In the middle of March 1978, Malva Landa returned to Moscow (CCE 48.11 and CCE 49.9, item 4 [note 1]). Her living quarters (in Krasnogorsk, near Moscow) turned out to be occupied. She settled in Petushki in Vladimir Region.
Malva Landa, 1918-2019
Andrei Tverdokhlebov (CCE 48.13 and CCE 49.11) also settled there, after all the relevant authorities refused him permission to register in Moscow. (The statute on residence registration, even in its secret [unpublished] clauses, does not forbid this; its prohibition relates only to those returning from “places of imprisonment,” CCE 34.21). A graduate of the Moscow Physico-Technological Institute, Tverdokhlebov has begun work at a factory in Petushki as a trainee lathe operator. Tverdokhlebov is the secretary of the Soviet Group of Amnesty International (CCE 36.1).
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On 5 September official surveillance of Vasily Ovsienko was again extended (CCE 47). He no longer has to report once a week (at first this was monthly, now it is twice monthly). He has applied to emigrate.
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On 1 August 1978, the period of surveillance of Nina Strokatova (CCE 49.11), a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, was extended.
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Since his release in November 1977 (CCE 47), Yury Litvin has been living in the village of Barakhty (Vasilkov district, Kiev Region) where his mother lives. In May 1978, he went to Kiev to visit Oksana Meshko, a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. On his way home he was taken to the police station in Vasilkov and searched. After this he was placed under surveillance for six months.
In November, the period of surveillance was extended because Litvin again visited Meshko when he went to Kiev to fetch his workbook after getting oral permission from the police.
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In September 1978, Anatoly Marchenko (CCE 35.2 and CCE 36.10) finished his term of exile.
In the middle of October Marchenko arrived in Moscow. On the second day after his arrival (according to the rules, any stay of more than three days has to be recorded or registered) an officer from the district police, the same one who gave false evidence against Marchenko in court, arrived at the flat of L. Bogoraz, Marchenko’s wife. Bogoraz refused to talk to him.
At the end of October, again on the second day after Marchenko’s arrival, another policeman arrived with witnesses. He told Bogoraz that she had to register her husband’s residence. Bogoraz replied that she had tried to do this, but the passport official of the housing office, surprised at her unusual request, had told her, “Why? Let him live there.”
On 9 November, Bogoraz received a letter from police station No. 96, sent on 3 November. The station chief wrote that “having examined on 25 October material concerning the infringement by citizen L. I. Bogoraz-Brukhman of Resolution No. 585 of the USSR Council of Ministers”, he had directed that a fine of 10 roubles be imposed on her. In the same letter it was written that “the offender must pay the fine within three days”, and that the “deadline for payment is 30 October”. Anatoly Marchenko has settled in the village of Karabanovo (Vladimir Region).
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In March and April officials of the Ivano-Frankovsk KGB chatted three times with Vasily Shovkovy (see “In the Prisons and Camps”, CCE 51.12), who had just been released, in connection with an interview which he gave while in the camps (CCE 47). This interview was printed in the English-language press and broadcast by Radio Liberty. The KGB officers tried to make Shovkovoi renounce the interview and contradict it. “We shall remind you of this interview in ten days’ time,” one of them said.
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In April 1978, P. F. Kampov (CCE 45) sent the executive committee chairman of the Transcarpathian Regional Soviet, M. Voloshchuk, a statement requesting help in finding work in some technical institute or at Uzhgorod University (where he taught mathematics before his arrest) or. After listing his numerous unsuccessful attempts to get work (CCE 47) he writes (translated from Ukrainian):
“If I do not receive a positive reply, I shall be forced to appeal to the Soviet government for permission to start negotiations with other states, so that one of them will accept me and give me work: I have no chance of finding this in my own homeland.”
In May Kampov received a refusal “in connection with the lack of vacancies”. In June he appealed to Brezhnev:
“I do not have the strength to endure discrimination and humiliation in my own country.
“Therefore, I ask you: allow me to make a personal appeal to the embassies of the USA and Canada in Moscow to be accepted by one of these countries. If they agree to accept me, let me go.”
He received no reply.
On 14 November, during the night, two police-officers, Captain Durunda and Lieutenant Syurtin, ordered Kampov to allow them into his home (Kampov is not under surveillance). When he refused, they broke down the door and burst into his home. That night 55 roubles disappeared from Kampov’s bedside table.
The following day Kampov sent a request for protection to Brezhnev by telegram. Ten days later the head of the Transcarpathian UVD informed Kampov that the facts stated in his telegram were unfounded.
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On 11 July 1978, an article entitled “Give the Ill-doer a Pedestal” (about Ivan Diky, CCE 48) appeared in the Lvov newspaper Leninska Molod. In the article P. Grigorenko, L. Lukyanenko and I. Kandyba were called “ideological tutors of a habitual thief”.
On 19 July, the head of the Pustomyty KGB Division, Captain Polishchuk (CCE 49), again visited Ivan Kandyba at his place of work (a communal consumer service establishment). The subject of his talk with Kandyba was the same: correspondence with political prisoners and membership of the [Ukrainian] Helsinki Group.
On 3 August, the Pustomyty district newspaper Leninsky Prapor published an article entitled “Through Dark Glasses”. The article states (translated from Ukrainian):
“Kandyba has not ceased his filthy activities. He writes letters to various organizations and authorities … At the same time, he tries to fill his complaints with a nationalist stuffing. In this connection he has important consultations with such traitors to the Soviet people as Sakharov, Bukovsky, Orlov, Rudenko, Tikhy and others … Even now Kandyba cannot sit quietly. He is trying to find the slightest fault in our everyday life and to send this information abroad at any price. As reward for this he is — clearly as a reward — sent parcels from abroad containing all sorts of trash. Kandyba is trying to spread his rotten nationalist ideas among those to whom he flogs these ‘rags’ …”
On 15 August, the Head of the Pustomyty criminal investigation department [ugrozysk] Senior Lieutenant Magurat (CCE 49), suggested to Kandyba that he find somewhere to live outside the Lvov Region once his period of surveillance came to an end on 23 September However, it transpired that he was not allowed to live in Kiev or in any regional centre.
On 25 August Captain Polishchuk told Kandyba that he had enough material in his safe to initiate criminal proceedings against him, and again asked Kandyba to leave the Helsinki Group.
On 22 September 1978, Kandyba’s period of surveillance was extended a further six months since he “had not taken the path of correction and had no desire whatever to be corrected”.
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NOTES
[1] As the Chronicle noted, no sooner had Malva Landa returned from exile than she signed Moscow Helsinki Group document No. 42 (18 March), a month later, with Irina Zholkovskaya and Sergei Khodorovich, she issued a statement about the Relief Fund for Political Prisoners (12 April 1978; CCE 49.19, item 4).
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