<< No 44 : 16 March 1977 >>

8 ITEMS

1.

GEORGIAN HELSINKI GROUP

In January 1977, a Group to Assist the Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements was set up in Georgia.

Six people joined it:

• Beglor Bezhuashvili, a lab assistant in the department of art criticism, Tbilisi University;
• Zviad Gamsakhurdia, now senior research officer, Institute for the History of Georgian Literature;
• the Jewish ‘refusenik’ brothers Isai and Grigory Goldstein;
• Teymuraz Dzhanelidze, singing teacher at musical technical college in the town of Rustavi; and
• Victor Rtskhiladze, chief inspector for the Protection of Monuments, Georgian Ministry of Culture.

At the beginning of March 1977, V. Rtskhiladze was dismissed from his job.

*

2.

CHANGES IN MEMBERSHIP OF OTHER GROUPS

On 5 January 1977, Yury Mnyukh joined the Moscow Helsinki group. On 14 January Naum Meiman joined.

*

After the arrest of N. Rudenko, Pyotr Vins (the son of Georgy Vins) joined the Ukrainian Helsinki group.

*

3.

PENTECOSTALS

In summer 1976, the Pentecostalists of Nakhodka (Primorsky Region, Soviet Far East) appealed to the Moscow Helsinki group to direct the attention of world public opinion to their problems.

On a mission for the Moscow Group in December 1976 Lydia Voronina visited two communities of Pentecostalists, in Nakhodka and in the settlement of Starotitarovskaya (Krasnodar Region, South Russia).

Many materials brought back by Voronina were lost in the January 1977 searches at the homes of members of the Group (CCE 44.2-1). Her report, therefore, gives only a general picture of the life of the Pentecostalists and contains almost no figures or specific facts (this issue CCE 44.21).

*

4.

WORKING COMMISSION ESTABLISHED

At the beginning of January 1977, a “Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes” was set up under the auspices of the Moscow Helsinki group [¹].

It is made up of the Muscovites Vyacheslav Bakhmin, Irina Kaplun, Alexander Podrabinek and Felix Serebrov, and Dzhemma Babich (Kvachevskaya) from Leningrad. The representative of the Moscow Helsinki group on the Working Commission is Pyotr G. Grigorenko. The commission is advised on legal matters by Sophia V. Kalistratova.

The commission’s postal address is: 117334 Moscow, 5 Vorobyovskoe shosse, flat 37, Irina Kaplun. Telephone, Moscow 137-69-32.

(For the activities of the Working Commission see “The Release of Vladimir Borisov”, this issue CCE 44.20.)

*

5.

DECLASSIFICATION OF INFORMATION

On 8 January 1977, the leader of the Moscow Helsinki group Yury Orlov published a “Proposal for an International Conference on the Declassification of Information”.

As a first stage Orlov proposes that information on natural disasters, epidemics, criminality, living conditions and violations of obligations on human rights should not be classified as State secrets.

*

6.

MHG DOCUMENTS

In January, the Moscow Helsinki group compiled and conveyed to the public and to heads of governments Documents Nos. 16-19 [²]:

• 16, “On reprisals against the Groups to Assist the Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements in the USSR.” Records of searches are given in an appendix.
• 17, “On prisoners of conscience who need to be released urgently because of the condition of their health.” A list of seriously ill political prisoners (51 names) is given in an appendix.
• 18, “On the position of the Meskhetians” (see CCE 41.11 and CCE 43.17-2).
• 19, “On the disruption by the Soviet authorities of the International Symposium on Jewish culture” (CCE 43.12).

*

7.

DISRUPTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

A number of facts from Document No. 19 were not included in CCE 43.12.

All foreign scholars invited to the Symposium were refused entry visas. Tourists suspected of being interested in the Symposium also received refusals. Three US citizens who announced to official Soviet persons their intention to visit the Symposium were deported from the USSR.

In connection with the Symposium there were searches at the homes of 21 people, amongst them 15 out of the 30 members of the Organizing Committee (10 out of the 13 Moscow members); moreover, at the home of the chairman of the Organizing Committee, Veniamin Fain, there were four searches, and at the homes of the deputy chairmen (Leonid Volvovsky, Vladimir Prestin and Pavel Abramovich) two searches each.

Besides members of the Organizing Committee, another six people were summoned to interrogations at the procurator’s offices in Moscow, Leningrad, Tallinn, Kishinyov, Vilnius, Tbilisi, Riga and Minsk.

*

On 21 December 1976, the opening day of the symposium, all the members of the Organizing Committee and another seven people were arrested in Moscow.

