From 22 to 27 March 1978, the Kiev Regional Assizes Court in Vasilkov (Kiev Region) examined the case of Ukrainian Helsinki Group members Miroslav MARINOVICH and Nikolai MATUSEVICH. Both were charged under Article 62, pt. 1 (Ukrainian Criminal Code = Article 70, RSFSR Code); Matusevich was additionally charged under Article 206, pt. 2 (“malicious hooliganism”).
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Judge Dyshel himself heard the case.
This is a list of some recent trials over which he has presided:
- Zinovy ANTONYUK (CCE 27.1) sentence — 7 years imprisonment + 3 years in exile;
- Vasyl STUS (CCE 27.1 — 5 + 3);
- Semyon GLUZMAN (CCE 28.7, item 4 — 7 + 3); and Lyubov SEREDNYAK (CCE 28.7, item 4),
- Nikolai PLAKHOTNYUK (CCE 28.7, item 1 — Special Psychiatric Hospital, SPH),
- Yevhen SVERSTYUK (CCE 29.5, item 2 — 7 + 3),
- Leonid PLYUSHCH (CCE 29.6 — SPH),
- Nadiya SVETLICHNAYA (CCE 29.5, item 3 — 4),
- V. VYLEGZHANIN (CCE 34 — 4) and
- Georgy VINS (CCE 35.3 — 5 + 5).
Both the accused refused defence lawyers. Nonetheless, Karpenko, the lawyer appointed by the court for Matusevich, took part in the trial.
Miroslav Marynovych, b. 1949
Miroslav Marinovich (b. 1950) is a graduate of Lvov Polytechnic Institute. Before his arrest he worked as an engineer in Kiev. His mother lives in Drohobych; his wife, Raisa Sergiichuk, in Vasilkov.
Nikolai Matusevich (b. 1948) was barred in 1972 from the fourth year of his history course at a Kiev teachers’ training college, because of his ‘poor progress’.
The real reason was his sympathy for the Ukrainian intellectuals who had been arrested that year [CCE 27.1-2]. Before his arrest Matusevich worked as an editor in a publishing house for medical literature in Kiev. His parents and sister live in Vasilkov; his wife Olga GEIKO lives in Kiev.
the trial
The opening date of the was kept secret.
Relatives and friends of the accused, summoned to court as witnesses, received notification of the trial only towards the end of the first day, the evening of 22 March. The court-building was surrounded by a large squad of police and auxiliary police [druzhinniki]. Many witnesses were not allowed to stay in the court-room after they had testified.
On the day of the verdict those witnesses who were at work were not released to hear the sentence. On 24 March 1978, after trying to obtain permission to attend the trial, Lyubov MURZHENKO was taken to a police station and detained there almost all day.
At the beginning of the trial Matusevich stated that he did not recognise the authority of the proceedings and was taken from the room for ‘contempt of court’. He was brought back only when the sentence was announced. When the verdict was read out, the disoriented Matusevich asked: “You are really not allowing us to make our final speech?” In reply his hands were tied and he was shoved out of the courtroom.
On the first day of the trial Judge Dyshel told Marinovich, who had protested against the closed nature of the trial, that the trial was open, but no one had come to it.
The next day, Marinovich realized from the questioning of Svetlichnaya that he had been deceived. He refused to take part in the trial. He answered all questions with the same phrase: “I refuse to participate in a closed hearing.”
The ‘case’ of Marinovich and Matusevich consists of eight volumes.
Under Article 62 (Ukraine SSR Criminal Code) they were charged with helping to prepare the following documents of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group: the “Declaration” (CCE 43.6 item 2), Memoranda Nos. 10 and 11; and also with ‘circulating’ the Group’s documents.
witnesses
In connection with these charges the following were called as witnesses:
- Alexander [Oles] Berdnik, a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group;
- Nadezhda Svetlichnaya. Memorandum No. 11 includes an account of Svetlichnaya’s situation after her release from the camps (CCEs 43 to 45);
- Vera Lisovaya. Memorandum No. 10 recounts how the KGB persecuted her (see CCE 44),
- Mikhailina Kotsyubinskaya (CCE 45), Yevgeny Obertas (CCEs 45, 46) and the wife of Matusevich, Olga Geiko (CCE 45).
B.D. ANTONENKO-DAVIDOVICH (CCEs 45, 46) was unable to be present because of illness; his testimony was read out in court. Also questioned were the parents, sister, uncle and female cousin of Matusevich; and the mother, sister and wife of Marinovich.
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Nadezhda Svetlichnaya, in answer to questions about whom exactly she had given information to about herself, who had compiled Memorandum No. 11 and what part had been played by Marinovich and Matusevich, replied that she had appealed to the Helsinki Group, not to its individual members.
After reading out a phrase from her declaration to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party (CCE 44): “I consider it beneath human dignity, after all that has been lived through, to be a citizen of the biggest, most powerful and most perfect concentration-camp in the world.”
Judge Dyshel asked: ‘On what grounds do you make this assertion?’
“Today’s kangaroo court of Marinovich and Matusevich asserts this better than my declaration,” answered Svetlichnaya.
