TWENTY-FOUR ITEMS
PRISONS & CAMPS (1-4)
[1]
In March 1972, as CCE 24.11 [6] reported, 16 prisoners at the Leningrad Region’s corrective-labour colony 6 (Obukhovo rail station) refused to eat and sewed up their mouths in protest at the conditions of their confinement.
Following an investigation, the camp commandant was removed from his post. The deputy head of the “Department for the Administration of Places of Imprisonment” at the Leningrad City Soviet Executive Committee (Internal Affairs Directorate) received a reprimand.
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The inmates of the colony, meanwhile, have been subjected to a torrent of repressive measures.
The solitary confinement cells and cell-type premises (punishment cells) are packed with the prisoners who supported the protest. Some, driven to despair, are inflicting serious injuries upon themselves.
There have been instances of warders being assaulted in the camp. In connection with this, almost half the prisoners in the solitary confinement cells have been chained with handcuffs whose construction prevents any movement of the hands: the wrist-clips tighten more and more with every move and cause severe pain.
Many prisoners are now threatened with a camp trial for violation of the camp-rules.
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[2]
In November 1971, the following persons took part in a hunger strike in Vladimir Prison: Vyacheslav Aidov, Yakov Berg, Leonid Borodin, Oleg Vorobyov, Alexander Ginzburg, Stepan Zatikyan (CCE 23.3), Zinovy Krasivsky, Vasyl Kulynin, Yaroslav Lesiv (CCE 17.7), Gunar Rode (CCE 22.4 [6]), and others.
Their protest was directed: against recruitment by the state security police employees of informers from among political prisoners; against blackmail; and against the classification as “anti-Soviet documents” of statements sent by prisoners to State bodies.
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[3]
in the prisons and camps, instances are not infrequent of persons with grave mental disorders being kept under an ordinary regime along with healthy people.
The sick men Vasily Kondrata [Kindrat], Juozas Zelenkevicius and Tarasov are in Vladimir Prison.
Prisoner Tregubov, transferred to that prison from Dubrovlag Camp 11 (Mordovia), used to call himself “President of all Russia” (cf. Patriarch of all Russia). On the expiry of his term in 1969 he was immediately sent to a psychiatric hospital.
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[4]
Ludvikas Simulis (b. 1935) was sentenced to 25 years of special-regime imprisonment as an active participant in the underground organization “Movement for the Freedom of Lithuania” (see CCE 18.3, where his surname is mispelt “Simutis”).
On 10 December 1971 he appealed for a second time to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet. Simulis asked to be released, stressing the deterioration in his health, the severe conditions of his confinement, his exemplary conduct, and the absence of any penalties in his 16 years of imprisonment.
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PSYCHIATRIC DIAGNOSIS (5-8)
[5]
Vaclav Sevruk, arrested in Vilnius in January (CCE 24.2), is under psychiatric examination in the Serbsky Institute.
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[6]
In April 1972, a diagnostic commission in the Serbsky Institute found Vladimir Borisov and Victor Fainberg (CCE 24.4) sound of mind.
At the end of that month, they were transferred back to the Leningrad Special Psychiatric Hospital to await a court hearing.
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[7]
At the beginning of May, the poet Vasyl Stus (CCE 24.3) was confined in the Pavlov Psychiatric Hospital in Kiev.
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[8]
DNEPROPETROVSK SPH
Anatoly Lupynos [Ukr. Lupynis] (CCE 22.8 [5]) is in the Dnepropetrovsk Special Psychiatric Hospital.
In the same hospital as the artist Leonid Beloborodov.
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In 1960 Beloborodov and German Bendersky were arrested as they attempted to sail a boat across the Black Sea to Turkey.
At first Beloborodov was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for “illegal frontier-crossing”. At the beginning of 1971 he was released, but then new proceedings were brought against him under Article 62 (UkSSR Criminal Code = Article 70, RSFSR Code).
A psychiatric commission found him of unsound mind, and the court sent him to Dnepropetrovsk Special Psychiatric Hospital (CCE 21.3). Beloborodov is about 20. The fate of Bendersky is not known [correction CCE 26.18].
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RELEASES & DEATHS
[9]
In summer 1971, Hryhoriy Mykhaylovich PRYSHLYAK (b. 1912), former head of counter-espionage for the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), completed his 25-year sentence and was released from the Mordovian camps.
In July 1971 Vladimir Leonyuk (b. 1932) one of five members of “OUN-North’’ [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists] was released from the Mordovian camps. This organization consisted of live Ukrainians who were former inmates of Stalin’s camps. Four of them remained living in the north after their release from the camps – hence the title of the organization.
On 12 January 1972 Yaroslav Hasyuk (b. 1925), another member of the same organization, was released from the Mordovian camps after the expiry of his 12-year sentence.
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[10]
In November 1971 Mykhaylo Zelenchik, convicted by the Ivano-Frankovsk Region Court on 14 February 1956, was released early from the Mordovian camps.