Members of the Organizing Committee from other towns were not allowed go to Moscow. The brothers Isai and Grigory Goldstein, who had arrived in Moscow earlier, were arrested and deported to Tbilisi. Alexander Smelyansky, who managed to come from Kiev and to take part in the one-day Symposium, was dismissed from his job.

Two people received written warnings from the KGB in connection with the Symposium, and four people besides the members of the Organizing Committee received verbal warnings. 17 people had their telephones disconnected. The members of the Organizing Committee and another five people were held under house arrest for three days and nights.

*

8.

THE UPCOMING CONFERENCE IN BELGRADE

In connection with the forthcoming Belgrade CSCE conference in June 1977, the Moscow Helsinki Group on 20 February addressed the governments of the countries which participated in the Helsinki conference with a proposal to set up without delay an international commission for checking violations of the Helsinki agreements in the humanitarian sphere.

The commission should include representatives of the participant countries, as well as representatives of independent groups. The commission should be guaranteed all facilities for checking facts on the spot and receiving necessary information …

The implementation of international agreements is not the internal affair of this or that country. This is a matter that requires effective international supervision.

*

In March 1977, the Moscow Helsinki Group published the document “Three Months before Belgrade”.

*

In the 1st section, “A General Evaluation”, it says:

“The development of events since August 1976, when the Group to Assist the Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements published the survey ‘A year after Helsinki’, has shown the full correctness of the opinion then held on the problem of human rights in the USSR.

“In particular, the evaluation expressed then — ‘The Soviet government does not intend to implement its international obligations on human rights’ — has been confirmed, as well as the conclusion formulated by us in August 1976 that the Final Act of the European Conference is being interpreted by an ever-greater number of people as a juridical basis in the struggle for human rights …

“In the USSR, the activity of individuals and groups of citizens who base themselves on the Final Act of the Helsinki conference in their struggle for civil rights is also continuing to grow.

“The stream of letters from citizens of the USSR to various Soviet bodies and to the public groups to assist the implementation of the Helsinki agreements is increasing, as well as letters to international organizations on the situation of political prisoners, psychiatric persecution, violations in matters of freedom of conscience, freedom of religious faith, freedom of exchange of information, and on violations of the right to emigrate.”

*

The 2nd section tells of the reprisals of the Soviet authorities against the Helsinki Group.

The section “Future Activities of the Group” says:

“For their part, the members of the Moscow Group will as before, despite reprisals, inform world opinion of all the violations of international obligations on human rights accepted by the government of the USSR. The fruitfulness of the initiative of Yu.F. Orlov in setting up the Moscow Goup is borne out by many facts, in particular by the appearance of similar Groups in the Ukraine, Lithuania and Georgia.

“In response to the authorities’ reprisals and the arrest of two of its leading colleagues, the Group announces the co-option of two new members: Yu. V. Mnyukh, Cand.Sc. (Physico-mathematical sciences), and professor N. N. Meiman, D.Sc. (Physico-mathematical sciences).

“Group member L. M. Alexeyeva, in connection with her departure from the USSR [CCE 44.8], will fulfil duties as a representative of the group abroad. In this way, despite the reprisals of recent months, the group continues to work …

“In connection with the danger which now threatens the arrested members of the Group, and also in connection with the campaign of libel being conducted by the organs of mass information, the group has asked certain individuals now abroad — Ludmila Alexeyeva, Andrei Amalrik, Vladimir Bukovsky, Lev Kvachevsky, Leonid Plyushch and Valery Chalidze — to explain the true aims and character of the work of the Group during personal meetings both with official representatives of the countries which signed the Final Act, and with representatives of Western opinion and political parties.”

<<Moscow Helsinki Group (documents 1-195): 1976-1982>>

==================================================

NOTES

1. In late 1976, various Soviet bodies contacted the Central Committee “about Western ‘anti-Soviet propaganda’ concerning the use of psychiatry for political purposes”. See compilation of eight documents by Bukovsky, covering the period from 10 September to 28 December 1976 (10 September 1976*, 2066-A).
   ↩︎
2. English translations of the different Helsinki Group statements may be found in the Reports of Helsinki Accord Monitors [1-3]: Vol 1 (Feb 1977), Vol 2 (June 1977), Vol 3 (Nov 1978); and in [4] The Right to Know, the Right to Act, 1978.
   
   All four volumes were published by the US Congress (Commission on Security & Cooperation in Europe) in Washington, DC.
   ↩︎

=========================