<<No 51 : 1 December 1978>>

Moscow.

On 25 August 1978, Moscow KGB officials, headed by a senior investigator of the Investigations Department, Captain V. S. Semenyuk, conducted a search of the home of Mark Aronovich MOROZOV (CCE 47.15). The decision to conduct a search was authorized by a military procurator. In the decision it was stated that the search was being conducted in connection with Case No. 494. Among the confiscated items were a xerox copy of A. Amalrik’s book Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?, A. Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a brochure by Yu. V. Andropov entitled “Communist Belief is the Great Strength of the Builders of a New World” (probably because of the marginal notes), two tape-recorders and a camera.

On 10 October M. Morozov sent a statement to the Moscow Procurator:

“I categorically assure you, citizen Procurator, that whatever the mysterious Case No. 494 being conducted by counter-intelligence, I am not involved in any intrigues by capitalist powers against our country. Therefore, I am compelled to interpret any attention paid by counter-intelligence to myself as the continuation of a campaign of insinuation aimed at discrediting the Soviet human rights movement, the beginning of which was marked by the very sad case of A. Shcharansky.

“In connection with the fact that the search conducted by counterintelligence has undoubtedly tended to dishonour my name as a Soviet dissident in the eyes of decent Soviet citizens, I would like to believe that when the KGB investigators reach the only conclusion possible, namely that I am innocent and was not a party to any crime, they will make me a public apology to compensate for the moral harm they have done me …

“I will be grateful to you if you use the prerogative of your office to return most speedily the confiscated articles, which cannot be material evidence, if only because there is no evidence of a crime …”

On 1 November 1978, Mark Morozov was arrested. The investigation of his case (apparently under Article 70 of the Russian Criminal Code) is being conducted by Major N. N. Belyaev and Senior Lieutenant N. A. Olezhko. At several interrogations, the questions concerned ‘information leaks’ (on the day Alexander Podrabinek was arrested someone phoned several people to warn them that he would be arrested that day).

On the same day searches were conducted at the home and workplace of Igor Veniaminovich ZHIV. Igor Zhiv himself was taken to Lefortovo early in the morning: here Investigator Major Chernysh (CCE 46) interrogated him in connection with the Morozov case all day (11 hours). The interrogation began with the threat that Zhiv was a witness who could very quickly become an accused. According to Chernysh, Morozov and Zhiv had pasted up on walls and distributed via letter-boxes a photocopied leaflet (Zhiv works in the photographic laboratory of a scientific institute). The leaflet, which carried pictures of Orlov, Ginzburg and Shcharansky, demanded their release (Chernysh showed Zhiv the pamphlet). Zhiv replied that he was hardly likely to be able to help him (Chernysh) in any way. After the search at Zhiv’s workplace he was forbidden to go out on work assignments and to leave the building during his lunch-breaks.

*

Bobruisk (Mogilyov Region).

On 30 August 1978, porter Oleg Borisov told Mikhail Kukobaka (CCE 47.12 and CCE 48.21) in front of everyone in a changing-room that he had received a packet from Minsk for Kukobaka.

On the way home Borisov was stopped by a police-officer and two men in plain clothes, who asked him to give them the packet. If he refused, they told Borisov, he could be sent to a labour-treatment clinic for two years for excessive use of wine. Seizing the parcel and without even opening it, they put Borisov into a waiting vehicle and drove him to the local KGB office. There they ‘had a chat’ with him about Kukobaka’s relations with other workers. During the ‘chat’ they told Borisov: “You should know that Kukobaka is a lunatic, and you ought to avoid all contact with him,” (The parcel turned out to contain a book by D. Shub entitled Russian Political Figures, 1850 to 1920.)

On the evening of 31 August three plain-clothes officers called on Sergei Novikov, a worker, at his home. One of them produced KGB identification and said that illegal literature belonging to Kukobaka was being stored in the house, and that it was necessary to confiscate it. He added in passing that they were aware that while the house was being repaired, Novikov had tried to ‘circumvent the law’ and obtain certain building materials.

