TWENTY-THREE ITEMS
(1)
MOSCOW. On 27 April 1971, Rolan Teodorovich AVGUSTOV (b. 1941), an electrician resident in Uman (Cherkassy Region) in the Ukraine, was detained at the entrance of the American Embassy.
He had come to Moscow with a statement to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet renouncing Soviet citizenship: his reason – expulsion from his trade union. After leaving the statement at the Reception Room of the Supreme Soviet, Avgustov went to the US Embassy and asked the policeman on duty to admit him. The policeman took him to the guard-room, from where Avgustov was sent to a psychiatric hospital.
Three weeks later he was transferred to the Regional Psychiatric Hospital in Korsun-Shevchenko (Cherkassy Region), where he spent six weeks with the diagnosis “an attack of schizophrenia”. During this period Avgustov’s father was summoned to the Uman KGB, where he was told that his son had been detained while attempting to betray the Fatherland. At present Avgustov is at liberty.
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(2)
The English newspaper The Daily Telegraph, in its issue of 15 July 1971 [1], published a report by the English actor David Markham about how he and his wife Olive were detained by KGB officials at Moscow airport when they were leaving the USSR.
Mr. Markham has played parts in several Russian plays which have been translated into English (Trofimov in Chekhov’s play The Cherry Orchard, the priest in a television film of Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago). As an active member of the National Council for Civil Liberties, he was interested in the civil rights movement in Russia. He came to the USSR wishing to visit Pasternak’s house at Peredelkino. When Mr. Markham and his wife were leaving Russia, KGB officials subjected them to a thorough search, going through all their clothing.
After this they were repeatedly questioned for a total of eleven hours over a period of two days (28-29 May), during which time they were not allowed to telephone the British Embassy. The Markhams were told to hand over letters from participants in the struggle for civil rights in Russia. During questioning they were threatened with long terms of imprisonment [2].
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(3)
In Belgrade as a tourist during the 1969 summer vacation, Strolman, a lecturer at a Moscow technical college, requested the Yugoslav authorities to grant him Yugoslav citizenship.
When they refused to accede to his request and announced that they would return him to the USSR, he made an attempt to commit suicide by stabbing himself twice – in the region of the heart and in the region of the carotid artery.
When he recovered, Strolman was handed over to the Hungarians. While in prison in Budapest he again tried to kill himself. At present Strolman is in the USSR under investigation.
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(4)
At the end of July 1971 the security agencies detained several persons while they were talking to foreign correspondents.
L. Tsypin was detained on Pushkin Square at 4.30 p.m. on 19 July and taken to Police Station 108.
At 2.15 p.m. on 20 July, also on Pushkin Square, A. Slepak was detained and taken to the same police station. At 11 p.m. on the same day L. Tsypin was detained outside the Puppet Theatre and taken to Police Station 17.
At 6.40 p.m. on 27 July L. Tsypin and A. Slepak were again detained, and taken to Police Station 10. On 27 July Josif Begun was detained on the boulevard near Samotyochnaya Square and taken to Police Station 17.
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After being detained they were searched, and notebooks were taken from them. In a number of cases the agents who detained them refused to reveal their identity. They were warned that if they did not stop associating with foreign correspondents, they would be subjected to criminal prosecution.
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(5)
LEONID RENDEL
Leonid Rendel [3] returned four years ago from the Mordovian camps after serving ten years’ imprisonment for his part in the case of the Krasnopevtsev group in 1957 [4].
At the beginning of May 1971 he applied to the USSR Minister of Internal Affairs (MVD) and the chairman of the Moscow City Council for the restoration of his Moscow residence permit. (For administrative surveillance of Rendel after release, CCE 1.5 [3]; for the extension of that surveillance, CCE 4.7 [8].)
Rendel was told to submit to the MVD passport section documents proving: that he had resided in Moscow before his arrest; that his family was in Moscow; and that accommodation was available. He did so on 26 May.
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On 22 July officers from Police Station 27 forcibly entered the flat of Rendel’s wife and ordered him to leave, otherwise proceedings would be taken against him for infringement of the residence regulations.
On 27 July the police burst in again. This time Rendel’s wife was handed an official refusal to give her husband a residence permit, dated 28 May. She was fined ten roubles “for harbouring citizen Rendel without a residence permit” and threatened with criminal proceedings for infringing the residence regulations.
