Some inmates of Vladimir Prison
There follows a list of some inmates of Vladimir Prison No 2 (address: 600020, Vladimir, [penal] institution OD-I/ST-2), convicted under articles of the Criminal Code relating to “especially dangerous State crimes”.
[Surnames in Russian alphabetical order, see CCE 46.23].
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Anatoly Avakov – Article 70 of the Russian Criminal Code, five years, sentenced at the beginning of 1970 in Komsomolsk-na-Amure for posting “anti-Soviet” letters to Soviet newspapers and to Nixon, and writing comments on ballot-papers [see CCE 18].
Bakhrov – a priest of the True Orthodox Church (TOC). Previously served a term of many years in the Mordovian camps and Vladimir Prison, from which he was released in 1967. Re-sentenced under Article 70 pt. 2 of the Code to ten years, six of them to be served in prison. Has been kept under special regime since July 1972.
Yakov Berg (now Khaimovich, he has changed his name in prison) – Article 70 of the Code, sentenced by Moscow City Court in 1967 in the same case as Vyacheslav Aidov (see CCEs 14, 15) for preparing leaflets for printing, and for constructing a duplicating machine. Sent to [Vladimir] Prison at the end of 1969 (see CCE 11.4, CCE 18.2 and CCE 25.10, items 2 & 12).
Yury Belov – Convicted for the second time in 1968 while in exile after a three-year term of imprisonment in the Mordovian camps; sentenced under Article 70 pt. 2 of the Russian Criminal Code to ten years of strict-regime camps, A court of second instance reduced the term to one of five years. Was in Vladimir Prison from April 1970 until recently, when he was ruled to be of unsound mind and sent to the Special Psychiatric Hospital in Sychyovka, Smolensk Region. The Head Doctor of the hospital, Lyamkin, has stated that they will treat Belov until he changes his opinions (see CCE9.10, item 14; CCE 18.2 [and CCE 26.5]).
Leonid Borodin – history teacher and school headmaster, sentenced in 1968 in the ASCULP case [All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People] (see CCE 1.6; CCE 17.12, item 9; CCE 19.4; and CCE 22.4, item 7) under Articles 70 and 72 of the Russian Criminal Code to six years. Has been in Vladimir Prison since November 1970. Term of imprisonment expires in February 1973.
Vladimir Bukovsky – Article 70 of the Russian Criminal Code, seven years, two of which to be served in prison (see CCE19.1; CCE 20; CCE 21.5; CCE 23.1; cce 24.1; CCE 25.11, item 6; and CCE 26) [note 2].
Boris Bykov – sentenced in Alma-Ata under the article of the Kazakh Criminal Code equivalent to Article 70 of the Russian Code, six years. Has been in Vladimir Prison since November 1970 (see CCE 18.3).
Bogdan Vtsuta – Article 64 of the Russian Criminal Code (Betrayal of the Motherland). 15 years. Arrested in 1969 when he tried to cross into Afghanistan while serving in the frontier forces. Has been in [Vladimir] Prison since the beginning of 1971.
Oleg Vorobyov – Article 70 of the Russian Criminal Code, six years, three of which in prison (see CCEs 16, 17 and CCE 18.10, item 1; CCE 21.9, item 18).
Vladimir Anastasevich Gavrilyuk – convicted in 1969 under the article [64] relating to “Betrayal of the Motherland”, for crimes committed in the Ukraine during the war years, Term: 15 years. Sent to a camp in August 1972.
Demchishin – convicted for having served in the UPA (Bandera’s Ukrainian Insurrectionist Army) during the war. Term: 15 years, commenced in 1969.
Boris Zalivako – a priest, sentenced in 1969 to eight years for crossing the Soviet-Czechoslovak frontier, has been in the prison since the Spring of 1971 (see CCE 17.11, item 3 [and 23]).
Juozas Zelenkevicius – a herdsman sentenced in 1969 for having served in the Lithuanian troops which collaborated with the Germans in wartime, term: 15 years, five of which in prison [see CCE 25].
Svyatoslav Karavansky – a philologist, Article 70 pt. 2 of the Russian Criminal Code (see CCE 11.3; CCE 13.7; CCE 15 and CCE 18.5, item 7). Held under special-regime.
Dmytro Kvetsko – instructor on a district committee of the Komsomol, sentenced to 15 years, of which five in prison, for participation in the Ukrainian National Front (see CCE 17.7), Sent to the Mordovian camps in March 1972.
Vasyl Kindrat – a worker, sentenced in 1962 to 10 years for “nationalist propaganda” [note 3]. Was in the prison from February 1971 until August 1972. when he was sent to the Mordovian camps.
