DEATHS
Aits Khanso, Estonian (b. 1913). Died 28 September 1969 in his twenty-third year of imprisonment. Heart attack. Earlier, during a search, some ‘validolum’ [1] was taken away. (Camp 17).
Juozas Lankauskas, Lithuanian (b. 1913). Hanged himself, 18 December 1969, in his nineteenth year of imprisonment. (Camp 17).
Jonas Stenokevicius, Lithuanian (b. 1902). Died in December 1969 (Camp 3).
Janis Kapicins (Kapitsyn), Latvian (b. 1917). Died 16 January 1970.
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FYODOROV
On 19 December 1969 Yu.I. Fyodorov, from Leningrad (b. 1933), arrived in Camp 17.
Formerly an official of district committees of the Leningrad Komsomol, he was then an MVD investigator and captain of police [2].
Tried 24-26 July 1969 by the Leningrad City Court on charges connected with an illegal organisation “The Union of Communists”. (Judge, N.V. Isakova; Procurator, I.V. Katukova. The preliminary investigation was conducted by a group of KGB investigators under Major Valzaitsev.)
There were five defendants in the case. Among them were a senior investigator of the Leningrad City Procuracy, and Party and Komsomol officials. Article 70 (RSFSR Criminal Code). Sentences from three to six years. None of the accused pleaded guilty, all refused defending counsel.
Fyodorov (sentenced to six years) has been transferred to Camp 17 after two weeks in Dubrovlag’s investigation prison, where he had been put for participating in a protest campaign against the keeping of political prisoners together with war criminals.
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Leonid Borodin, a participant in the hunger strike that took place in the Mordovian camps in November and December 1969 (CCE 11.4), and one of the authors of the “Letter of the Seven” addressed to the deputies of the USSR Supreme Soviet, is still being held in a punishment cell.
All the other participants in the hunger strike have been released from the punishment block. Borodin is seriously ill.
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Yury Galanskov has been transferred to hospital (Potma, institution ZhKh 385/3) because of extreme aggravation of his ulcers. Galanskov’s condition is critical.
Victor Kalnins, on 10 December 1969, was read a deed of confiscation concerning a letter he had written to Deputy and writer Rasul Gamzatov, because of its “openly anti-Soviet nature”.
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Birute Geidane (19) sentenced under Article 65 (Latvian SSR Criminal Code) to eighteen months imprisonment, arrived in October 1969 in the women’s zone of Camp 3.
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NOTES
- The ‘validolum’ taken away from Khanso was methyl valerate, a sedative used in USSR for treatment of cardiac disease.
↩︎ - “Before his arrest” Yury I. Fyodorov (not to be confused with Yu.P. Fyodorov, CCE 17.6-1) “was no longer an MVD investigator, but worked as a supplier to some institution” (CCE 18.13).
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A Chronicle of Current Events 