A number of samizdat articles, interviews by Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn, articles by Kukobaka himself and tape-recordings of Western broadcasts of them, the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, a picture of Grigorenko, photographs and personal correspondence belonging to Kukobaka, and also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Bulletin of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the text of the Helsinki Final Act, and a printed letter ready for posting to P. N. Masherov, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Belorussian Communist Party, were confiscated.

On 1 September two plain-clothes officers openly and persistently followed Kukobaka. On 2 September this had increased to three men and a car.

Mikhail Kukobaka, b. 1936

On 3 September, Kukobaka sent a protest to the Head of the Bobruisk KGB office and a letter to Masherov. On 5 September he sent a protest-statement to the USSR Procurator-General. At some time in September Kukobaka sent an open letter to Andropov to the Pravda newspaper, in which he described the conditions in which he had been obliged to live during the past two years, i.e., since he was released.

In a chat with N. F. Kuklitskaya, Deputy Head of the Bobruisk communications office, Kukobaka managed to find out that on the orders of the Gomel Region Procurator (see “The Trial of Buzinnikov”, CCE 51.3) his correspondence had been confiscated up to 20 August. On 1 October Kukobaka sent the Mogilev Region Procurator a complaint about the violation of the confidentiality and integrity of his correspondence.

On 19 October 1978, Kukobaka was arrested. At his workplace it was officially announced that he had engaged in agitation. The investigation is being conducted by an investigator of the Mogilev Regional Procuracy, Pichugov. In conversation with an acquaintance of Kukobaka he said that he had no doubt that Kukobaka was mentally deficient. Kukobaka was sent for psychiatric examination.

Following Kukobaka’s arrest the Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes and the Moscow Helsinki Group made a joint statement about their fears over his fate. The appeal, entitled “Stop an Imminent Act of Tyranny” was signed by 15 people.

*

Leningrad.

In the spring of 1976, on the opening day of the 25th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, a group of young people distributed pamphlets. One of the members of this group, Andrei Reznikov, a first-year student of the Applied Mathematics Faculty of Leningrad University, was arrested. He was charged under Article 70 of the Russian Criminal Code. The case was closed, however, after one month (probably in accordance with Article 6 of the Russian Code of Criminal Procedure) and he was released. The other members of the group were expelled from their institutes, and one was even expelled from school (CCE 40). Alexander Skobov was a member of the group (see below on him; in CCE 40 he is mistakenly referred to as Strogov).

*

On 4 April 1978, the group “The Leningrad School” confirmed the following ‘programmatic statement’:

• 1. A group of young people, motivated by their dissatisfaction with the surrounding reality — that motor of social progress — have decided to embark on coordinated social activity aimed at transforming the existing society.
• 2. The group starts from the desire to bring about a social system capable of satisfying the widest material and spiritual demands of each member of society, and of guaranteeing each individual the opportunity of full and harmonious development. The group considers communism to be such a social system …
• 4. The group takes Marxism as its theoretical basis…
• 5. By means of a Marxist analysis of reality the group has reached the conclusion that the existing system in the USSR constitutes slate-monopoly capitalism …
• 6. The process whereby this system was established in Russia after the 1917 revolution was in keeping with the laws of history and was inevitable,
• 7. The establishment of this system was at that time progressive …
• 8. An analysis of the present state of Soviet society has brought the group to the conclusion that the Soviet system has already fulfilled its historic function and has outlived its day. The consequence and main symptom of this is the crisis which has seized our society, manifested in the loss of faith among the masses in the official ’religion’, their increasing apathy as citizens, the intellectual and moral impasse which society has entered, and the growth of moral depravities … The development of our system has entered the downward phase. For mankind’s next step to be on the path to progress it is essential to replace it with a more forward-thinking system — socialism …
• 10. The transition from state-monopoly capitalism to socialism is essentially a revolutionary process, for it involves the removal from power of the class of state bureaucrats us a result of a class struggle against it by the working classes, led by the intelligentsia.
• 11. The intelligentsia is the most progressive class of the late 20th century.,.
• 13. The revolutionary process of the transition to socialism can take place in peaceful ways if the ruling class, after realistically appraising the situation, makes concessions and accordingly democratizes the existing system. Such a squeezing of the bureaucracy from power will be able to occur through normal methodical political struggle within the framework of a legal constitutional system.
• 14. This kind of revolutionary course is the most to be desired …
• 15. An indispensable condition for achieving it is the presence of a strong, organized and, most important, constructive opposition, which will present the government with a peaceful solution to conflict, and which has a concrete programme for improvements.
• 16. The intelligentsia will then he able to play its vanguard role and lead the masses behind it, will then be able to give birth to a strong, organized opposition when it finally forms itself into its own class, will advance its own programme and form its own political party, a militant, united vanguard party.
• 17. To achieve all this the intelligentsia must overcome its three weaknesses: ideological, organizational and moral. For this, in turn, the exchange of information and ideas and the discussion of burning polemical questions must be organized in intellectually critical circles. It is necessary to undertake education and self- education to unite cultural forces and stimulate public thinking. The group sees its primary task as furthering this aim …

