On July 14, 1978, the Soviet government imprisoned Anatoly Shcharansky, a dissident accused of supplying secret material to a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. The trial began on July 10, just two days before the start of U.S.-Soviet strategic arms limitation talks in Geneva.

The trial captured public attention because Shcharansky had been promoting the cause of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union. In addition, Shcharansky's countryman Alexander Ginzburg, manager of a fund for political prisoners, received a sentence of hard labor on July 13. President Jimmy Carter spoke out against the trials but said that American athletes would not boycott the Moscow Olympics. He reversed this decision in 1980 after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.