SEVEN ITEMS
MOSCOW (1-5)
[1]
Galina Gabai, the wife of Ilya GABAI (CCE 9.6), is a speech therapist and teacher of literature at the Moscow inter-regional high-school for the deaf and hard of hearing.
The Party committee of Moscow’s Sverdlovsk district asked the school administration to deprive Mrs Gabai of her teaching post at the school. The school director Usachev submitted a report to the pedagogical council, in which he said, among other things, that Galina B. Gabai committed political errors in her comments on pupils’ essays: she called Stalin a criminal, and said nothing about his services to the Revolution. Moreover, claimed the director, in her comments G.B. Gabai was calling for bourgeois individualism: he was referring to a comment which she had written — in answer to a pupil’s argument that society alone should bear the responsibility for the fate of Chekhov’s character Ionych — about the personal responsibility of every man for his actions.
The Director also expressed his dissatisfaction with a speech Galina Gabai had made at a meeting of the pedagogical council. She had said that teachers ought to write their comments in literary language, and not descend to the speech level of their deaf-mute pupils. They should teach them to speak, in literate, not “deaf-mute” language.
The Director added that Mrs Gabai was an erudite teacher, her comments were abstruse, and the students had great difficulty in understanding them. Therefore (?) she should be transferred to the teaching of junior pupils. A number of teachers at the meeting of the pedagogical council spoke against these proposals, and the resolution was not carried. The local trade-union committee also opposed the transfer of Mrs Gabai to junior teaching.
The Party organisation and the school administration, however, obeying a phone-call from the district Party committee, passed a resolution transferring Mrs Gabai to teaching the 6th class, which has only six pupils, and the 7th class, which in practice is non-existent. She was not allowed to take the top (11th) class, for the rest of the school year. To comply with the administration’s decision another teacher lost her duties with the 6th and 7th classes and was made partially redundant: she is due to retire in a year’s time, and a full teaching-load is very important for her pension.
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[2]
Irina YAKIR, an evening-course student at the Historical Archives Institute, has been expelled from the Institute for failing to fulfil her study plan, and for conduct unworthy of a Soviet student.
As far as her study plan is concerned, Irina Yakir was in fact ahead of her year. The real reason for her expulsion was her presence on Mayakovsky Square at the time of the Crimean Tatars’ demonstration on 6 June 1969 (CCE 8.5). She was only informed of her expulsion a month after the order was issued.
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[3]
Lilya KOSIOR, a director of cultural activities, and daughter of a former General Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, Stanislav Kosior, has been dismissed “at her own request” from her job at the taxi-drivers’ club.
This followed a declaration by the administration that Kosior’s production of Boris Gorbatov’s play “The Youth of our Fathers” was erroneous, and the discovery from her personal documents that her mother was Jewish.
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[4]
“For convictions incompatible with the title of Party member”, mathematician, historian, and author of a three-volume work on Stalin (CCE 6.8 [1]), Roy Medvedev, has been expelled from the Party.
His personal dossier was examined by the Lenin district Party committee; no discussion took place in his local Party cell.
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[5]
Boris YEFIMOV is a senior engineer in the Information Department of the Experimental Construction Bureau for power and technological processes in the chemicals industry.
The Director of the Bureau, E.I. Shipov, asked Yefimov to apply to be dismissed “at his own request”, and did not hide the fact that he was acting on the instructions of the KGB. “We cannot keep you here as an employee, because of your political unreliability: after all, we have a duplicating machine in the next room”, he said, referring to an ERA machine. Yefimov was threatened with dismissal “because of personnel cuts” if he refused to leave “at his own request”.
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LENINGRAD
[6]
Gemma KVACHEVSKAYA, sister of Lev Kvachevsky (CCE 5.2; convicted under Article 70) and wife of Vladimir Borisov, who was forcibly interned in a psychiatric hospital (CCE 8.12 [13]), has been deprived of her residence permit for Leningrad.
Gemma Kvachevskaya (rt.)
Moreover, the administration of the Leningrad Medical Institute, from which she was expelled for actions “incompatible with the title of Soviet student” (in reality for refusing to repent and to condemn her brother) is refusing to give her an academic reference. As a result, Gemma Kvachevskaya is deprived of the opportunity to complete her education.
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[7]
Issue 7 (CCE 7.12 [13]) reported that A.V. GUSEV, a senior research officer at the Academy of Sciences’ Zoological Institute, had been expelled from the Party. Several more details of his case have now come to light.
The immediate reason for starting a case against him was a letter he sent to L.I. Brezhnev on 26 August 1968. It contained a protest against the occupation of Czechoslovakia. The decision to invade would damage the prestige of the Soviet Union, the letter’s author believed, and the building of a communist society.
Instead of replying to the letter, it was forwarded to Gusev’s local Party cell. During the investigation of his case, an earlier letter Gusev sent to A.N. Kosygin, L.I. Brezhnev and the paper Komsomolskaya Pravda was also held against him: it concerned the plundering of natural resources — of Lake Baikal, of Keret on the White Sea, and of other regions of natural beauty. Gusev indicated that the irreparable damage caused by these activities resulted from the irresponsible attitude of top official bodies, acting with impunity.
From Kosygin’s secretariat, and from the editor of Komsomolskaya Pravda, he received cautious but favourable replies; Brezhnev’s secretariat, on the other hand, forwarded the letter to Gusev’s local Party cell for examination.
Yet another letter, concerning matters of State and public life, intended for dispatch to A.N Kosygin (Soviet ‘prime minister’), was stolen from Gusev ‘s office desk by a commission investigating his case. The commission was led by O.S. Khmelevskaya, an instructor from the Vasilevsky Island district Party committee. At the same time, letters of a personal nature were taken and these, too, were added to the case.
On 8 December 1968, at a meeting of the Institute’s Party committee chaired by O.A. Skarlato, Gusev was expelled from the Party. Forty people voted for his expulsion, 11 against; there was one abstention. A Communist Party member who knew of Gusev’s letter about Lake Baikal and did not report it has had a case opened against him.
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