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(6)
After an appeal which left his sentence unaltered, Anatoly Krasnov-Levitin has been sent to Smolensk to serve his three-year term of imprisonment [5] (CCE 20.7).
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(7)
On 29 July 1971, the RSFSR Supreme Court considered the appeal in the case of the Leningrad Trial of those connected with the “aeroplane affair” (CCE 20.1). Only six immediate relatives of the defendants were admitted to the court-room.
The appeal court left the sentences unaltered.
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UkSSR SUPREME COURT
(8)
The UkSSR Supreme Court was due to consider the appeal in the case of Reiza Palatnik (CCE 20.5) at the end of July.
Following her statement that she had not been granted the right to familiarise herself with the materials of the court examination, the appeal was postponed and her case transferred from Kiev to Odessa.
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(9)
On 3 August 1971, the UkSSR Supreme Court heard an appeal in the case of F. M. Babelev of the Donetsk Region, convicted under Article 187-1 (UkSSR Criminal Code = Article 190-1, RSFSR Code).
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(10)
On 29 July 1971, Anatoly Marchenko was released after three years’ imprisonment.
He was sent to Chuna in the Irkutsk Region (eastern Siberia), where he has been placed under administrative surveillance [6].
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RELEASES
(11)
From the Mordovian camps:
9 July — Lailis Rijnieks, a Latvian, on being pardoned.
He was sentenced in 1963 to 15 years’ imprisonment in the case of the “Baltic Federation” together with Gunars Rode, Victor Kalnins, Knuts Skujenieks and others.
20 July — Victor Fyodorovich GREBENSHCHIKOV (b. 1907), a resident of Alma-Ata (Kazakhstan).
He was arrested in Moscow in 1967 after attempting to throw the type-written text of his work “A History of the Collectivisation of Agriculture in the USSR” onto the territory of the American Embassy.
3 August — Dmitry Krasnov, a student at the Law Faculty of Kuibyshev [Samara] University, after two years’ imprisonment (see CCE 17.14-2 where his name is misspelt as Kranov).
26 August — Mikhail Gorin [Ukr. Horyn], after six years’ imprisonment [7].
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(12)
On 4 August 1971, Boris Maftser, one of the defendants at the Riga Trial of the Four (see CCE 20.2), was released from the Latvian KGB investigation prison (in Riga) on completion of his one-year sentence.
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(13)
The Lithuanian priest Antanas Seskevicius was released on 6 September 1971 (see trial CCE 17.12 [7]).
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(14)
On 28 July 1971, Olga Joffe (CCE 15.2) was released from a psychiatric hospital of ordinary type in Moscow.
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(15)
At the beginning of August 1971, Victor Kuznetsov was released from the Special Psychiatric Hospital in Kazan, Tatarstan. (For his commital in 1969, CCE 9.3.)
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TRANSFERS
(16)
In August 1971, Valeria Novodvorskaya was transferred from the Kazan Special Psychiatric Hospital to a psychiatric hospital of ordinary type in Moscow (See arrest, CCE 11.7 and trial, CCE 13.2).
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(17)
Alexander Ginzburg, who was being held as a witness in Lefortovo Prison in Moscow (CCE 20.11 [16]), was transferred back to Vladimir Prison on 5 August 1971.
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(18)
Oleg Vorobyov, who was tried and convicted (CCE 18.10 [1]) in Perm (Volga District), has arrived in Vladimir Prison to serve the first three years of his sentence.
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(19)
Ruta Alexandrovich has arrived in the Mordovian camps (trial CCE 20.2).
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(20)
Simas Kudirka has arrived in Dubrovlag, Camp No. 3 (trial CCE 20.6).
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(21)
By a court decision Genrikh Altunyan (trial CCE 11.11) was to be sent to work on the construction of a large chemical plant. After a protest by the Procurator that Altunyan had committed “an especially dangerous crime” he was kept in his central Siberian camp (Krasnoyarsk Region [Krai]).
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(22)
“POLITICAL DIARY”
The existence in the Soviet Union of a clandestine, typewritten, monthly socio-political journal, Political Diary, has become known through reports in the Western press [8]. It has been circulating for the past seven years among a small group of the Soviet intelligentsia.
Of the journal’s more than seventy issues, only 11, comprising a total of 530 pages, have become available to Western publishers [9]. The problems touched on in the journal concern the economic and political life of the USSR.