In spring 1978 the group began to issue a journal entitled Perspective. By autumn two issues had come out and a third was under way. For mid-October, the group organized a conference.

On 12 October searches were conducted at the homes of the group’s leaders — Arkady Tsurkov, a second-year student at the Pedagogical Institute, Andrei Reznikov and his 18-year-oId wife Irina Fyodorova. Copies of The Gulag Archipelago, A Chronicle of Current Events, From Under the Rubble and Perspective were confiscated, A search was carried out at the same time at the home of 19-year-old Irina Lopotukhina. A typewriter, photographic equipment and materials for the third issue of the journal Perspective were confiscated.

*

On 14 October 1978, Andrei Besov, who had just arrived from Moscow, was detained at a railway-station “on suspicion of theft”.

Besov was born in 1948; he left the Komsomol in 1966 in connection with the Sinyavsky and Daniel case; during his army service he was given a medical discharge, put on the register of a psychiatric clinic as a schizophrenic; he was interned in psychiatric hospitals on a number of occasions; in 1977 he sent critical remarks on the draft new Constitution to several Soviet newspapers.

During the search in the station’s police-office, photographic film of The Gulag Archipelago and copies of Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? were confiscated from Besov. He was then released, but after a few minutes detained once again ‘for jostling and insulting citizens’. In the police-office a record was drawn up about ‘petty hooliganism’. On 16 October, a court sent Besov for psychiatric examination. Until 16 November Besov was in Leningrad Psychiatric Hospital No. 6 (here he was administered Aminazin), and then he was transferred to Moscow’s ‘transit’ Psychiatric Hospital No. 7, and a few days later he was transferred from here also.

*

Also on 14 October 1978, Viktor Pavlenkov, a resident of Gorky and the son of Vladlen Pavlenkov (see CCE 10.6; CCEs 42 and 47), was detained at a different railway-station and imprisoned for ‘petty hooliganism’.

*

On 16 October 1978, Alexander Skobov, a fourth-year student in the History Faculty of Leningrad University, a member of the editorial board of the journal Perspective and organizer of a ‘commune’, was arrested. (Many young people used to come to Skobov’s flat, exchange samizdat and hold discussions; his flat was also frequented by people from other towns; the ‘commune’ survived for half a year; in September 1978, the police broke it up.) According to the Procurator, proceedings have been instituted against Skobov under Article 70 of the Russian Criminal Code.

A. Reznikov, I. Fyodorova, A. Tsurkov, I. Lopotukhina and Lev Kuchai signed an appeal calling for people to take up Skobov’s defence. In this appeal they call themselves a ‘left opposition group’.

On 25 October, a search was carried out at the home of Alexei Chistyakov, a third-year student of the Languages Faculty of Leningrad University.

On 31 October Arkady Tsurkov was arrested. He is also charged under Article 70.

Numerous interrogations (30 to 40 people have already been summoned) are being conducted in connection with Case No. 70. KGB Investigators Blinov, Karmatsky, Kuznetsov, Lepetunin and Tsygankov refuse to clarify the central issue of the case, since, according to them, it is an investigation secret. In reply, Reznikov and Fyodorova have refused to give evidence.

