SIX ENTRIES
MOSCOW
[1]
On 14 January 1972 a number of searches were carried out in Moscow.
The order for the searches was signed by Major Fochenkov, Senior KGB Investigator for Especially Important Cases (CCE 21.2).They were sanctioned by Malyarov, USSR Deputy Procurator-General.
Searches were carried out at the home of Pyotr Yakir in connection with Leningrad “Case 38”, and at the homes of Alexander Ginzburg, Adele N. Osipova (Naidenovich), Yury Shikhanovich, S. Genkin, Yuly Kim and R. Mukhamedyarov in connection with Moscow “Case 24” [1].
In addition, by decision of the RSFSR Procuracy, a search was carried out at the home of Ernst Rudenko: according to the warrant it was in connection with “the case of Sergei Myuge” (CCE 22.8 [7], CCE 23.7 [11]).
The order for searches in connection with Case 24 stated that proceedings had been instituted in relation to a crime covered by Article 70, part 1 (RSFSR Criminal Code). Samizdat literature, typewriters, rolls of film and personal correspondence were confiscated during the searches.
*
[2]
On 15 January 1972 another search was carried out in connection with Case 24 – this time at the home of Kronid Lyubarsky, an astronomer [2], in the village of Chernogolovka (Moscow Region).
On 17 January Lyubarsky was summoned by the KGB for questioning, and was arrested on the same day. He has apparently been indicted under Article 70 (RSFSR Criminal Code). The investigation is being conducted by KGB Major Kislykh.
*
During the following six weeks all those whose homes had been searched, except Yakir, [3] were summoned by the KGB for questioning, as were their relatives and friends.
It has become clear from the interrogations that the matter of principal concern to the investigation is the preparation and circulation of the Chronicle of Current Events [4].
♦
NOVOSIBIRSK
[3]
Searches in connection with Case 24 were carried out in Novosibirsk on 14 January at the homes of G. Yablonsky (CCE 2.1 [85]) and Rybakov.
Again the order for the searches was signed by Major Fochenkov. After the searches several persons were summoned for questioning.
♦
VILNIUS
[4]
A number of searches in connection with Case 24 were also carried out in Vilnius on 14 January, one at the home of Vaclav Sevruk (CCE 15.11 [3]) [5]. After the search he was arrested. During the following few days about one hundred people were summoned for questioning.
♦
LENINGRAD
[5]
On 15 January searches in connection with Case 24 were carried out in Leningrad at the homes of Ernst Orlovsky, Yury Melnik and P. M. Goryachyov [6].
Items confiscated from P. M. Goryachyov, a former political prisoner, included all his manuscripts about his camp experiences.
In Melnik’s flat a radio telex receiver was discovered; he was arrested on 17 January. For the first three days, in the words of the investigator, he behaved like Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya (wartime heroine [7] of Margarita Aliger’s poem Zoya): he took the entire responsibility upon himself.
But then he began to name names and tell everything he knew.
♦
UMAN
[6]
Another search in connection with Case 24 was carried out on 14 January 1972 in the Ukrainian town of Uman at the home of Katerina Olitskaya.
Her memoirs about the Civil War, the Central Rada and the early years of the Soviet regime in Ukraine [8] were confiscated from her [correction CCE 26.18].
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NOTES
- On Yakir, Shikhanovich and Kim see entries in Reddaway, Uncensored Russia (1972). On Osipova, Shikhanovich and Mukhamedyarov (see also CCE 15) and elsewhere in this issue.
On all six, see entries in Name Index, e.g., Shikhanovich, CCE 2.1 [81], CCE 24.10 [4], CCE 25.2, CCE 27.2 [1], CCE 29.11 [5], etc.
Genkin was a mathematician who signed five of the documents included in P. Litvinov, The Trial of the Four, London and New York (1972).
↩︎ - Kronid Lyubarsky was the author of numerous articles in scientific journals on meteors, planets, space biology, etc., and of three books: Essays on Astrobiology (1962), Cosmic Biology and Medicine (1968), and The Planets of the Earth Group-Mars (1969).
He also translated into Russian the books Galaxies by Fred Hoyle and The Search for Planet X by Tony Simon.
On Lyubarsky, see CCE 25.2 [1], CCE 26.2 [1], CCE 27.2 [12] and Name Index.
↩︎ - Yakir was arrested on 21 June 1972 (CCE 26.1). See a statement written in anticipation of arrest in The Times, published on 23 June.
↩︎ - The Times and the New York Times reported on 4 February that dissenting circles believed a high-level political decision to have been taken on 30 December 1971, ordering the suppression of the Chronicle and of other samizdat journals, like Veche and the Ukrainian Herald.
On 6 May at least 16 flats in Moscow were searched, mostly in connection with Case 24: those of Yakir, Shikhanovich, Anatoly Jakobson, Grigory Podyapolsky, Irina Kaplun, Irina Kristi, N. P. Lisovskaya, Vladimir Gershovich, V. Batshev, Vladimir Gusarov, L. Pinsky, Valentina Makotinskaya, Vladimir Albrekht, Andrei Dubrov, Olga Joffe and Miss E. Armand.
Despite this, CCE issue 25 (20 May 1972) began to circulate in Moscow on about 21 June.
↩︎ - See CCE 22.3 [2] and, on Sevruk’s arrest, The Times, 1 February 1972.
↩︎ - On Goryachyov, see CCE 11.4; on Orlovsky, CCE 16.2. A Reuters dispatch of 20 June 1972 reported that on 19 June Yury Melnik was sentenced in Leningrad to three years for “anti-Soviet agitation”, to which he pleaded guilty.
↩︎ - Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya (1923-1941), an 18-year-old Red Army soldier, was sent to operate behind enemy lines during the war. She was captured and tortured by the Germans but did not give away any information.
↩︎ - Possibly a companion volume to Olitskaya’s memoirs (Moi vospominaniya, Possev Verlag, 1971), which recount her experiences as a Socialist Revolutionary in the 1920s and 1930s, mostly in camps.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 