The journal has published: various essays, usually anonymous; transcripts of closed Party meetings (including that at which Khrushchev was removed in 1964); the October seminar on ideological matters (1966); and also the results of a survey carried out by Literaturnaya gazeta in 1968 among 10,000 of its subscribers.
It has also included various letters, petitions, documents, excerpts from unpublished books, and critical surveys of domestic and foreign policy.
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(23)
ALEXEI SNEGOV
On 15 July (?1971), the Krasnaya Presnya district Party committee (Moscow) expelled Alexei V. Snegov (b. 1898) in his absence from the Communist Party [10]. He had been a Party member since 1917.
After the 1917 October Revolution, Snegov [11] was a leading Party official in many cities of the USSR, and was elected a delegate to the 11th Party Congress (1922).
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In 1937 he was arrested, and was tortured while under investigation.
Released in 1939 on the quashing of his case, he immediately came to Moscow and appeared in Mikoyan’s office to tell him about the lawless acts which were being committed during investigations. He was arrested on the spot and sentenced to ten years by the Special Board of the NKVD [12].
Following Stalin’s death Snegov was rehabilitated.
He had several conversations with Khrushchev and was appointed head of the Political Directorate of the GULag at the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). He took part in the compilation of Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’ to the 20th Party Congress. Following Khrushchev’s removal he continued to struggle actively against the consequences of Stalin’s personality cult.
After making a sharply-worded speech at a Party meeting in the MVD, he was dismissed. As the recipient of a special pension he repeatedly spoke at meetings of Old Bolsheviks, exposing the lawless acts of the Stalinists.
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In November 1965 Snegov came out in support of the book 22 June 1941 by Alexander Nekrich.
A brief transcript of the discussion of the book appeared abroad [13], and an investigation began. Snegov, and others who had taken part in the discussion, were summoned several times by the Control Commission of the Party.
Some time later Snegov spoke at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism during a discussion [14] of a draft of Vol. 3 of the History of the Communist Party. He criticised that part of the text dealing with the position of Kamenev, Zinoviev and Stalin on the eve of the October Revolution. These two speeches served as the grounds for expelling Snegov from the Party.
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NOTES
- In fact, Markham’s report appeared in the 1 June issue.
↩︎ - See also extracts from the Markhams’ Open Letter to Mr. Kosygin in The Daily Telegraph, 7 June 1971.
↩︎ - On Leonid Rendel, see CCE 1.5 [3], CCE 4.7 [8], and the first “special issue” of Possev (Pervyi spetsialnyi vypusk) Frankfurt, August 1969.
↩︎ - For details of the Krasnopevtsev group and Rendel, see Grani, No. 80 (Frankfurt, 1971, p. 146).
↩︎ - A later issue of the Chronicle clarified the details of Levitin’s sentence: corrected to an ordinary-regime camp in the town of Sychyovka, Smolensk Region (CCE 22.8 [17]).
↩︎ - See also the New York Times dispatch of 9 August 1971 about Marchenko.
↩︎ - On Gorin (Horyn), see Viacheslav Chornovil, The Chornovil Papers, New York, 1968, and Michael Browne, Ferment in the Ukraine, London, 1971.
↩︎ - See The Washington Post, The New York Times and Aftenposten (Oslo) on the Political Diary: all published in 22 August 1971 issue.
Later it became known that the compiler of the monthly journal was Roy Medvedev.
↩︎ - The Russian edition of the Political Diary is to be published by the Alexander Herzen Foundation. Amsterdam.
↩︎ - On the expulsion of Snegov, see also reports in the Western press (e.g. The Times, 13 September 1971).
↩︎ - Wikipedia (Russian) writes that Alexei Vladimirovich Snegov was born Josif Falikson in Kiev in 1898. He died in Moscow in 1989.
↩︎ - The Special Board was an extra-judicial body (cf. troika and dvoika) of the NKVD, the Stalin-era predecessor the KGB during the Moscow Show Trials and the Great Terror.
↩︎ - An English translation of Nekrich’s book was published in Survey (London), No. 63, 1967. The Russian original was republished in Possev (13 January 1967).
↩︎ - Snegov, “The history of a Party discussion”, Russian transcript in Grani No. 65, 1967 (pp. 129-56). An abbreviated English text appeared in Survey No. 63, 1967.
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