TEN ITEMS
[1]
Victor Fainberg, who is confined in the Leningrad Special Psychiatric Hospital, ended his hunger strike (CCE 27.6) on 15 October.
Fainberg declared a hunger strike on 28 September, protesting against the transfer of “politicals” from his hospital on Arsenalnaya Street to the special hospitals in Oryol and Dnepropetrovsk. He eventually obtained a promise from the administration to discontinue the transfers.
*
[2]
Mathematician Leonid Plyushch, a member of the Action Group for Human Rights who was arrested on 15 January 1972 in Kiev, has been ruled mentally ill by a commission of forensic psychiatrists.
*
[3]
On 30 November 1972 the Supreme Court of the Lithuanian SSR sentenced Stasis Stanislavovich JAKAS (b. 1941) to 2 years in strict regime camps. Jakas was indicted under Article 199 (Lithuanian criminal code = Article 190-1, RSFSR code).
He was charged with keeping and circulating A Chronicle of Current Events, other samizdat materials (Avtorkhanov’s Technology of Power, Yakir’s letter to the journal Kommunist, and others), and the Archives of Lithuania [Vietuvos Archivas], a book about the 1940 elections to the Seim (Lithuanian parliament) published under the Germans; and with having ties to Pyotr Yakir.
The Jakas case, like that of Sevruk (CCE 24.2, CCE 25.10 [5], CCE 26.4 [5]), is a Vilnius metastasis of “Case No. 24”. Jakas is confined to a camp in Provinigtis (Lithuania) [1].
*
[4]
Yakov Leibovich KHANTSIS, a resident of Kishinyov, was arrested in summer 1970 outside the Dutch Embassy in Moscow. He had gone there to get permission to emigrate to Israel.
On 17 August 1970 he was sentenced by the Krasnopresnensky Court in Moscow under Article 206 (RSFSR Criminal Code: “malicious hooliganism”) to 2.5 years in hard regime camps. He served his term in Vyatlag (institution K-231) in the Kirov Region.
On 18 April 1971 Khantsis was conditionally released and sent on probation as a worker to Omutninsk in the Kirov Region. He wrote letters to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet demanding that he and his family be allowed to go to Israel. In spring 1972 he was again arrested, and in the autumn he was sentenced to 2 years in strict regime camps under Article 190-1 (RSFSR Criminal Code).
The address of his place of confinement is: Kirov Region, Postbox OR 216/10 [2]. It has become known that Khantsis has been subjected to beatings and persecution while in confinement.
*
[5]
On 10 December, the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 240 prisoners in Camp VS 389/36 in the Perm Region declared a two-day hunger strike.
The prisoners demanded of the Supreme Soviet that it introduce the status of “political prisoners” and revoke illegal restrictions on reading materials. Textbooks dealing with foreign languages and other subjects are not allowed in the camp. The reason given by the administration for this prohibition is: “You are not authorized to have these books, as you are not students.”
*
[6]
In the same Perm camp (institution 389/36) 25-year sentences are being served by Yury Gutsal (worker, 40), Grigory Girchik (artist, 41), Nikolai Nikolayenko (worker, 43),and Vasily Pirus (40); 15 year sentences by Lev Lukyanenko (jurist, 39), Mikhail Lutsik (40), Andrei Turik and Victor Kurchik; and a 7 year sentence by Nik. Kots (35, teacher at an agricultural school).
*
[7]
Pavel M. Litvinov, convicted for participating in the Red Square demonstration on 25 August 1968 in protest against the sending of Soviet forces into Czechoslovakia (CCE 3.3, CCE 4.1), was released on 11 November 1972 upon completion of his five-year term of exile.
On 11 October 1972, a month before Litvinov’s release, his home in the village of Usugli (Chita Region) was subjected to a search by the guards. The search warrant was signed by Investigator Alexandrovsky, who is in charge of the case of Victor Krasin (CCE 27.2 [2]; this issue CCE 28.3 [3]). The basement and the environs were carefully checked with a mine-detector. Several samizdat poetry anthologies and some parodies of V. Kochetov and S. Smirnov were confiscated.
*
[8]
Early in 1972 a soldier from one of the military units stationed near Moscow, one Yakovlev (b. 1953; called up in Smolensk Region) was confined to the Kashchenko Psychiatric Hospital for criticizing army procedures and compulsory military service. For about a month and a half, without receiving any treatment, Yakovlev was held in a ward with patients, after which he was discharged from the army as mentally ill.
*
[9]
Previously, prisoners in corrective-labour colonies and prisons could get books, making payment on delivery from the bookshops, including certain second-hand shops (“Books by Mail”).
In November 1972, in answer to a routine request of this kind, the director of the shop “Bukinist” (on Lenin Avenue in Moscow) stated that in future the bookshop would not mail any books to addresses “of [penal] institutions”. In this connection she referred to oral instructions.
*
[10]
In late November 1972 Valery Nikolayevich CHALIDZE, with his wife Vera Slonim, flew to the United States. Chalidze had received a visa in connection with invitations from universities in Washington and New York to deliver a series of lectures on problems of the defence of human rights. Chalidze used his ordinary vacation for his private trip (this was its official status). His visa was for a one month stay. He did not have to go through any of the formalities associated with current Soviet instructions on leaving the country for permanent residence abroad.
After his arrival in the US, Chalidze adopted a markedly loyal position with respect to the Soviet authorities in his public utterances and statements, including questions put to him on such touchy matters as the relative conditions of Soviet and American prisoners after he had visited a prison in the State of New York.
Nonetheless, in mid-December Chalidze was notified by the Soviet Ambassador in the US that, by a special decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, he was deprived of his Soviet citizenship “for acts incompatible with the title of citizen of the USSR”.
============================================
NOTES
- A back transliteration, which has not been confirmed as correct.
The camp may in fact be the one at Pravienakiai, where Juozas Zdebskis (CCE 21.9, CCE 22.8 [6], CCE 23.8 [1], CCE 27.3) was imprisoned.
↩︎ - Previously certain persons convicted at the “Jewish” trials were transferred to this camp (//CCE 27).
↩︎
========================
A Chronicle of Current Events 