In March-April 1977 members of the Ukrainian Helsinki group (Oles Berdnik, Oksana Meshko, Mykola Matusevich, Miroslav Marinovich, Levko Lukyanenko, Ivan Kandyba and Pyotr Vins) were summoned for interrogation in connection with the case of Rudenko and Tykhy (CCE 44.4), who are charged with “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”.
Matusevich and Marinovich were interrogated in Kiev. The others were summoned to Donetsk. Meshko and Vins did not go to their interrogations.
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In mid-March Ukraine SSR Deputy Procurator Samayev had a talk with Berdnik in Kiev. He told him:
“We ourselves have nothing against your group. We respect you personally.
“However, Rudenko and Tikhy have taken part in all sorts of things under cover of the group. They were connected through Sakharov with anti-Soviet centres.”
At the end of March Berdnik was summoned to Donetsk for interrogation. He did not go.
In mid-April he was seized on the street in Kiev and taken to Donetsk. There he was released after interrogation.
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Lukyanenko was questioned, during an interrogation, about the work of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and about Valentin Turchin’s book The Inertia of Fear: Socialism and Totalitarianism (CCE 42.12). The investigator did not believe Lukyanenko when he said that he had never seen this book and continued to ask where it was.
Questions was asked about Turchin’s book at other interrogations.
Ivan Kandyba was asked about his visit to Moscow in January 1976, when he came out of the camps. In particular he was asked whether Malva Landa had written down what he had to recount about the camp.
It was suggested to Matusevich and Marinovich during interrogations that they should cooperate with the KGB.
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The following were also interrogated in Ukraine in connection with the Rudenko-Tikhy case:
- Raisa Rudenko,
- Matusevich’s father,
- Nadiya Svitlychna,
- Kuzma Matviyuk,
- Valentina Barladeanu,
- Leonid and Valentina Sery,
- the doctor A. F. Demchenko,
- poet Boris Dzyuba,
- Candidate of Chemical Sciences Vasilega,
- Ivan Kaplun, Victor Borovsky and Vladimir Danileiko.
After her interrogation Nadiya Svitlychna was sacked: she had been working as a ///floor-lady (CCE 44.18).
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During interrogations, the investigators said that Rudenko and Tikhy were spies; that Rudenko was a good man but had fallen under the influence of Sakharov; and that Rudenko had repented.
One of the investigators said [1]:
“This time we won’t miss the mark the way we did in 1972 — this time your lot won’t recover!”
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In Moscow in connection with the same case, Investigator Tsimokh interrogated Action Group member Tatyana Velikanova on 29 March and, on 5 April, Valentin Turchin, chairman of the Soviet group of Amnesty International.
Both Velikanova and Turchin refused to give evidence.
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The investigators are referring in their questions to the evidence of Mykola Rudenko.
Investigator Nagovitsyn, who is in charge of the Rudenko case, told Rudenko’s wife Raisa Rudenko that the pre-trial investigation would finish in May.
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On 28 March Pyotr Vins and M. Marinovich, who were returning from Tarusa, were detained in Serpukhov and it was demanded that they should allow themselves to be searched.
After several hours of attempted persuasion, they were searched forcibly. Letters by Ukrainian Helsinki group member Nina Strokata and by Kronid Lyubarsky were taken from them.
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NOTE
- Apparently a reference to the widespread arrests in the Ukraine in 1972: see especially CCE 24.3, Kiev and Lvov, March; CCE 25.2, CCE 26.3, CCE 27.1-2 & December 1972 (CCE 28.7).
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