1.
ERUAND LALAYANTS
Referring to A. Yenina’s article “Renegades” (Leningradskaya Pravda, 18 January 1970) in “The Soviet Press on the Persecution of Dissenters” (CCE 14.5), the Chronicle‘s information about the fate of Eruand LALAYANTS included certain inaccuracies [correction CCE 18.14].
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E.A. Lalayants (b. 1925), fought in the Patriotic War (1941-1945) and is an engineer and economist.
At the end of 1969 he was sentenced under Article 70 (RSFSR Criminal Code) to three years in strict-regime, corrective-labour colonies. The court which considered the case of Lalayants consisted of Judge Isakova (chairwoman), Manin and Artamonov (people’s assessors) and prosecutor Katukova (Procurator).
E.A. Lalayants was charged with the systematic compilation, duplication and circulation of documents slandering the Soviet political and social system:
- writing a letter to Literaturnaya gazeta addressed to M.A. Sholokhov;
- a leaflet (two copies) calling on the inhabitants of Leningrad to start a general strike; and
- a letter about the case of Ginzburg and Galanskov (CCE 1.1) to the CPSU Central Committee.
Lalayants signed his letters “Headquarters of the Rossiiskaya Socialist Party”, i.e., the Socialist Party of Russia.
At present Lalayants is being held in one of the Mordovian camps: penal institution ZhKh 385/17 [Camp 17, see Map 3].
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2.
MIKHAIL MAKARENKO
On 13 October 1970, Pravda published a feature by V. Chertkov: “A speculator in his true colours. Against falsification”. The main character is Mikhail Yanovich MAKARENKO [1], arrested in Moscow in 1969 by the KGB.
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Mikhail Makarenko, 1931-2007
The trial was held in closed session in the Moscow City Court in September 1970 and lasted several days. It was presided over by Judge Vladimir V. Bogdanov. Beside Makarenko in the dock was Vyacheslav Rodionov.
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M.Ya. Makarenko was born in 1931 in the Rumanian town of Galati. In 1940 he found himself on Soviet territory, following the USSR’s annexation of Bessarabia, and was placed in a children’s home.
After serving in the army and working under contract, organising clubs in the countryside, he moved to Leningrad in 1954. He married Ludmila Makarenko and took her surname. Some time later he entered the Philosophy Faculty of Moscow University, but was expelled from the university in connection with a criminal charge against him – building a house with unearned income. Makarenko’s guilt was not proven by the court.
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Next he turned up in Novosibirsk where, in 1965, he organised a club “At the Integral” [Pod integralom] and ran the Picture Gallery in Akademgorodok.
As one of its most noteworthy functions it is worth mentioning the periodic “Festival of Bards”, which included among its participants Galich, Klyachkin and Vysotsky [2]. The activities of the club “At the Integral” and of the Picture Gallery virtually came to an end in 1968 with this festival and with the organisation of one-man exhibitions of the artists Filonov, Falk and Lissitsky [3], as well as of Picasso’s sketches.
They were followed by an article in Evening Novosibirsk and Makarenko’s dismissal from the post of manager of the Picture Gallery. Makarenko’s subsequent fate was determined by his persistent efforts to organise a Mark Chagall exhibition. Chagall had agreed to come to the USSR and to provide canvasses for it [4] …
Vyacheslav Rodionov, aged 23, is a carpenter and resident of Kolchugino (Vladimir Region, Central Russia). The charge against him was in part the same.
Rodionov’s mother was not admitted to the courthouse. The court rejected the petition by defence counsel Yu. Bobrova pointing out the need to hear testimony from witnesses called by her.
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Verdict and Sentence
Makarenko was sentenced under Articles 70, 162, 173 & 88 of the RSFSR Criminal Code [5] to a total of eight years imprisonment (with confiscation of property) in strict-regime corrective-labour colonies.
Under Article 70 Makarenko and Rodionov were charged with preparing and circulating a letter to the Budapest Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties [6]. It was signed “The Party of Non-Party Workers Struggling for the Restoration of Socialism”. Copies of the letter were handed in at the Rumanian and Hungarian embassies and thence reached the KGB.
(This item is based on a biography of Makarenko circulating in samizdat.)
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NOTES
Eventually, Makarenko left the USSR. He was shot dead, aged 75, in Washington D.C. on 15 March 2007 (Wikipedia).
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- For the 1968 letter of protest about the Galanskov-Ginzburg trial and the beginning of Makarenko’s problems in Novosibirsk, see CCE 2.2 and following notes.
Subsequent Chronicle reports document the later treatment and experiences of Mikhail Makarenko in Perm Camp 36 (CCE 33.5-2), in Vladimir Prison (CCE 46.10-1), and after his release (CCE 48.13-2).
↩︎ - The annual “Festival of Bards” brought together singer-songwriters such as the nationally famous Alexander Galich, Yevgeny Klyachkin and Vladimir Vysotsky, as well as local performers. “Illicit” recordings made at such festivals circulated as magnitizdat, the taped equivalent of samizdat.
↩︎ - The work of all three artists – Pavel Filonov (1883-1941), Robert Falk (1886-1958) and El Lissitsky (1890-1941) – enjoyed a revival after Stalin’s death.
↩︎ - Not until the late 1980s was there an exhibition in the USSR at Moscow’s Pushkin Museum of Chagall’s work, although some of his earliest and best work was produced in and around Vitebsk.
↩︎ - Articles 162, 173 & 88 refer respectively to: “engaging in a prohibited form of enterprise”; “taking of bribes”; and “violating the rules for hard-currency operations”.
↩︎ - Makarenko’s letter to the February 1968 Budapest Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties may be contrasted to the “Appeal” sent from Moscow by Kostyorin, Bogoraz, Litvinov and others (CCE 1.4).
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