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[11]
On 22 November 1971, Vyacheslav Alexandrovich AIDOV was released from Vladimir Prison.
In May 1970 he took part in a hunger strike (CCE 15.7, CCE 18.2) and was transferred to Vladimir Prison. Aidov, an engineer born in 1938, was sentenced in March 1967 by Moscow City Court to five years in a strict-regime labour camp for forming a “Union to Struggle for Freedom”: the incriminating documents were a programme, statutes, and the text of a leaflet which was supposed to be duplicated on a printing-press.
Since his release Aidov has been living under administrative surveillance in Kishinyov (Moldavia).
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Yakov Berg, who was sentenced to seven years in the same case as Aidov, is in Vladimir Prison.
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[12]
On 31 December 1971 Ivan Zholdak died in Dubrovlag Camp 3. He was about 60. He had spent 15 years in the camp and was a blacksmith by trade.
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[13]
On 31 March 1972 political prisoner Rostislav Serbenchuk from Odessa, who had served eight years and five months for attempting to form an “anti-Soviet organization”, was released from Mordovian Camp 385/19.
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[14]
On 19 May 1972, Ilya Gabai (CCE 12.3, CCE 30.1) was released after serving a three-year sentence of imprisonment.
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[15]
The artist Yury Ivanov (CCE 10.9, CCE 22.8 [15]) has been released early.
He tried to get a job in Saransk (Mordovia), but as he could not obtain a residence permit there he has gone to Smolensk (west-central Russia).
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INVESTIGATIONS (16-18)
[16]
MOSCOW. Kim Davletov, arrested in December 1971 (CCE 24.11 [3]), was expelled from the Communist Party on 30 December by the Moscow City Party Committee; until his arrest he had been a member of the Party Committee at the Academy of Sciences Institute of Philosophy.
It is thought that he has been charged, under Article 70 (RSFSR Criminal Code), with publishing his works in the Western press under a pseudonym. According to some reports, K. Davletov has been ruled to be of unsound mind.
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[17]
It has become known that the investigation of the case of Ilya Glezer (CCE 24.11 [4]) is proceeding under Article 70 (RSFSR Criminal Code).
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[18]
The Moscow KGB has completed its investigation of the case of A. Dronov (CCE 23.7 [10]).
A charge has been brought under Article 88 (RSFSR Criminal Code: “violation of the foreign currency transaction regulations”). Apparently, the samizdat confiscated during a search, and the interrogation of witnesses, did not provide enough material to charge Dronov under Article 70, although many witnesses were questioned about the circulation of literature and about statements by Dronov on political topics.
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[19]
PLATONOV
Due to an unfortunate misunderstanding, the name of Vyacheslav Mikhailovich PLATONOV was omitted from a report on the fate of members of the “All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People” [ASCULP] (see, CCE 1.6, CCE 19.4 and note 1 [1]).
A specialist in Abyssinian history, Platonov was sentenced in 1968 to seven years’ imprisonment by the Leningrad City Court. He is currently in Dubrovlag Camp 3, and was one of nine prisoners who appealed to the International Red Cross in a letter of December 1971 (CCE 23.3).
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[20]
In March-April 1972 Yury Shtein and Yury Glazov (CCE 24.12 [9]) left the USSR.
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[21]
In March 1972 Revolt Pimenov (see CCE 22.8 [23]) was unanimously elected to the post of Junior Research Officer at the Komi branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He has been entrusted with forming first a group and then a department specializing in his own mathematical field.
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[22]
On 11 April 1972 the Kiev authorities, thanks to a telephone call from the Mayor of New York John Lindsay, permitted wreathes to be laid at Baby Yar in memory of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto.
A meeting, however, was banned. About 200 people were present. Four wreathes were laid bearing the inscription: “We shall not forget! We shall not forgive!” Towards eight o’clock in the evening the crowd was dispersed, and those who expressed their indignation at the prohibition of the meeting were detained. Six people of advanced years — among them Isak Margolin, Semyon Nivelt and Lazar Zingerman — were jailed for 15 days.
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[23]
After the publication of her penitential letter (CCE 24.3) Zinoviya Franko was reinstated in her job; she was given a new, four-roomed flat and granted two weeks’ leave for moving in.
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[24]
On 21 April 1972 members of the Human Rights Committee (Sakharov, Chalidze, Tverdokhlebov, Shafarevich) and a consultant to the Committee, Alexander Volpin, sent the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet a memorandum on the restoration of the rights of forcibly deported nations and ethnic groups.
They called upon the Presidium to help restore the right of the Crimean Tatar and Meskhetian peoples (and other nationalities and groups) to live on the territories from which they were forcibly and unconstitutionally deported.
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NOTE
- See also the ‘remarkable’ 100-page essay, “Encounters of a Convict” by Alexander Petrov-Agatov, published in full in Grani (Nos. 82, 83 & 84); and his two shorter essays about Platonov and Leonid Borodin in Possev 3, 1971.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 