Victor KRASIN (b. 1929), a former inmate of Stalin’s camps, is an economist by training and a member of the Action Group for the Defence of Civil Rights in the USSR (CCE 8.10). He is father of three children.
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ARREST
At a quarter to midnight on 20 December 1969 Krasin was detained at a friend’s flat. Policemen and plainclothes agents broke into the flat, almost tearing the door from its hinges.
Roughly pushing aside the lady of the house, and flinging open cupboards in the corridor as they passed, the men strode swiftly into the room where Victor Krasin was. They presented him with a warrant for his arrest, signed by the procurator of Moscow’s Perovo district. In the flat with Krasin were his wife and three children, and seven children belonging to the owners of the flat. They were woken up as they slept.
Krasin’s wife wanted to telephone her friends and tell them of her husband’s arrest, but the police did not allow her to do this, calling her a “hooligan”. The intruders wanted to search the flat without a search warrant. The owner tried to resist, but they confdiscated some of his translation work, saying that they wished to examine it. After this Krasin was led away.
Victor Krasin (1929-2017)
Krasin’s wife and friends spent the whole night searching for him in Moscow police stations. Only next day did they find out that he was being held in Police Station 57. Neither his friends nor his wife were informed of the reasons for his arrest.
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DETENTION
On the morning of 22 December 1969, Krasin was transferred to Police Station 102, where he was held for the next two days. During a conversation Mikhailov, deputy head of the station’s criminal investigation, told Krasin’s wife, Anna Krasina: “We’ll do whatever they tell us—we might release him, we might convict him, it doesn’t depend on us.”
During the time that Krasin was held in the police station, that is three days, access was strictly controlled: everyone who entered was questioned in detail as to where he/she was going, and to whom. On the evening of 22 December an ambulance was called for Krasin. The diagnosis was spasm of the aorta. Notwithstanding this, Krasin was left in the same cell in terrible conditions: no windows, no ventilation, and in the company of drunkards, hooligans and mental cases whom the hospital would not accept for treatment.
On 23 December 1969, Krasin underwent a medical examination, and was found to be suffering from heart and stomach trouble. The medical team which diagnosed him specified that he could not engage in heavy physical labour; it recommended that he work in the speciality for which he was trained.
On 23 December Krasin was taken for an interview with the Perovo district procurator, at which he was finally told the reasons for his detention and arrest: for the past 15 months he had done no work, he had not thought about his children’s welfare, he had not attended parents’ meetings at school, and he had not been present on his son’s birthday.
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Krasin is known as an active fighter against Stalinism. He had recently been working on the completion of his Master’s thesis, and had been employed as a freelance technical translator for The All-Union Scientific Research Institute for Technical Information [VNIITI].
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TRIAL
KRASIN’s trial was held at 6 pm, following his interview with the procurator, on the evening of 23 December 1969. His wife was not informed of the time or place of the trial, and it was quite by chance that she was present and appeared as a witness.
Krasin was charged, in accordance with RSFSR Supreme Soviet decree (4 May 1961), with leading an anti-social, parasitic way of life. The charge was based on a reference from a post at which Krasin had not been working for a year and three months. The reference was signed by V. Mikhalevsky, a laboratory head at the Central Economics & Mathematics Institute. Accusations that Krasin had failed to attend parents’ meetings at school, and had not been present on his son’s birthday, also figured in the trial.
The Judge asked Krasin why his mother’s surname was Rozenberg. Krasin replied that his mother had kept her maiden name.
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Anna Krasina stated that she had no complaints against her husband. For many years the whole family had lived on her husband’s wages alone, she said, and no one had ever expressed any interest in what her children were eating; at the moment she was earning a particular sum by translation work, and was anxious to finish work on her thesis. She said that to condemn her husband as a parasite would be completely unlawful.
The Judge asked Krasin what he could tell the Court. Krasin replied that he did not consider himself a parasite, but that if the Court brought in a verdict of guilty he would appeal against it, invoking the supervisory powers of the procurator’s office [1].
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Sentence
KRASIN was sentenced to five years’ exile, the maximum punishment under the 4 May 1961 decree. On 24 December 1969 he was sent to the Krasnoyarsk Region (Krai) in central Siberia in a convicts train.
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Note
- In the Soviet judicial system the procurator has many functions.
In addition to the investigation of many crimes and offences and their prosecution in court, the procurator’s office also has supervisory powers over the application of laws.
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