*

Kuibyshev.

On 7 November 1978, Vladislav Bebko (b. 1953), a second-year student at Kuibyshev Polytechnic Institute, was arrested.

Vladislav’s father is a factory foreman and his mother a nurse. In 1972 V. Bebko entered the Kuibyshev Construction Engineering Institute. After one year he was expelled ‘for academic failures’ and found a job.

In 1975 a group of young people formed around Bebko. They read and discussed samizdat, made tape-recordings of radio broadcasts of works by V. Maximov, I. Shafarevich and others. They then decided to “go out onto the street”. The first time it was without ‘political intentions’.

On 1 April 1976, a noisy group of about 30-40 young people chanting humorous slogans processed from Samara Square. Thirty minutes later the police blocked their path. Twelve people were taken to a police station. On the orders of KGB Captain Babkov, records were compiled that three of them had disrupted public order. The following day V. Bebko was given 15 days in jail and two others, V. Ryzhov and V, Funtikov, 10 days each. During their imprisonment KGB officials ‘chatted’ with them.

The KGB continued to take an interest in the group of young people which had formed around Bebko. The group fell apart by winter.

On 1 April 1977 Bebko and the workers V. Solomko and A. Sarbayev again went to demonstrate. This time they took a placard demanding freedoms (of the press, expression etc). They were seized on the way and detained. Their placard was confiscated and then they were released.

In 1977 Bebko entered a polytechnic institute. In February 1978 he was subjected to a series of interrogations in the Kuibyshev KGB offices, after which he was issued a caution in accordance with the 25 December 1972 Decree. Bebko was charged with “anti-Soviet remarks, the dissemination of anti-Soviet materials and ‘Charter 77’,” and organizational activity in forming an ‘anti-Soviet group’. At the beginning of March A. Sarbayev was issued a similar caution.

On 1 April 1978 Bebko was put under preventive detention and taken to be interviewed by the KGB. On 7 April he was again detained and searched and a tape-recording of a ‘Voice of America” broadcast confiscated from him.

In September, when living with other students on a collective farm, Bebko initiated a discussion on ‘anti-Stalinist’ themes; the following day he was sent back to town.

*

On the evening of 7 November 1978, in the presence of the student M. Ryabova and the worker G. Konstantinov, Bebko tore an anniversary placard [61st anniversary of 1917 revolution] down from an administration building, 15 minutes later all three were detained and sent to a police station.

On 9 November criminal proceedings were instituted against Bebko under Article 206, part 2, of the Russian Criminal Code (‘malicious hooliganism’). The same day a search was carried out at his flat. Two reels of tape ‘with recordings of foreign anti-Soviet radio-stations’, five cassettes ‘containing similar recordings’, a notebook and 32 sheets of notepaper ‘containing excerpts from foreign radio broadcasts’, 37 building pipes, and two sheets of paper ‘with notes about Trotsky” were confiscated. Vladislav’s father said that these two sheets belonged to Marina Ryabova.

On 10 November, a search was carried out at Ryabova’s flat. Three spools of tape, six notepads and two notebooks ‘containing notes’, and a typewriter were confiscated. On 12 November Konstantinov and Ryabova were released.

On 15 November further criminal proceedings were instituted against Bebko under Article 190-1 of the Russian Criminal Code. He was transferred to Investigations Prison I Z-42/1. The investigation was carried out by V. A. Korostelev, Investigator of the Kuibyshev Regional Procuracy. Bebko refused to give testimony, made a statement about the political motives for his actions, and demanded political prisoner status.

*

Sovetsk (Kaliningrad Region).

On 2 August 1978, Romen Kosterin was arrested. Kosterin is a friend of Konovalikhin [see above]. In March, a search was conducted at his flat in connection with Konovalikhin’s case (CCE 49.7; here he was mistakenly called Roman). Kosterin was charged under Article 190-1 of the Russian Criminal Code. The Procuracy Investigator Kudashkin {CCE 49) threatened him with physical reprisals and also that his wife would be arrested, and his daughter put into an orphanage.