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Anatoly KRASIVSKY – a writer sentenced in the same case as Kvetsko to twelve years, of which five in prison (see CCE 11, CCE 17.7, CCEs 18, 25). In December 1971, a ‘‘cell case” was brought against him under Article 70 pt. 2. the charge was one of manufacturing and circulating, orally and in writing, verses of nationalist content, in particular the poem “Apocalypse”. After a psychiatric examination in the Serbsky Institute in the Spring of 1972 a commission consisting of A. V. Snezhnevsky, G. V. Morozov, and D. R. Lunts found him of unsound mind. Krasivsky is now in the second hospital block of the prison, awaiting transfer to a Special Psychiatric Hospital.
After the war Krasivsky and his family were administratively exiled to Kazakhstan. On his way into exile Krasivsky escaped, returned to his homeland, and was detained and sentenced to live years. On the expiry of his term, he was sent into “exile in perpetuity” in Kazakhstan, where he worked in the mines and became an industrial invalid as a result of a head injury received in an accident. With great difficulty he obtained permission to return to his homeland. After graduating from the Philological Faculty of Lvov University he published several bibliographical works. At the time of his arrest in 1967 he had prepared for the press a historical novel about the Zaporozhian Cossacks. Krasivsky has two children; his wife is a music teacher at a school in the town of Morshino (Lvov Region). Her salary is the sole source of income for the family’s upkeep since existing legislation deprives prisoners of the right to a [disability] pension.
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Yakov Kryuchkov – Article 64 of the Russian Criminal Code, special-regime. According to the most recent information, found to be of unsound mind.
Kulynin – a worker sentenced to six years for his participation in the Ukrainian National Front (see CCE 15 & CCE 17.7). Has been in the prison since May 1970.
Yury Lazarev – Article 70. Six years, has been in the prison since November 1970. term expires in May 1975 [see CCE 18].
Yaroslav Lesiv – A teacher of physical culture, sentenced to six years for participation in the Ukrainian National Front (see CCE 17.7).
Konstantin Lushch – sentenced to 15 years in the same Demchishin. Sent to a camp at the beginning of 1969 under the article [64] for “Betrayal of the Motherland”, for war crimes; term 15 years, of which five in prison.
Matiash – sentenced in 1969 under the article about “betrayal of the Motherland” for war crimes. Term; 15 years, of which five to be spent in prison.
Vyacheslav Merkushev – sentenced in 1968 under Article 64 for attempting to cross the Soviet-Turkish frontier, where he was serving in the frontier troops. Term: ten years. Sent from a camp to the prison for three years in the Spring of 1971.
Valentyn Moroz – a historian (see CCE 14.11, item 1; CCE 17.2; and CCE 18.5, item 8). Nine years of which six in prison, plus live years’ exile. Like all persons convicted for a second time on a charge of anti-Soviet propaganda, he is being held under special-regime. Criminals confined in the same cell have constantly taunted him and threatened to assault him One night in July 1971 [in fact 1972] his cellmates attacked him and inflicted four knife-wounds. Moroz was transferred to the prison hospital in a grave condition. [note 4]
Igor Ogurtsov – translator and leader of ASCULP [Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People], articles 64 and 72 of the Russian Criminal Code, 15 years, of which five in prison, plus five years exile (see CCE 1.6 and CCE 19.4).
Yevgeny Pashnin – artist, Articles 64 and 15 of the Code; attempt to cross the frontier; eight years. Sentenced in 1968. Sent to the prison for two years in November 1970 [see CCE 18.2, No 24].
Valery Petrashko – Articles 70 and 72, six years, for participation in an organization consisting of 16- and 17-year-old youths who disseminated leaflets and set fire to several buildings (the law court, the Procuracy, and the private residences of the “city fathers’’) in the satellite town of Krasnoyarsk-45. Sentenced in 1969 (cf. CCE 15.8, item 15; and see CCE 17 [Supplement, pt. 1]). Sent to the prison in the spring of 1971.
Alexander Petrov (Agatov) – a writer, Article 70, seven years. Verses and stories by Petrov-Agatov were published in 1967-1968 in the official journals Neva and Prostor. His memoirs “Encounters with Convicts” [Arestantskiye Vstrechi], which describe his most recent arrest and imprisonment in a camp, are well-known in samizdat: it was for getting his memoirs out of the camps that he was sent to the prison in November 1970.
Anatoly Radygin — (see CCEs 18, 22 [.24]). Term expired on 12 September 1972.
Gunar Rode — (see CCEs 18, 22 [,25]). Will be sent to a camp in January 1973.