“Take note of that!” exclaimed Judge Dyshel, turning to the prosecutor, “— she is insulting a Soviet court, she is slandering it!”
Svetlichnaya’s words aroused a storm of indignation amongst the ‘public’, who on other occasions hurled threatening or abusive replies in the direction of the accused and several witnesses; the judges reacted favourably to all this.
“We have assembled here in an open court session with the participation of People’s Assessors and a defence attorney, in the presence of the public,” Judge Dyshel said to Svetlichnaya: “and you call this a kangaroo court?!”
“And you call this an open trial? Where neither the relatives nor close friends of the accused, nor even the accused himself, are admitted?!” responded Svetlichnaya.
The next day, 24 March 1978, when Svetlichnaya, amongst others, submitted a declaration to Dyshel, requesting to be allowed back into the courtroom, a man went out especially to fetch her and bring her into the session.
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Vera Lisovaya confirmed what was written about her in Memorandum No. 10, that her chats with the KGB had brought her to the verge of a heart-attack.
She related the cause of her illness, she said, to acquaintances who visited her, among them Marinovich and Matusevich. On these grounds the panel of judges considered the part played by the accused in the ‘preparation’ of Memorandum No. 10 to be proven.
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Olga Geiko refused to answer the Procurator’s question, “Do you still consider yourself a member of the Group?”
Dyshel: Defendant Marinovich: what do you have to say about this?
Marinovich: I refuse to take part in a closed court session.
Dyshel: Marinovich, I cease to understand you. On your word hangs the fate of your comrade. It is one thing if she is simply a witness, but a completely different matter if she is a member of the Group. Then her place is beside you yet you keep on saying “I refuse”. When it was a matter of your own interests you could well say ‘‘This is ethical, but that isn’t ethical”. But not to take account of your comrades — is that ethical in your opinion?
“It is not the place of a Soviet court to talk of ethics,” said Marinovich, adding to his usual formula.
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Mikhailina Kotsyubinskaya and Yevgeny Obertas refused to tell the court from whom they had received the documents of the Group confiscated from them during searches. Obertas said at the trial that he was a friend of the accused and supported their activities.
“Hooliganism”
For almost a whole day the court looked into the question of Matusevich’s ‘hooliganism’. Of the 36 witnesses who appeared, 14 were summoned in connection with the charge of hooliganism.
The event which served as grounds for this charge took place six years (!) earlier.
Travelling with friends in the Carpathian mountain area in summer 1972, Matusevich heard in the village of Krivorivnya that one of the tourists had insulted a Hutsul woman [note 1] who was passing by. Matusevich reproached the offender, whose travelling companions then attacked Matusevich. Matusevich managed to escape them and the incident, it seemed, was over and done with.
However, a declaration turned up at the KGB offices from the tourist-group leader G. Makogonenko, according to whom Matusevich had shouted at the tourists, “Go back to the Urals! You Muscovites! You cattle!” and had hit one of them (V. Danilov). This version was quoted in the indictment. The case concerning hooliganism was instituted only in 1977, two months before the statute of limitations expired. Of course, no traces of the fight were left on the ‘injured party’.
Eleven members of the tourist group and three of Matusevich’s travelling companions, the Obertas man and wife and Valentina Girenko, were witnesses at the trial. The tourists all testified before the break. Asked whether they knew the accused, they replied, with greater or lesser certainty: “I know him,” “I remember him,” “I remember him clearly,” — although it was Marinovich, not Matusevich, who sat before them in the dock.
Not all the tourists affirmed that they had heard the criminal phrase.
The Judge inquired at length how the incident should be described: was it a ‘fight’, a ‘struggle’ or an ‘argument’? Even when the Helsinki Group’s documents were under discussion he asked the ‘injured party’ each time whether he had any questions for the witness. Danilov would answer with an important air that he had no questions to ask. According to the charge, Matusevich had committed an act of hooliganism for nationalistic reasons, because the tourists were conversing in Russian. Meanwhile, it came out during the trial that Valentina Girenko , Matushevich’s companion at the time, usually spoke Russian.
The court hearings took place on 22, 23 and 24 March 1978. The sentence was announced on 27 March; each of the accused received seven years in strict-regime camps and five years exile. The beginning of the sentence was backdated to 23 April 1977 (CCE 45.7), the date of arrest.
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A week before the trial began, the district newspaper Shlyakh Ilicha published an abusive article by P. Barzinsky, about N. Matusevich and his family, entitled “Profound Ingratitude”. On 19 March 1978 the article was reprinted in the Regional newspaper Kievskaya pravda.
On 15 April 1978, the newspaper Shlyakh Ilicha published another article by Barzinsky, “Spiteful Critics”. It stigmatized not only Matusevich and Marinovich, but also “their confederates, especially the anti-Soviet Alexander Berdnik and Yevgeny Obertas“. The article said that letters had reached the editor from people demanding that Berdnik and Obertas “be put on trial to answer for their actions”.
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NOTES
For the arrest of Marynovych and Matusevich see CCE 45.7.
[1] Hutsul — a distinct ethnic group to be found in Western Ukraine and Romania.
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