Kosterin worked as an artist in a municipal park. The First Secretary of the Sovetsk town Party committee, Petushkov, disrupted the exhibition he had mounted for the May holidays. For this reason Kosterin sent a complaint to Brezhnev.

Kosterin’s wife works as a history and sociology school-teacher.

*

Krasnoyarsk.

On 13 June 1978, officials of the Krasnoyarsk KGB conducted searches at the home of engineer Vladimir Georgievich SIROTININ and senior economist Vera Yevgenyevna PARFYONOVA. The searches were conducted on the instructions of the Chief of the Investigations Department of the Leningrad KGB, Major Savelev, in connection with Case No. 86, “on illegal involvement in producing printed material” (CCE 49; apparently the defendants in this case are Bakhtin and Peretyatko). Copies of Cancer Ward and The Gulag Archipelago were confiscated, along with a reel of film containing The Great Terror by Robert Conquest. At subsequent interrogations the investigators asserted that Boris Vail {CCE 47) had given this film to Sirotinin before emigrating.

On 1 August Sirotinin and Parfenova were issued a warning in accordance with the Decree of 25 December 1972. The Deputy Chief of Krasnoyarsk KGB, B. K. Chernyshev, said to Sirotinin, “I wonder what will you do when we smash the Moscow dissidents?!”

On 9 August ‘discussions’ began: at the city Soyuzpechat agency where Parfyonova works; at the Krasnoyarsk branch of the All-Union State Polytechnic Institute for the Automation of Accounting Systems and Computer Studies (USSR Central Statistical Office), where Sirotinin works; and at the radio factory where his wife Svetlana works.

After the discussions in the Soyuzpechat agency the following placard was hung up:

“Warning!”

“On 9 August, a meeting of the collective took place in the city Soyuzpechat agency with the following agenda, ‘Condemnation of the hostile anti-Soviet activities of senior economist Parfenova’. In the course of the meeting speeches were made by officials of the agency, who angrily condemned her hostile actions against our reality.

“Resolution of the Meeting: Expel Parfyonova from our collective!”

Four months before reaching retirement age V. A. Parfyonova resigned her job “of her own free will”.

*

At the radio factory meeting Strelkova, third secretary of the October district Party committee, called on the employees to create an intolerable atmosphere around Sirotinina. (Sirotinina has worked at the factory for 19 years, during 12 of which she has been a member of the local Party committee and has been awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour).

At many of the lectures given in Krasnoyarsk at this time remarks were made insinuating that Sirotinin and Parfenova were involved in the Moscow metro explosions {CCE 44).

During KGB interrogations I. D. Mesyats, a sales assistant at a bookshop (at the beginning of August she was promoted), and E.I. Alichenko, a worker, gave evidence about people from whom they had received ‘forbidden’ books.

*

Togliatti (Kuibyshev Region).

On 12-13 September 1978, KGB officers conducted a search at the workplace of M. V. Zotov (CCE 49; he works as an artist at a dairy combine). Samizdat and Zotov’s own archive were confiscated. In reply to the KGB officers request to tell them who gave him the samizdat Zotov wrote an ‘Explanatory Note’ (a copy of which he sent to Kosygin).

In this ‘Note’ Zotov (b. 1923) recounts that in 1939, after finishing his apprenticeship, he started working as a metal-worker. In 1941, when the war started, his father was no longer alive. Since his mother’s maiden name was German, she and Mikhail Zotov, together with his brother, were sent to Siberia — at first to a place of exile, then to a camp. With some difficulty M. Zotov managed to be sent to the front. In August 1944 he was wounded for the fifth time and demobilized. In 1949 his mother was released from compulsory labour due to illness, but in 1950 the authorities decided that she had recovered and returned her to the work army [forced labour//]. At the same time, whilst working as a milling-machine operator, Zotov was producing three one-year output norms per year.

