On 3 October 1969, the Leningrad City Court considered in closed session the case of Galina Vladimirovna SILIVONCHIK [1] (b. 1937), a packer at the Northern Lights factory with seven years of education, and her brother Yury Vladimirovich VASILYEV (b. 1947) who has eight years of education.
The court was made up of:
O.V. Karlov, chairman; V.M. Shimanov and V.I. Chistov, people’s assessors;
A.Ya. Dosugov, Procurator, State prosecutor;
and G.V. Feigina and E.N. Trofimovskaya, counsels for the defence.
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The charge was that on 3 June 1969, as members of a group of three, they attempted to hijack an IL-14 passenger aircraft (No. 3724), on a flight from Leningrad to Tallinn.
The initiator of the operation and its principal executor was Ivan Andreyevich SILIVONCHIK, husband of Galina Silivonchik. When the aircraft made a forced landing at Johvi (on the Estonian coast, near Kohtla-Jarve) Silivonchik attempted to escape pursuit and was killed in an exchange of fire with a border patrol.
The charges against Galine Silivonchik were brought under the following Articles of the RSFSR Criminal Code: 64, para. (a), via 15; 70, para. 1; 72; 102, items (d) and (e), via 15; & 218.
The charges against Yury Vasilyev were identical, apart from the deletion of Article 70 and addition of Article 218, pt. 2.
The subjects of these Articles are as follows:
- 15. Responsibility for preparing, and attempting, to commit a crime;
- 64. Betrayal of the Motherland (compare CCE 4.4);
- 70. Anti-Soviet Agitation & Propaganda;
- 72. Organisational activity directed towards the commission of especially dangerous crimes against the State, and also participation in an anti-Soviet organisation;
- 102. Premeditated murder with aggravating circumstances:
(d) involving danger to the life of many people,
(e) with the object of concealing another crime or facilitating its commission. - 218. The unlawful bearing, possession, manufacture or sale of arms or explosives.
It was the plan of the participants in the affair that the pilot, when threatened with a gun, would change course and fly to Finland, where it was intended to go to the American embassy and ask the US government for political asylum.
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The hijacking of the plane involved the use of arms (a member of the crew was wounded) and inflicting material harm on the passengers of the aircraft.
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Defendants Silivonchik and Vasilyev admitted their guilt.
On the strength of all their crimes and in accordance with Article 40, “Assigning punishment when several crimes have been committed”, RSFSR Criminal Code [2] they were given the following sentences:
Silivonchik, 13 years’ imprisonment in a strict-regime corrective-labour colony with confiscation of property, and five years’ exile after the completion of the basic punitive measure [3].
Vasilyev, 11 years’ imprisonment in a strict-regime corrective-labour colony with confiscation of property, followed by three years’ exile.
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NOTES
- In CCE 15.8 her surname is given as Selivonchik.
↩︎ - Compare the 1970 “Leningrad plane affair” (CCE 14.11 [3]) and the verdict at that trial (CCE 17.6).
↩︎ - On Silivonchik, see CCE 15.8, CCE 16.5 and CCE 33.4.
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