews were conducted by Philip Boobbyer between 1994 and 2003 for a research project on the role of ‘conscience’ in shaping opinion and undermining communism in the late Soviet era. They explored the ethical thinking and experiences of dissidents, intellectuals and Communist Party reformers, and the ways in which moral and spiritual motivations were present in their ideas and activities. They took place face-to-face, in Russian, and were conducted in a semi-structured way. Interviewees were asked questions about how their ideas about morality were formed and how they experienced the influence of conscience in their lives, as well as about the impact on them of moments of crisis or transformation. The interviews were initially used as the basis for Boobbyer's article, 'Truth-telling, conscience and dissent in late Soviet Russia: Evidence from oral histories', European History Quarterly 30 (2000), 553-585. Material from the interviews was then used to inform his book Conscience, Dissent and Reform in Soviet Russia (London: Routledge, 2005), which was published in Russian as Sovest’, dissidentstvo i reformy v Sovetskoi Rossii (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2010).
For a summary and description of the interviews, including brief biographical details about the interviewees, and information about transcripts and summaries, see ‘Summary of interviews’ in the ‘Documentation’ section
Models released for How do Variational Autoencoders Learn? Insights from Representational Similarity
No full textThis repository contains the 300 VAE models saved at different epochs for "How do Variational Autoencoders Learn? Insights from Representational Similarity"
Intrinsic Dimension Estimations released for Fondue: an algorithm to find the optimal dimensionality of the latent representations of variational autoencoders
No full textThis repository contains more than 35,000 intrinsic dimension estimations used in "Fondue: an algorithm to find the optimal dimensionality of the latent representations of variational autoencoders"
Postscript files relating to: An Architecture for an ATM Network Continuous Media Server Exploiting Temporal Locality of Access (PhD Thesis Kneale J Rothwell 1999)
Full text linkDataset used in the paper "The Effects of Emergency Government Cash Transfers on Beliefs and Behaviours During the COVID Pandemic: Evidence from Brazil"
Full text linkThis dataset can be used to replicate the results in the paper "The Effects of Emergency Government Cash Transfers on Beliefs and Behaviours During the COVID Pandemic: Evidence from Brazil
Eighteenth Century Journals V
No full textPart V of Adam Matthew Digital’s Eighteenth-Century Journals (ECJ) subscription online resource. Eighteenth-Century Journals V offers a complete and full-text searchable digitisation of the Lady’s Magazine (1770-1832) with secondary resources. Jennie Batchelor was Consultant Editor for Eighteenth-Century Journals V and the author of its scholarly introduction. ECJ V also features (on open access, not behind the subscription paywall) ‘The Lady’s Magazine Index’, co-authored with Koenraad Claes and Jenny DiPlacidi. The ‘Index’ was a key output of Batchelor’s Leverhulme Trust funded ‘Lady’s Magazine (1770-1818): The Emergence of a Genre’ project (2014-16). Adam Matthew converted Batchelor’s Excel database into a web database as an additional resource in ECJ V
Test responses: Species identification by experts and non-experts: comparing images from field guides
No full textAccurate species identification is fundamental when recording ecological data. However, the ability to correctly identify organisms visually is rarely questioned. We investigated how experts and non-experts compared in the identification of bumblebees, a group of insects of considerable conservation concern. Experts and non-experts were asked whether two concurrent bumblebee images depicted the same or two different species. Overall accuracy was below 60% and comparable for experts and non-experts. However, experts were more consistent in their answers when the same images were repeated, and more cautious in committing to a definitive answer. Our findings demonstrate the difficulty of correctly identifying bumblebees using images from field guides. Such error rates need to be accounted for when interpreting species data, whether or not they have been collected by experts. We suggest that investigation of how experts and non-experts make observations should be incorporated into study design, and could be used to improve training in species identification
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