The trial of Pyotr Petrovich STARCHIK (CCE 25.2) was held on 14 December 1972 in the Moscow City Court.
Starchik (b. 1939) is married with two children, aged seven and one-and-a half.
He completed two years of study at the Moscow University psychology department and worked as a laboratory assistant at the Psychology Institute (USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences).
Starchik was arrested in the spring of 1972.
*
Pyotr Starchik, b. 1939
*
TRIAL
The judge was Vladimir Bogdanov [1],
the People’s Assessors were Sarayeva and Travkina, the prosecutor was Procurator Yermakov
the defence counsel was Rausov [2].
Rausov was appointed by the Moscow Bar Association. Starchik’s wife had retained defense attorney Simeon Ariya to handle the case, but he withdrew after signing Article 201 (owing to the “absence of enough material on which to base a speech for the defence”). The trial was open, although the day before the Judge had said that it would be closed; it was not clear whether the accused’s wife would be allowed to attend. Starchik was charged under Article 70 (RSFSR criminal code).
*
Starchik was accused of the massive dissemination of many hundreds of anti-Soviet leaflets which contained an appeal for the overthrow of the “dictatorship of the Party” and carried a “five-pointed swastika” as an emblem. He was charged with having executed inscriptions of similar content in public places.
A search at his home had turned up “anti-Soviet literature”. Mention was made of Djilas’s The New Class, Amalrik’s Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?, and 41 copies of the “libellous Journal Chronicle” (including 14 copies of CCE 19).
Lyakhov [3], a friend of Starchik’s from student days ’ who had been interrogated as a pre-trial witness, confirmed in court that he had received some kind of literature from Starchik (he did not specify the titles; his home had also been searched), but he knew nothing about the inscriptions or the leaflets.
There were also two female witnesses — art school students who on 15 April 1972 had seen a person resembling Starchik leave a bundle of leaflets in the Dzerzhinskaya metro station. They had delivered the leaflets to a police station without reading them.
*
Starchik himself was not present at the trial.
A commission of psychiatrists had ruled him non-responsible: it was the third (two preceding commissions had submitted ambiguous conclusions). Its report, and that of an expert commission of criminologists, was not read aloud at the trial. No experts were present in court.
After a brief presentation of the indictment the procurator proposed that Starchik be exempt from criminal liability and sent to a Special Psychiatric Hospital for treatment.
Defence counsel stated that he would not be able to defend his client if he were ruled to be accountable, as the charges had been proven (literally: “Since Starchik’s anti-Soviet attitudes have been completely proved, there exists every ground for trying him under Article 70”). He supported the request that Starchik be sent to a hospital (without specifying which type).
*
SENTENCE
In its decision (Special Psychiatric Hospital) the court repeated the indictment, indicated the diagnosis (“sluggish schizophrenia”), and in part indicated the reasons why he had been sent for psychiatric examination:
“he would lie naked on the floor” (Starchik did yoga exercises), his religious beliefs, and the rudeness of his attitude towards the investigators. Starchik said that in 10 years the investigators would be sitting in his place, and then refused to testify.
========================
NOTES
- Vladimir Bogdanov presided at the trials of many other Moscow dissidents and rights activists, (Judge Bogdanov): among them Olga Joffe, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Andrei Tverdokhlebov and Alexander Lavut.
↩︎ - Rausov previously defended Roman Fin (CCE 18.10 [8], CCE 22.8 [12]).
↩︎ - In CCE 25.2 and CCE 26.3 [4] the surname was at first spelt Liikhov with first names ‘Vasily Ivanovich’.
↩︎
===========================
A Chronicle of Current Events 