Political trials around the USSR, February 1970 (12.4)

«No 12 : 28 February 1970»

FOUR TRIALS

Dneptropetrovsk, Saratov, Ryazan, Gorky

See Maps of Russia (RSFSR) and the Soviet Union

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[1]

DNEPROPETROVSK

East Ukraine

From 19 to 27 January 1970 the trial of Ivan Sokulsky, N.G. Kulchinsky and V.V. Savchenko, accused under Article 62 (UkSSR Criminal Code = Article 70, RSFSR Code), was held in Dnepropetrovsk.

The judge was Tubelts, the assessors were Krikunov and Grinevich. The prosecutor was Zhupinsky, Regional deputy-procurator.

The defence lawyers were Romm and Sarry (Moscow) and Yezholy (Dnepropetrovsk).

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The case was heard in closed session. Only the mothers of the accused, the correspondents of several Ukrainian newspapers, and officials of the KGB were present. Sentence was passed in open court.

The accused were charged with:

  1. Preparation and distribution of an “Appeal to the Creative Youth of Dnepropetrovsk” (CCE 11.15 [14]). Sokulsky admitted authorship of the work. (Among other things, the document discussed the dismissal from their work of persons devoted to Ukrainian culture, and facts about enforced Russification.)
  2. Distribution of the document by Valentyn Moroz, “Report from the Beria Reservation”.
  3. Distribution of an article by Academician Aganbegyan, “The Soviet Economy”.
  4. Copying chapters from The Slovaks and the Ukrainians [1], a book by Molnar (the books of this author have been published in the USSR; the book in question has received positive reviews in the Soviet press).
  5. Keeping, at Sokulsky’s home, a letter addressed but not sent to the CPSU Central Committee entitled “Acting like the Satraps of the Tsar”.
  6. Sokulsky only (his own verse).
  7. Verbal statements on the National Question and the military intervention in Czechoslovakia.

The procurator demanded: six years imprisonment for Sokulsky; four years for Kulchinsky; and three years for Savchenko (who was at liberty during the trial).

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The court passed the following sentences.

Four and a half years imprisonment for Sokulsky [2] under Article 62 (UkSSR Criminal Code) strict-regime.

Two and a half years imprisonment for Kulchinsky under Article 187-1 (= Article 190-1, RSFSR Code); and a two year suspended sentence for Savchenko, with three years probation, also under Article 187-1.

The Article under which Kulchinsky and Savchenko were charged was altered in the course of the proceedings. The accused pleaded guilty within the terms of Article 187-1 (Ukrainian SSR Criminal Code).

Sokulsky expressed his repentance.

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[2]

SARATOV

Volga District (Okrug)

In Saratov the trial of six young persons accused of creating an anti-Soviet organisation and of “Anti-Soviet Agitation & Propaganda” (Articles 70 & 72, RSFSR Criminal Code) was held from 5 to 13 January 1970.

The head of the organisation was Senin, a student at the Institute of Law.

The other members were Romanov, a 4th-year student in the history faculty of Saratov State University; Kulikov who graduated from the physical education faculty (Saratov University) and was at the time of his arrest a trainer in artistic gymnastics; Kirikin, a student at the Institute of Law, and Bobrov (likewise); and Fokeyev, an evening-course student at Saratov University.

At 28, Kulikov was the oldest of those convicted. All the accused pleaded guilty and repented.

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There were about fifty witnesses at the trial, principally students.

According to inexact information, the organisation was called the “Party of True Communists”, and had a programme of liberal-democratic content. Its aim was the creative study of Marxist literature from primary sources and also of other works by Soviet and foreign authors, both published and banned.

At the trial the accused particularly emphasised that (a) they had conducted not “agitation” (‘a little for many’), but “propaganda” (‘much for a few’), and (b) invited newcomers to join the organisation only when they had familiarised themselves with the propagandistic material, and only if their views were similar.

The trial was organised on the model of analogous Moscow trials: specially invited people, and a few relatives. Near the courthouse a crowd gathered (CCE 14.10), 100-150 strong, mainly of young people.

Senin was sentenced to seven years; Romanov, Kulikov and Kirikin to six years; and Bobrov to four years; all in strict-regime camps.

