On 21 June 1972, Pyotr Ionovich YAKIR was arrested in Moscow.
P.I. Yakir (b. 1923) is the son of General Iona Emanuilovich Yakir, a hero of the Civil War, who was executed by Stalin. Pyotr Yakir himself served 17 years (1937-1954) in Stalin’s prisons and camps.
He is a member of the “Action Group for the Defence of Human Rights in the USSR.”
Pyotr Yakir (1923-1982)
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ARREST
On the afternoon of 21 June 1972, when Yakir went outside during his lunch-hour, he was bundled into a car and driven off.
Approximately one hour later, the same squad of KGB men who had conducted searches of Yakir’s flat on 14 January (CCE 24.2) and 6 May 1972 (CCE 25.2) came to fetch Yakir’s wife Valentina Ivanovna SAVENKOVA at her place of work.
The squad drove Savenkova to her home and carried out a search, the third this year. The search warrant indicated Article 70 (RSFSR Criminal Code). The search lasted four hours. Only Savenkova was present at the search.
Several citizens who wished to be present (in particular, Yakir’s son-in-law Yuly Kim, husband of Irina Yakir; and Academician Andrei Sakharov) were not allowed into the flat. On the same day searches were also carried out at the workplaces of Yakir and his wife.
None of Yakir’s family has seen the records of these searches. The Chronicle knows nothing about them either.
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On the evening of 21 June KGB Investigator Major Gennady Vasilyevich Kislykh telephoned Valentina Savenkova and informed her that Pyotr Yakir had been arrested, charged under Article 70, and was currently being held in the Lefortovo KGB investigation Prison.
Incidentally, during the day official sources told foreign correspondents in Moscow that Yakir had been arrested for “anti-constitutional activities” [1] and charged under Articles 70 and 210 (“the inducement of minors to criminal activities”) of the RSFSR Criminal Code.
Savenkova appealed to the USSR Procurator-General to reduce the measure of restraint imposed on Yakir to a signed statement not to leave Moscow.
On 1 July 1972, the Action Group addressed a similar appeal to the USSR Procurator-General. The Action Group’s letter says, amongst other things [2]:
“… the public activities of Pyotr Yakir originate entirely in the idea of the de-Stalinisation of our society. Yakir’s anti-Stalinism is organically linked with his biography, his professional knowledge of our history, and his uncompromising attitude to public evil. The activities of Yakir reflect his convictions and are utterly selfless.
“Yakir’s sole aspiration is to further the democratization of our society …”
No reply has yet been received to these letters.
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APPEAL
A letter signed by a “Group of Soviet citizens” and dated June 1972 says, amongst other things:
“Pyotr Yakir has been thrown into jail.
“The authorities have resolved to add a new, sombre page to the tragic fate of one of our most remarkable contemporaries, a man of rare civic talent, great fortitude of spirit, indomitable energy and unswerving courage.
“This is yet another stage – perhaps the culminating point in the tactical campaign of creeping but systematic repression which the regime has been conducting for several years now in an attempt to stifle the democratic movement.
“One can and should protest against this action. What is more important, though, is to understand the essence of the new situation, and intensively and without hysteria (whether it be the hysteria of the bayonet-charge or the hysteria of capitulation) to adapt the life and methods of struggle of every democrat, and consequently of the entire movement, to the reality of the present.
“The arrest of Yakir, a man who consciously placed himself at the spearhead of the struggle, does not mean that ‘all is lost’, that the authorities have achieved a victory with their policy.
“… The arrest of Yakir is neither a beginning nor an end: it is an important landmark.
“… to preserve people and to preserve samizdat, to preserve and strengthen the movement for democratization – that is the chief aim today, that is the best answer to the arrest of Yakir …”
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NOTES
- Compromising allegations were made when detailing Yakir’s activities; some were carried in Western news reports the next day.
↩︎ - Longer extracts were given in a Reuters dispatch dated 9 July 1972. This listed the signatories as Tatyana Velikanova, Sergei Kovalyov, Alexander Lavut, Grigory Podyapolsky, Tatyana Khodorovich, Anatoly Jakobson, and Victor Krasin.
See also an article on Yakir’s arrest by Yury Shtein, a member of the Action Group now abroad, in Possev 8, 1972. On the Group see Reddaway, Uncensored Russia (chap. 7) and CCE 8.10.
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