The first issue of the Chronicle reported the trial of members of ASCULP, the “All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People” [CCE 1.6]. [1]
Seventeen “rank-and-file” members of ASCULP were convicted, as well as (separately) four “leaders”: Igor Vyacheslavovich Ogurtsov (b. 1937) the “head” of the organisation; Mikhail Yukhanovich Sado (b. 1934) “director of the personnel section, responsible for the security of the organisation”; Yevgeny Alexandrovich Vagin (b. 1938) “director of the ideological section”; and Boris Anatolevich Averochkin (b. 1938) “curator of the documents of the organisation”.
They were charged with “betrayal of the fatherland” (Article 64-a of the Russian Criminal Code), i.e. in this case with “conspiracy to seize power”; with “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” (Article 70) and with “creation of an anti-Soviet organisation” (Article 72).
Altogether eighteen members of ASCULP arrived in the Mordovian camps and Vladimir Prison during 1968; three (Stanislav Konstantinov, Olgerd Zobak and Oleg Shuvalov) were given sentences which they had in fact already served during the pre-trial investigation.
The following [five] are at present in the Mordovian camps:
Averochkin (Camp 19; sentence, eight years) and Vagin (same camp, same sentence [2]): Article 43 of The Russian Criminal Code (“imposition of a more lenient sentence than is prescribed by the law”) was applied in their case;
Nikolai Viktorovich Ivanov (b. 1937; Camp 17, sentence six years); Vladimir Fyodorovich Ivoilov (b. 1938; Camp 19, same sentence [3]); and also Sado (sentence, thirteen years), who was transferred from Vladimir Prison in 1969, first to Camp 17 and then to Camp 3. At present he is working as an orderly in the hospital zone of Camp 3.
Igor Ogurtsov, by sentence of the court, is serving the first seven years of his fifteen-year term in Vladimir Prison, to be followed by eight years in a camp and five years in exile. In April 1971 the USSR Supreme Court, according to supervisory procedure, considered the case of the ASCULP leaders and found no grounds for mitigating Ogurtsov’s fate.
Leonid Ivanovich Borodin (b. 1938) is also in Vladimir Prison, having been transferred from Dubrovlag Camp 17 in autumn 1970 until the end of his sentence (CCE 17.12, item 9). He is due for release on 18 February 1973. [4]
Ten other ASCULP members (Yu. Baranov, G. Bochevarov, Yu. Buzin, V. Veretenov, A. Ivlev, M. Konosov, A. Miklashevich, V. Nagorny, A. Sudarev and S. Ustinovich) have been released at various times, beginning on 9 June 1969:
Yury Petrovich Baranov (b. 1938), formerly an electrical engineer at the surgery hospital-clinic of the First Leningrad Medical Institute, was released on 10 February 1970. He died suddenly a few weeks afterwards;
On 7 February 1971 Mikhail Konosov was released after serving four years’ imprisonment. M. Konosov (b. 1937) lived in Leningrad before his arrest, was an external student at the Moscow Literary Institute and worked as a fitter for the Leningrad Gas Board. His work was published in newspapers and journals. At present Konosov is registered in the town of Luga in the Leningrad Region.
A Chronicle of Current Events 