Alexander Romanov — (see CCEs 12, 17 [Supplement]). In Vladimir Prison until 1974.
Roman Semenyuk – sentenced in 1950, for participation in the OUN [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists], to a term of 25 years. Three years were added for an escape attempt in 1965. Due to be sent to a camp in 1972 [see CCE 11, 18].
Ivan Sokulsky – (see CCEs 12, 17 [Supplement]). Has been in the prison since the end of 1971.
Yakov Pavlovich STASYONOK — from Belorussia. Term: 15 years, of which three in prison. Arrested together with his father in 1969 for the murder of a collective-farm chairman in [?] 1969 (by planting a bomb in his home). Article [66 of Russian Code] “terrorism”.
Several people have already served terms of punishment in connection with this case, but evidently, they were wrongfully prosecuted for the murder. The father of Yakov Stasyonok died in camp 3 in the Spring of 1971 at age of 85. Yakov Stasyonok himself was sent from the prison to the camps in March 1971 to serve out his term.
Vladimir Timofeyev – “Betrayal of the Motherland”, the so-called Potsdam case of 1962 (?) when several Soviet soldiers attempted an escape from a prison to the West. Term: 12 years.
Vladimir Titov – Article 70 (for a statement renouncing his citizenship). Term: five years (?). Sent to the prison from the camps at the same time as Zalivako.
Leonid Trepov – “Betrayal of the Motherland” ; a sailor, Trepov attempted to escape in Malta. Term: 12 years (from June 1967). In the prison since 1971 and until 1974 (see CCE 8 //[?—not the copy which reached the West]).
Fabyshevsky – a Ukrainian, who served as a policeman under the Germans. Term: 15 years. Prison period specified in the sentence.
Semyon Tselyuk – Banderite. Served nine years, freed under an amnesty in 1955. Now sentenced to 15 years, but previous nine taken into account. 2 ½ years remain.
Igor Iosifovich Yurkevich — (see CCEs 14. 15. 17). Due for release in May 1973.
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Six inmates of Vladimir Prison went on a hunger strike from 26 June to 6 July 1972. They were: V. Bukovsky, Ya. Berg, V. Petrashko, V. Kulynin and R. Dragimas [one name omitted here in error]; they were protesting at being confined in a cell designed for four people.
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Political prisoner Mikhail Ignatievich KUKOBAKA (b. 1936), a native of Bobruisk, spent some time in confinement in the hospital wing of Vladimir Prison.
Kukobaka was employed as an unskilled worker in a radio factory in Alexandrov [Vladimir Region]. He was arrested on 14 April 1970 and proceedings were brought under Article 190-1 of the Russian Criminal Code, Material cited during investigation included entries in Kukobaka’s diary, a draft of a letter by him addressed to Brezhnev, and the testimony of workers to the effect that Kukobaka had spoken of the lack of freedom of speech and the press in the USSR. He was also accused of having made statements criticizing the occupation of Czechoslovakia.
A commission from the Serbsky Institute ruled that Kukobaka was of unsound mind (diagnosis: schizophrenia) and the court sent him for compulsory treatment.
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In one of the Mordovian special-regime camps Petras PAULAITIS (b. 1904) is serving a term of punishment [see CCE 24.5, text and notes]. He studied in Rome and is a Doctor of Philosophy. During the German occupation of Lithuania Paulaitis was leaching Latin to the eighth class in a Jurbarkas grammar-school, where he also directed the pupils’ underground activities. On 16 February 1942 (Lithuanian Independence Day) his pupils hoisted the Lithuanian flag on the local Gestapo building. Wherever the young conspirators came across the “new” name of the town, “Georgenburg”—they altered it back to the old name of Jurbarkas.
With the arrival of Soviet troops in Lithuania in 1944, 26 of Paulaitis’s pupils joined the Union of Struggle for the Freedom of Lithuania. Paulaitis himself edited the Union’s newspaper To Freedom.
In 1946 a military tribunal sentenced him to 25 years’ imprisonment; in 1956 Paulaitis was released following a review of his case. He returned to Kaunas and worked as a stoker at a cannery. He refused to condemn Lithuanian bourgeois nationalism—this was the condition on which he was promised that he would be allowed to teach. In 1957 he was re-arrested, charged with conducting subversive activities amongst students at Kaunas Polytechnic Institute, and, with the sanction of Voroshilov, Chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet, Paulaitis was sent to serve the remainder of his term.