Fokeyev was sentenced to three years in a normal-regime camp.

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[3]

RYAZAN

Central Russia

In the second half of 1968 six students from the Radio-Technical Institute in Ryazan formed an illegal group, a “Marxist party of a new type” (CCE 14.7). They were Yury Vudka, Shimons Grilyus, Frolov, Valery Vudka, Martimonov and Zaslavsky.

Ryazan radiotechnical institute (Vudka i ko)

Ryazan Radio-Technical Institute

Yury Vudka, an external student and a turner at the Ryazan agricultural machinery factory, wrote (under the pseudonym “L. Borin”) a pamphlet called The Decline of Capital, which was the programmatic document of the group.

In August 1969 the group was arrested by the KGB.

The arrests took place after the denunciation of the organisation by two of its members, Martimonov and Zaslavsky, and by their confession of guilt. Charges were brought under Articles 70 & 72. The case was heard in February 1970 in the Ryazan Region Court. The witnesses were from the Moscow area, Leningrad, Kiev, Saratov and other towns.

(Apparently the Ryazan group was linked with various towns. Senin’s Saratov group, above [2], sentenced a month earlier, had the same Decline of Capital as its programmatic document.)

Yury Vudka was given a seven-year sentence [3]; Shimon Grilyus and Frolov, five years each; Valery Vudka, three years — all strict-regime.

At liberty during the investigation, Zaslavsky and Martimonov, were given suspended sentences.

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[4]

THE GORKY AFFAIR

Volga District (Okrug)

In Gorky the case of Mikhail Kapranov, Sergei Ponomaryov and Vladimir Zhiltsov (CCE 10.6) continues (and with it the associated case of Vladlen Pavlenkov.)

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Mikhail Kapranov is a former student of Gorky University, twice expelled for speaking out at a Komsomol meeting and in a private letter about the economy and politics of the Soviet Union. He is the father of two sons.

Sergei Ponomaryov is an arts student, a contributor to a factory broadsheet, and the father of a four-year-old daughter.

Vladimir Zhiltsov, a 5th-year history student at Gorky University, who received first-class marks throughout his years of study, was arrested just before he was due to defend his graduation dissertation.

During the arrest his leg was broken.

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All three were arrested in summer 1969.

All three were charged under Article 190-1 (RSFSR Criminal Code) in January 1970. Later this was changed to Articles 70 & 72. The investigators were Khokhlov, Belovzorov and Savelev.

The charges concern the composition and distribution of leaflets.

In spring 1968, to mark the centenary of Gorky University, an appeal was issued and pasted up in the streets of the town, in particular opposite the KGB building and on the university buildings.

It contained the following demands:

  • those condemned in the political trials of the 1930s must be fully rehabilitated; the true nature of those trials should be made public;
  • conditions of imprisonment for present-day political prisoners must be improved;
  • democratic freedoms should be introduced.

The charges also concern an attempt to form an anti-Soviet organisation. (It is possible there was an intention — and no more than that — to form a group to fight against infringements of legality.)

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In October 1969 Vladlen Pavlenkov was arrested by the KGB.

Born in 1929, he is a teacher of history. The Chronicle has no information about the charges against him, or whether his case is in some way linked with the case of the three, or is simply one and the same case (a ”case of the four”).

The investigators sent Pavlenkov for a forensic-psychiatric examination.

PAVLENKOV’s wife, Svetlana wrote to KGB Senior Investigator A M. Khokhlov. If her husband were declared of unsound mind, she said, she would respond by burning herself to death (CCE 11.15 [13]). She also sent the statement to USSR Procurator-General Rudenko and to KGB Chairman Andropov.

Vladlen Pavlenkov was declared to be of sound mind.

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NOTES

  1. Published in 1965, author Mikhaylo I. Molnar who from 1974 onwards was a senior research associate at the Slovak Academy of Sciences’ Literary Institute in Bratislava, where he died in 2006.
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  2. See entry for Ivan Sokulsky on KHPG website (“The dissident movement in Ukraine”), and Name Index on this site.
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  3. On Yury Vudka, see CCE 14.7, CCE 18.4, CCE 22.4 [1], CCE 24.11 [19] and CCE 42.4-4.
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Ivan H. Sokulsky (1942-1992)

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