In 1957, owing to ill health, he was no longer able to stand at his machine and began to draw. Since 1963 he has been trying to arrange an exhibition of his pictures. His ‘Note’ concludes:

“nowadays dissidents are the only people who are at least in some way trying to eradicate injustice, to reveal just what it is that makes them dissidents. In any matter it is a hundred times more important to know the Causes than the Results!

“In our country, though, the authorities want to spit on the Causes; they don’t want to face up to the evidence produced by the dissidents. In advance and without hesitation they call this evidence slanderous. Under such circumstances the naming of any one of the dissidents who have given me the opportunity of getting to know the voices of Sakharov, Grigorenko and others, to give the names of these people, knowing perfectly well that instead of looking at the Causes (I repeat) and eradicating these Causes, the authorities will simply take action on the unworthy secondary question — the eradication of the Results. Under such conditions to name anyone would be sacrilege.

“I can say nothing more and only ask one more time: find some answers to the questions — Who profits by prolonging the Causes which provoke dissidence?”

On I November 1978, officials of the Togliatti City Procuracy, on orders from the Moscow Procuracy, conducted a search of Zotov’s home and workplace and of his mother’s home. Before the search began it was suggested to Zotov that he surrender “materials, documents, printed publications and items defaming the Soviet political and social system”.

The bulk of material confiscated consisted of pictures (many of a political nature) and manuscripts by Zotov and photographs of his pictures. After the search Zotov wrote a statement to the Procurator-General of the USSR:

“Dear Mr Procurator, two years ago I sent several statements to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I stressed that only under duress could * I be a citizen of this super-Chilean regime, that is, a citizen of the USSR. So why was I not allowed to leave? …Would it not be better to use your reason — return what you have confiscated and allow me to go abroad with all this — my manuscripts and pictures? This way I would at least have no motivation to paint new pictures.”

*

Chernovtsy.

In February 1978, KGB officials detained the Director of the District House of Culture, Sherbul, and the sculptor Lisakovsky, and charged them with being Ukrainian nationalists, duplicating and distributing anti-Soviet and nationalist literature (in particular a tape-recording of an essay by Valentyn Moroz entitled ‘Amid the Snows’), and with participation in nationalistic ‘gatherings’. Lisakovsky was also charged with distortion of an article by Lenin on the national question. The KGB officers said that Sherbul and Lisakovsky had arrived from Kiev on an assignment from a certain nationalist organization to create similar groups in Chernovtsy (Sherbul and Lisakovsky both studied in higher educational institutions in Kiev). The KGB officers used threats and blackmail. KGB officer Sochivets tried to set Sherbul and Lisakovsky against one another.

Sherbul was detained for three days. Lisakovsky was released after five hours but was then twice summoned back to the KGB.

Many acquaintances of Sherbul and Lisakovsky were also summoned by the KGB. A search was carried out at Sherbul’s workplace.

Sherbul and Lisakovsky were cautioned under the Decree of 25 December 1972. Both were expelled from the Party. Sherbul was dismissed from his job.

Lisakovsky was dismissed from the Regional Council for Art and Public Sculpture. Now, when mention is made in the press of the monument to Czechoslovak soldiers who died in the war, one of the designers of which was Lisakovsky, either the designers are not mentioned at all, or only the co-designers are mentioned. No new works are being assigned to Lisakovsky. Maryanin, a regional newspaper correspondent and author of an article on Lisakovsky’s work, and local radio and television contributors who organized a broadcast about him, have all met with unpleasant difficulties at work.

*

On 10 November, the [city’s] Leningrad district procuracy conducted a search at the home of Josif Zisels {Chronicles 44, 48, 49), formally in connection with the case of some man named Morgulis, charged with pornographic offences. Naturally, no pornography was found. Poetry by Tsvetayeva, Voloshin and Mandelshtam, books by Bulgakov, the Gospels, copies of letters from the Austrian poet Paul Celan to friends in Chernovtsy, together with a card-index of prisoners in psychiatric hospitals (approximately 100 people, a particularly large number of whom are in the Dnepropetrovsk SPH), materials concerning Baptists in Chernovtsy, correspondence with exiles, postal dispatch certificates and official notifications of letter receipt were all confiscated.

*

Taganrog.