In 1958 criminal proceedings were instituted against him yet again for his connection (in 1957) with students who aimed to re-found the Union of Struggle for the Freedom of Lithuania. On 12 April 1958, the Lithuanian Supreme Court sentenced seven students to various terms from one to ten years, and Paulaitis was again given 25 years. In connection with the reform of the Criminal Code the term was then reduced to one of 15 years, Paulaitis is due for release on 12 April 1973. He will be 69 years old; 25 of those years will have been spent in camps and six in underground activities, including four during the German occupation.
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Josif Mishener and Yakov Mikhailovich Suslensky, sentenced on 30 October 1970 in Bendery [Moldavian SSR] to terms of six and seven years respectively under Article 70 of the Russian Criminal Code, have been transferred to the supervision of the Perm Administration for Internal Affairs [UVD]. Mishener, age 37, is a history teacher, and Suslensky is a teacher of English. Both ex-members of the Communist Party, they wrote two letters to the Central Committee (concerning the execution of Jews in Baghdad and the events in Czechoslovakia). After being dismissed from their jobs, they intended to write to the UN, but their letters were confiscated during a search (see CCEs 15, 16).
Also transferred to the Perm Region are: David Chernoglaz, Butman, Yagman, [Yury] Vudka [CCE 12, 14], Altman, Dymshits, Khnokh, Mendelevich and V. Zalmanson [see CCEs 17 & 20]. Their address: 618263 Perm Region, Chusovskoi district, Kopalno post office, post-box UT 389/36 [i.e. Perm-36].
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Vladislav Grigorevich Nedobora, now in a camp (Zholtye Vody, Dnepropetrovsk Region, [penal institution] YaEh-308/26-3-32) refused to testify in the case of Plyushch. He was then removed from his work as an engineer and transferred to general duties. In reply to a complaint by the wife of Nedobora, the head of the Dnepropetrovsk [UVD: Regional Administration for Internal Affairs] stated: “The transfer was occasioned by production requirements.” Nedobora’s radiculitis [a nervous disease affecting the nerves of the brain] has become acutely aggravated. The trial of Nedobora in March 1970 was reported in CCE 13.4 [see also CCEs 17, 23 and CCE 11.4].
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COMMENT
This list highlights the confusion in the 1960 Criminal Code of the RSFSR (and other national republics) as to what constituted an “especially serious State crime”. This section in the code did not include crimes against the individual such as murder or rape; it embraced offences ranging from treason, espionage, terrorism and sabotage (64-66, 68) through “promotion of war” (Article 69) to anti-Soviet activities (Article 70).
In September 1986, for example, KGB chairman Chebrikov listed some of these crimes for his fellow Politburo members: “In total 240 individuals have been prosecuted and are now serving sentences for committing these types of crime. These are people convicted of espionage, crossing the State frontier, distributing hostile leaflets, dealing in hard currency, and so on.”
The mixing of dissent with other harmful activities and the accompanying confusion in official minds and public perceptions have persisted in Russia. In the 1990s, the adoption of a new constition (1993) and a new Criminal Code (1996) began to change such attitudes. (In January 1987, incidentally, Chebrikov was already quoting different figures …)
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NOTES
[1] On 26 February 1973 a report, “The Forced Labour Camps in the USSR Today”, by Peter Reddaway was presented to the press in Brussels by the International Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in the USSR.
[2] In December 1972 the University of Leiden invited Bukovskv to come to the Netherlands to study and offered him a scholarship. On 8 December three foreigners (Mario Celletti of Italy, Peter Krosbu of Norway and Andre Kientzi of France) handed out leaflets on Moscow’s Revolution Square in Bukovsky’s defence. Detained at once, they were expelled from the USSR two days later.
See agency dispatches from Moscow about the incident (AP on 11 December, Reuter on 13 December) and a big attack on the demonstrators in the Literary Gazette (13 December, p. 9). Possev Nos. 1 & 2, 1973, reprinted the Literary Gazette article.
[3] Not quite accurate, according to lawyer and prisoner Ivan Kandyba, writing in 1966. The trial of Kindrat and 19 others for forming a “Ukrainian National Committee’’ took place in Lvov in December 1961, he says. Kindrat, “a young boy, was sentenced to 13 years, whereupon he went mad”. See Ferment in the Ukraine (p. 69). Kandyba’s evidence is supported by CCE 25.10 (item 3) where Kindrat (spelt there as Kondrata) is described as mentally ill.
[4] In October 1972 the Dutch Historical Association (Utrecht) sent a series of appeals to the political leaders in Moscow and Ukraine. Signed by its secretary C.B. Wels, these called for the release of fellow-historians Moroz, Pyotr Yakir, and Andrei Amalrik.
A Chronicle of Current Events 