Vera Lashkova

She studied at the directing department of the Moscow Institute of Culture. A typist, she retyped samizdat materials. A participant in the dissident movement.

One of the defendants in the court case known as the ‘Trial of the Four.’ Arrested in January 1967, she was charged with participating in the preparation of the collections ‘The White Book’ and ‘Phoenix’. In January 1968 she was sentenced to one year in prison. With credit for time already spent in pre-trial detention, she was released on April 17, 1968.

1960s

Dissidents Poets Trial of the Four

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The final statement

‘I never held anti-Soviet views or convictions and never had the aim of weakening Soviet power.’

I have been imprisoned for a year now and have had a great deal of time to think. I never held anti-Soviet views or convictions and never had the aim of weakening Soviet power.
I see my guilt in the fact that I did not think seriously enough about certain things; had I thought about them seriously enough at the time, I might not have found myself here, in the dock.

In his closing speech, the prosecutor asked that a punishment be imposed on me involving deprivation of liberty for a term of one year. Therefore, I cannot ask the court for leniency. But regardless of what the sentence may be, I want to say that this, my first final word as a defendant, will also be my last.

12 January 1968

Moscow City Court, Moscow, USSR.

Source: ‘My final statement: Speeches of the Defendants at Court Trials of 1966–1974’.