In 1974-75 Eduard Kuleshov (b. 1936), a worker at a combine harvester factory, made tape-recordings of Western radio broadcasts of The Gulag Archipelago, and also of a number of speeches by Solzhenitsyn. The tape-recordings were kept by M. Slinkov, a foreman at the same factory, who, without consulting Kuleshov, lent them to a worker at the factory, E. Chernopyatov, who was also a correspondence-course student at Moscow University history faculty. Chernopyatov lent them to an acquaintance, a student at a Taganrog Institute. At about the same time Chernopyatov photographed “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” and gave several copies of it to friends to read.

On 11 November 1977 police arrived at Chernopyatov’s flat. They told him that he looked like a bandit wanted by the police. At this point there was a knock at the door. The student appeared. He quickly handed back the tapes and ran away.

Everyone in the flat was then taken to the town police department for interrogation. On the same day M. Slinkov, his wife, and E. Kuleshov were also interrogated.

During his interrogation, which was conducted by a KGB investigator called Gennady Ivanovich, E. Kuleshov admitted that the tapes belonged to him. In reply to the question: why had he made the recordings? Kuleshov said that he had a high opinion of Solzhenitsyn’s literary talent and had made the recordings so that he could analyse the work and make an individual appraisal of it. He stated that he did not consider The Gulag Archipelago anti-Soviet.

Slinkov and Chernopyatov were interrogated for a second time in February 1978.

Slinkov was asked about Kuleshov’s acquaintances and sphere of interests, whether Kuleshov was thinking of writing a book, whether he intended to campaign against the existing system, and even what Kuleshov’s view of Brezhnev was. The Chief of Taganrog KGB, Sorokovoi, threatened Slinkov. He stated that Kuleshov was using Slinkov to obtain information which was then being passed to the West, Slinkov refused to give compromising evidence against Kuleshov, He was cautioned under the Decree of 25 December 1972.

Chernopyatov wrote a detailed character-report on Kuleshov, in which he called him an ‘anarcho-syndicalist’ and an ‘anti-Sovietist’. He also named the people who had helped him to photograph “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. (He later defended his graduation essay successfully and finished university.)

On 22 February 1978 E. Kuleshov was interrogated. In reply to a question about his view of Solzhenitsyn Kuleshov again stated that he had a high opinion of him as a writer and a citizen. He said that he considered The Gulag Archipelago a truthful book, and when asked whether he would continue to make similar recordings in future, he replied that he saw nothing wrong in this, but if the law directly forbade it, then he was prepared to comply.

Kuleshov, too, was cautioned under the decree of 25 December 1972.

*

Odessa.

On 25 May officers of the Criminal Investigation Department conducted a search at the home of Vyacheslav Igrunov {Chronicles 44, 47). They were looking for a stolen typewriter, gold, and drugs. They found a copy of Doctor Zhivago, articles by Pomerants, a translation of Toynbee’s book Change and Custom, and other samizdat items.

Igrunov was summoned to the psychiatric clinic and ordered to appear for check-ups once every ten days, (In November 1977 he was asked to present himself at the clinic once every two months — CCE 47).

At the beginning of July, a search was conducted at the home of Anna Mikhailenko (CCE 42, 44, 49).

In June and July Yulia Savchenko, Alexander Chumakov, Pyotr Butov, and Igrunov’s former wife Svetlana Artsimovich were summoned to the KGB for ’talks’. They were questioned largely in connection with the proposed publication of an almanac (part of the material confiscated from Igrunov was intended for this almanac).

*

Kiev.

On 2 June Yefim Pargamanik {CCE 47, 48; see also The Right to Leave’ in the present issue) was taken off a flight to Moscow at [Kiev’s] Borispol Airport. He was called back by a policeman when already on the airfield. He was taken to a police room, where two plain-clothes officers searched him and his luggage. Several documents, including materials from the appeal hearing in Pyotr Vins’s case {CCE 49) were confiscated from Pargamanik. After this he was interrogated for two hours.

