Moscow. On 12 May the editorial board of a journal published by the department of astronomy at the All-Union Institute of Scientific and Technical Information refused to recommend that Galina Salova, wife of K. A. Lyubarsky (see the section “After Release” in Chronicles 43, 44 and this issue, CCE 46.11), should be confirmed in the post of senior scientific researcher.
K.S. Losev, party organiser at the institute, and director A.I. Mikhailov told Salova that they were opposed to her being re-employed because of her “anti-Soviet views” and because she was passing on information about the institute to foreign radio-stations. The commission appointed to inspect Salova’s work (the chairman of it was N.M. Ostianu, head of the mathematical department) was mostly interested in her “social image’.
On 14 June, the Academic Council of the institute’s Department of Physics and Mathematics refused to confirm Salova in her post for a new term, by nine votes to two. In a speech Salova called this an act of the most gross discrimination on grounds of political conviction, and an example of the “bar to the professions” which the Soviet press got so worked up about when it happened in West Germany. “The plan to throw me out of the institute,” said Salova, “is a premeditated action, intended to deprive my family of the means of existence.” (Salova is now the only breadwinner in the family.)
On 4 July Salova was offered a job “in accordance with her education and work experience” in the personnel department as a senior scientific technician, with a salary of 95 roubles a month. (Salova is an astronomer with a university education, she has a post-graduate degree and 15 years of experience of specialised work; the job Salova was offered is usually filled by girls straight from school.)
Salova was forced to agree.
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Kiev. On 3 June, a general meeting took place in the Vishcha Shkola (Higher School) publishing house, which was announced as “About the further employment in the publishing house of the editor Mikhailina Kotsyubinskaya” (CCE 45). Kotsyubinskaya was accused of having a hostile ideological viewpoint, of being linked with the ‘so-called [Helsinki] Assistance Group” and of receiving parcels from abroad.
The meeting decided to apply to the management for Kotsyubinskaya’s dismissal and to ask the Higher Degrees Commission to deprive Kotsyubinskaya of her degree of Candidate of Philosophy. Two people voted ‘against’,
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Moscow. Dina Isaakovna KAMINSKAYA was dismissed in June from the Bar “in connection with her retirement on a pension”. Kaminskaya was asked to leave the legal profession after a letter was sent by the Procurator’s Office to the Presidium of the Moscow Bar, stating that during a search at the home of Kaminskaya and her husband Simis, many libellous anti-Soviet materials had been confiscated, as well as a manuscript by Simis which describes the economic and legal system of the Soviet state in a distorted, libellous form (CCE 43). The letter referred to the fact that their son was living in the U S A and that they themselves had connections with foreigners.
Kaminskaya was allowed to complete cases she had started.
A Chronicle of Current Events 