Mordovia camp complex, ZhKh 385/3
1. Zaritskaya, Yekaterina Mironovna
Born 1914 in the town of Kolomyya [Ivano-Frankovsk Region] in the family of a school teacher. Graduated from Lvov’s Lysenko Musical Institute and the Lvov Polytechnic Institute. Arrested in 1934 for taking part in the assassination of the Polish minister of internal affairs Pieracki and sentenced to four and a half years’ imprisonment, released in August 1939. In March 1940 Zaritskaya (Zarytska, Ukr.) she was arrested by the NKVD [KGB title, 1934-1943] on the same charges which had been brought against her by the Polish authorities in 1934. In September 1940 her son Bogdan was born in prison.
At the end of June 1941, during the brief period between the retreat of the Soviet forces and the arrival of the Germans, Zaritskaya was released from Lvov Prison, one of sixteen prisoners who had survived. She then went underground. Until 1947 she was a leader of the Ukrainian Red Cross, worked on the journal Thought and Action [ideya i delo] and was a messenger for the OUN [Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists], She was arrested in 1947 in the town of Khodoriv. Zaritskaya resisted arrest with gunfire, killed and wounded one or two people, and was herself wounded in the head. When she came to in prison she bit an ampoule of potassium cyanide, but her life was saved. She was sentenced by the Special Board to 25 years’ imprisonment. Until April 1969 she was in Vladimir Prison.
Her husband, Mikhail Mikhailovich Soroka, is in Camp ZhKh 385/17A.
2. Didyk, Galina
Born 1912, a teacher. Until the beginning of 1947 she was deputy head of the Red Cross attached to the UFA [Ukrainska povstanska armiya, Ukrainian Insurgent Army], and then an intelligence agent and messenger of the OUN.
Didyk was arrested in April 1950. The house where she was hiding with General Roman Shukhevich was surrounded. Shukhevich was killed in the exchange of fire (or shot himself, seeing the hopelessness of his position), and G. Didyk tried to kill herself by taking poison. She was sentenced to 25 years. Until April 1969 she was in Vladimir Prison.
3. Gusyak, Darya
Born 1924, an OUN messenger, arrested in March 1950 and sentenced to 25 years. Spent nineteen years in Vladimir Prison.
4. Palchan, Maria
Born 1927, an OUN messenger, arrested in 1958 and sentenced to fifteen years.
5. Sklyarova, Lydia
Sentenced to fifteen years for taking part in an attempt to hijack an aeroplane in order to go abroad.
6. Selivonchik [Silivonchik], Galina
Born 1937. Sentenced to thirteen years for taking part in an attempt to hijack an aeroplane [CCE 16.5] in 1969. Her brother and husband also took part in the attempt; her husband was killed.
7. Kodene, Verute
Born 1919. A Lithuanian collective farm [kolkhoz] worker. Kodene was sentenced in 1968 to ten years for events twenty years earlier (the post-war nationalist resistance). Arrested in the psychiatric hospital where she was being treated, on the denunciation of a doctor who had listened to her talking in a delirium. She is still mentally ill.
8. Grozena, Nadezhda Stepanovna
Aged 59. Arrested in Tashkent. Sentenced for a second time to ten years for membership of a “True Orthodox Church” [istinno pravoslavnaya tserkov] group under Article 70, anti-Soviet propaganda. Grozena‘s first sentence was 25 years, of which she served a few years and was released in 1956. Her sentence expires in October 1970.
9. Varseyeva, Mariam Mitrofanovna
Aged 50-52. Arrested in Tashkent. Sentenced to ten years, “True Orthodox Church” group. Sentence expires in October 1970.
10. Semyonova, Maria Pavlovna
Aged 45. Ten-year sentence, “True Orthodox Church” group. Sentence expires in 1971.
11. Kislyachuk, Evgenia Fominichna
Aged about 65. Sentenced for a second time to ten years for belonging to the “Jehovah’s Witnesses” sect. Sentence expires in 1972.
12. Bozhar, Vera lovna
Aged 46. Sentenced for belonging to the “Jehovah’s Witnesses” sect to seven years plus five years’ exile. Sentence expires in December 1970.
13. Mashkova, Valentina
Born 1938. In a political camp for the second time. Arrested in August 1966 for trying to cross the border with her husband. Mashkova birth to a daughter in prison. Sentenced by the Leningrad City Court first to ten years – the Procurator demanded fifteen – and then, after the sentence had been quashed by the Supreme Court and the case retried by the Leningrad City Court (with the same membership), to six years – the Procurator demanded ten).
I4. Geidane, Birute
Born 1950, daughter of a Latvian woman writer. Arrested in June 1969 for hanging out the national red-white-red flag of Latvia. Sentenced to one and a half years.
15. Rogaleva [Rogalyova], Elena (b. 1952)
Arrested in 1969 in Krasnoyarsk-45, a satellite town of Krasnoyarsk [central Siberia], and sentenced at the end of the year at an assizes session of the Russian Supreme Court with Petrashko and Potemchenko, two girls [correction: two lads] of her age, to five years in a strict-regime corrective labour colony. Rogaleva was charged under Articles 68, 70 and 72 of the Russian Criminal Code: anti-Soviet organisation, propaganda; circulating leaflets, diversion; setting fire to official buildings (the police, the Procuracy, the court) and to the villas of the “city fathers”.
16. Bekdualiyeva, Raisa Ilinichna
Aged 45, teacher of literature. Sentenced to three years in March 1970 by the Uzhgorod [S.W. Ukraine] Region Court for sending letters to foreign statesmen.
17. Gryunvald, Natalya Frantsevna
Heroine of the film Two Years above the Abyss. Arrested in the 1940s and sentenced to 25 years; amnestied in 1956 but, on the personal order of Procurator-General Rudenko, returned to a camp in 1962. She does not admit guilt on any of the charges brought against her.
18. Vorontsova, Vera
Repeatedly convicted during the last few years on criminal charges. Vorontsova was sentenced by the Leningrad Region Court in 1968 to be shot for collaborating with the Germans during the war (she informed on the Soviet underground); execution by shooting was commuted to fifteen years as an act of mercy. At present she reports [nadzor] on the other prisoners in the camp.
19. A ninety-year-old woman
“An especially dangerous state criminal”, was recently pardoned after having served more than half of her 25-year sentence.
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