Kiev. People visiting O. Ya. Meshko, a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki group, are frequently searched and interrogated on leaving. For example, Vasily Sichko, a member of the group, and the wife of A. Berdnik were both searched, V. Serenko and D. Dovgalyuk, residents of Dnepropetrovsk, and Lyubov Andrushko, from Ternopol Region, were interrogated.

*

On 14 July in Darnitsa a policeman and a vigilante searched Mikhail Melnik. Melnik is a historian living near Kiev, who works as a watchman. In October KGB officers promised to help him find work in his field if he agreed not to associate with Meshko.

*

Kiev-Moscow. On 15 November, whilst returning early in the morning from Kiev to Moscow, Natalya Babitskaya was removed from a train at Konotop Station, the pretext being a search for stolen goods. At the police offices of the railway-station she was searched, papers which she was bringing from Kiev were confiscated from her, and she was placed on the next train to Moscow. N. Babitskaya is the daughter of K. Babitsky (CCE 4) and T. Velikanova.

*

In 1968, in response to the invasion by Soviet troops of Czechoslovakia, Sergei Anatolyevich POTYLITSYN refused to do military service. He was ruled not responsible and sent for compulsory treatment to Kabardino-Balkar Republican Psychiatric Hospital. After discharge he attempted to cross the border but was caught and sent for treatment to the Dnepropetrovsk Special Psychiatric Hospital (SPH), where he was given neuroleptic drugs. On 9 January 1978 Potylitsyn was transferred to a clinic of the republican psycho-neurological dispensary, from which he was discharged at the end of April.

In July Potylitsyn arrived in Kiev and went to see the brother of N. Plakhotnyuk, in order to discover his whereabouts. (Potylitsyn had overlapped with Plakhotnyuk whilst in Dnepropetrovsk SPH). When Potylitsyn was leaving, Plakhotnyuk’s brother offered to drive him to the station, but took him to a police station instead. There Potylitsyn was searched — Bulletins and questionnaires of the Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes, documents of the Helsinki group, an issue of the Chronicle of Current Events, and other samizdat items were confiscated. Potylitsyn was detained for several days, during which he was kept in a special detention centre.

On returning to Nalchik, Potylitsyn was placed in a psychiatric hospital for ten days. On discharge he was summoned several times to the KGB.

The Explosions Case

Interrogations continue in connection with the case of Stepan Zatikyan, Akop Stepanyan and Zaven Bagdasaryan, who are charged with organizing the explosions in the Moscow metro (CCEs 44, 48).

According to confirmed reports, Stepanyan and Bagdasaryan were arrested in Moscow at the end of October 1977, and Zatikyan in Erevan on 3 November.

The investigation was at first conducted in Yerevan, but with investigators from Moscow taking part. Almost all the ‘old’ members of the National United Party (NUP) were summoned for interrogation.

The investigation was later transferred to Moscow.

In March Shagen Arutyunyan (CCE 48) was brought to the Moscow KGB investigation prison (Lefortovo). During interrogation Arutyunyan was questioned about Zatikyan (in 1968 Zatikyan and Arutyunyan stood trial together in one of the first NUP trials; Stepan Zatikyan received 4 years for ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda’, Sh. Arutyunyan received 3 years, and a third defendant, Aikanuz Khachatryan, received 5 years), about Zatikyan’s views on terrorism, and about the NUP. Questions were also asked about the Armenian Helsinki Group.

At the beginning of June, also at Lefortovo, Paruir Airikyan (see “In the Prisons and Camps”, CCE 51.9) was interrogated by Captain Semenyuk about Zatikyan. Semenyuk told Airikyan that Zatikyan was charged under Article 68 (‘diversion’) and Article 72 (‘organized activity’) of the Russian Criminal Code. He also told him that one of the accused had already confessed. (On 7 June the Moscow evening edition of Izvestiya stated that the persons responsible for the metro explosions ‘have confessed their involvement in this and other crimes’). To Semenyuk’s remark ‘See where the NUP has led to’, Airikyan made the categorical objection that the NUP recognizes only peaceful forms of struggle. He wrote in the record that he respected Zatikyan and did not believe he could be involved in diversions using violence.