Commentary No 18 (April 1971)

No 18 : 5 March 1971

18.1 POLITICAL PRISONERS IN PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALS

  1. The Russian text of one of Zinaida Grigorenko’s letters, dated 11 February, and addressed to “The World Mental Health Society”, is in Possev 5, 1971, pp 5-6. English extracts were published in The Observer, 2 May 1971.
  2. Chernyshov appeal. Russian text in Possev 5, 1971, pp. 3-4.
  3. Victor Fainberg. A shortened text of the document is in Possev 3, 1971, pp. 6-7; the full text in Kaznimye sumasshestviem (punished by madness), a large compilation on Soviet prison-hospitals, Possev Verlag, 1971.

18.2 THE HUNGER STRIKE IN VLADIMIR PRISON

  1. On Karavansky, see also V. Chornovil, The Chornovil Papers, 1968, pp. 166-226, and Michael Browne, Ferment in the Ukraine, London, 1971, Passim.
  2. Krasivsky’s sentence, according to other sources, was twelve years, plus five in exile.

18.5 A SURVEY OF EVENTS IN UKRAINE

  1. Nos. 1 and 2 appeared as a book: Ukrainsky visnyk. Vypusk I-II, P.I.U.F. – Smoloskyp, Paris (3, rue du Sabot, Paris) – Baltimore, 1971.
  2. Text in Programma Demokraticheskogo Dvizheniya Sovetskogo Soyuza, Amsterdam, 1970. See Chronicle 11.16.

18.7 THE CRIMEAN TATAR MOVEMENT

  1. Zarlyk Saginbayev 300 dnei v tylu vraga: dokumentalnaya. povest, Frunze, 1969, reviewed in Sovetskaya Kirgiziya, Frunze, 3 December 1969.
  2. Nasriddinova, President of the Supreme Soviet’s second chamber, The Council of Nationalities.

18.8 A WARNING TO THE COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

  1. The text of the 1932 Regulations are to be found in Sobranie uzakonenii … RSFSR, No. 74, p. 331, exact date 10 July 1932.
  2. Article 200 defines this offence as “a self-willed exercise of an actual or supposed right, which has involved infringement of the procedures prescribed by law, and caused substantial damage to citizens or the State or public organizations”.

18.10 NEWS IN BRIEF

  1. A leaflet distributed in Moscow on 18 January 1970 by the Belgian student Victor van Brantegem, calling on Shostakovich to intervene not only for the Greek Theodorakis but also for Soviet political prisoners. Text in Possev 2, 1970, pp. 6-7.
  2. Also present at the discussion of the Voinovich story, according to several sources, was a General in the KGB.
  3. Yevtushenko statement on events in Czechoslovakia, dated 22 August 1968, may be found in Abraham Brumberg, ed., In Quest of Justice: Protest and Dissent in the Soviet Union Today, London, 1970, p. 311.
  4. For attacks on Chendei see, e.g., Zakarpatska pravda, 18 July 1969. But see also praise of him in Molodaya gvardiya 5, 1968, p. 299.
  5. Handilstidning, Stockholm, 13 April 1971, reported that Silmale had a serious cancer operation in 1964 and now suffers from high blood pressure. She is the author of essays on Balzac and Pirandello, published as afterwords to Latvian editions of their works, and the translator of Camus’s La Peste, published in Latvian in Riga in 1969.
  6. In this as yet unpublished document the priests gave their addresses as, respectively, Kaunas-Garliava, P. Cvirkas 35, and Sakjai district, Valakbudis. See the text of a similar, collective appeal in Studies on Comparative Communism, Los Angeles, III, 2, April 1970, pp. 141-5.
  7. On Zverev see A. Amalrik, Involuntary Journey to Siberia, London, 1970, chapters 1 and 2.

18.11 SAMIZDAT UPDATE

  1. Exodus No 4 was published in English by the Institute of Jewish Affairs, 13-16 Jacob’s Well Mews, George St., London, W.1.
  2. A. S. Khomyakov, 1804-1860, and I. V. Kireyevsky, 1806-1856, were prominent Slavophiles and religious philosophers. A. I. Dubrovin was a leader of the chauvinist early 20th-century Union of the Russian while A. D. Menshikov (1673-1729) was a rather crude lieutenant of Peter the Great.
  3. Osipov’s statement was published abroad in Possev 5, 1971, p. 8.

18.12 OBITUARIES

  1. See Talantov on these articles in M. Bourdeaux, Patriarch and Prophets: Persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church Today, London, 1969, pp. 332-9. This book also contains the texts of the 1963 and 1966 letters.

18.13 LETTERS AND STATEMENTS

  1. Presumably a reference to Stikhi, Frankfurt, 1969, where Gorbanevskaya’s poems of 1956-61 occupied 12 of the 136 pages.
  2. Stikhi contained the last three of these collections.
  3. Published in Grani 76, 1970, pp. 87-91.
  4. Published in Vestnik Russkogo studencheskogo khristianskogo dvizheniya (91, rue Olivier-de-Serres, Paris 15), No. 98, 1970, pp. 148-50.