The fate of Anatoly MARCHENKO, author of My Testimony, is well-known to readers of the Chronicle. On 21 August 1968, he was sentenced to one year in a strict-regime camp, for “infringing identity document regulations” (CCE 3.1 [1]).
Marchenko’s friends say the charge was trumped up, as was borne out at every stage of the legal proceedings. As additional proof, mention may be made of the ‘instructions’ given to the People’s Assessors. They were dealing with a criminal so cunning and insidious, they were told, that he had not broken the law: this Article of the Criminal Code was the only way of getting him imprisoned.
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Anatoly T. Marchenko (1936-1986)
Anatoly Marchenko is a very sick man.
In the camps of Mordovia he had meningitis and became deaf. After he came out, he had a trepanning operation on the skull. He also suffered from heavy internal bleeding in the stomach, and a dangerously high loss of haemoglobin, and was saved only by a series of blood transfusions.
The court had access to Marchenko’s medical reports. Yet they still sent him to a camp in the extreme north of the Perm Region, with a severe climate. In the camp Marchenko worked in a construction gang. In April 1969 he was put in the punishment cell for 15 days for refusing to work in a basement without the protective clothing authorized for that particular job.
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Marchenko’s term of imprisonment was due to end on 29 July 1969.
In May this year, however, the Perm Region Procurator’s Office began new proceedings against him under Article 190 (RSFSR Criminal Code). Marchenko was transferred to Solikamsk Prison (Perm Region).
His book My Testimony, in which he tells the truth about life in the prisons and camps for political prisoners, has aroused a personal hatred in the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It cannot be excluded that the persons who ordered these new proceedings are intent on destroying Marchenko.
Three years in a strict-regime camp could kill a man in Marchenko’s condition.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 