THIRTY-FOUR ITEMS:
INDIVIDUALS. BAPTISTS & PENTECOSTALS. GERMANS. JEWS
*
INDIVIDUALS (1-10)
[1]
VICTOR NEKIPELOV
On 12 September 1977, Major Ilyukhin, the deputy head of the Vladimir City Department for Visas & Registration (OVIR), informed Victor Nekipelov of the Moscow Helsinki Group that he had been refused an exit visa (CCE 47.8-1 [2]):
“We consider that you have no reason to visit the State of Israel — there’s nothing for you to do there.”
*
Victor Nekipelov (1928-1989)
At the Vladimir City Internal Affairs Department (UVD) on 5 December 1977, Colonel Shaidrov told Nekipelov:
“You must prove that the person who sent you the invitation really is your twin brother. Besides, your father is categorically against your leaving.”
In March 1978 Major Ilyukhin told Nekipelov: “Your son is serving in the Army — you’ll have to wait.” In May 1978, Sergei Nekipelov was demobilized.
On 31 July, at the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) Department for Visas & Registration (OVIR), Colonel Davydov told Nekipelov: “You have been refused a visa on security grounds. It’s in the interests of the State!” The same day Nekipelov sent a declaration of protest to K. I. Zotov, Head of the USSR MVD Department for Visas & Registration (OVIR).
On 15 August Nekipelov wrote a declaration entitled “On Security Grounds …“:
“… your ‘security grounds’ have nothing to do with access to State Secrets, which you know I have never had.
“And all your earlier subterfuges about my twin brother or my son being in the army were just irresponsible gabbling by lips accustomed to lying. The real ‘security grounds’ are my dissenting views: my ‘Declaration on a Visa Refusal’; my apostasy, conscious and irreversible; my rejection of today’s State — of its spider-like Partocracy [rule by Party], prisons and special political hospitals, its godlessness, violence and lies.
“Your ‘security grounds’ consist of my defending to the best of my ability the rule of law, of my creative work and the publication of my poetry, of my sketches and journalistic articles in the foreign press.
“These are indeed ‘security grounds’, for by having grown up in your ‘large zone’ [1], I know too much about its security regime and you are afraid I’ll take my knowledge abroad with me!
“Only in this way can I explain to myself your refusal of today. I don’t know how long I will still be allowed to sit at my writing table. But even in those places you are now trying to force me into, on the same ‘security grounds’ — behind the barbed wire of a Mordovian camp, in a psychiatric hospital, in the punishment block of Vladimir Prison — I shall still do the same thing every day, every hour, every stolen minute: I shall be telling people the truth about your diabolical regime.”
*
[2]
SERGEI POLIKANOV
In September 1976, Sergei Mikhailovich POLIKANOV marked his 50th birthday.
A Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Polikanov was a winner of the Lenin Prize, and a department head at the United Institute of Nuclear Research in the small, Moscow-Region city of Dubna [2].
Polikanov’s great merits as a scientist and his extensive public activities were the subject of numerous congratulations from the Institute’s various laboratories, the directors of the United Institute and from the Academy of Sciences itself.
*
CERN and VAK
In September 1978 the Academic Council of the Nuclear Research Laboratory requested the Higher Degrees Commission (VAK) to deprive Polikanov of his degrees as both Cand.Sci and D.Sci. (Physical & Mathematical Sciences).
The USSR Academy of Sciences was asked to deprive him of the title of Corresponding Member; and the Lenin and State Prize Committee was asked to deprive him of his Lenin Prize.
*
As early as the beginning of the 1970s there had been a proposal that Polikanov should carry out a series of experiments in Geneva [3] at CERN (Centre Européen de Recherches Nucléaires).
The idea was backed by: the scientists at CERN; the leadership of the United Institute, which had a keen interest in such cooperation; and lastly by Polikanov himself. He saw it as an opportunity to complete his 15-year programme of research in nuclear physics.
In autumn 1975, Polikanov began to fill out the documents needed for a journey to spend a year in Switzerland, together with his wife and daughter.
At the beginning of 1976, Polikanov was informed that only he would be allowed to make the journey, not his family. He would not go alone, he replied: in that case he’d refuse to make the trip at all. In the spring of 1976, Polikanov was invited for a talk by the director of the United Institute, Academician Bogolyubov, who tried to persuade Polikanov to accept the conditions and go.
In summer 1976, Polikanov wrote a letter to Mikhail A. Suslov, a Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee: decisions about international scientific cooperation were often resolved, he pointed out, by arguments which had nothing to do with science.
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INTIMIDATION
In September 1977, Polikanov was summoned for a talk by A. M. Petrosyants, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Committee, who intimated that Polikanov would not be going abroad.
“You’ve reached the limit,” Petrosyants told him: “Don’t cross it and become a dissident.”
At a press conference on 18 November 1977, Polikanov shared with Western correspondents a letter to CERN Director-General, Leon Van Hove, in which Polikanov stated that he could not come to CERN and explained the circumstances (CCE 47.8-1 [3]).
At the end of December 1977, Polikanov was invited to visit Logunov, Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and Academician Markov, Secretary of the Nuclear Physics department. The two Academicians admitted the existence of shortcomings in the situation, but condemned the position adopted by Yury Orlov and Andrei Sakharov. A scientific approach was necessary, they said, to overcome such shortcomings.
“And when you signed the letter against Sakharov, were you also taking a scientific approach?” parred Polikanov [4].
At almost the same time, on the orders of the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Party committee, Academician Bruno Pontecorvo [5] came to persuade Polikanov to act otherwise. Pontecorvo also criticized the dissidents.
In January 1978 Kuznetsov, Secretary of the Dubna city Party committee, together with a representative of the Moscow Regional Party Committee, talked to Polikanov. They also urged him to think again.
On 20 February 1978, a Party meeting at the Laboratory expelled Polikanov from the Soviet Communist Party.
*
PERSECUTION
The administrative persecution of Polikanov started at the beginning of 1978.
- His lectures at seminars were cancelled.
- Postgraduate students were forced to reject him as a scientific supervisor.
- Polikanov was forbidden to travel to Moscow from Dubna without written permission from the administration.
The persecution was orchestrated by laboratory head V. P. Dzhelepov, who wrote a letter to the Higher Degrees Commission (VAK) specifically asking that Polikanov be expelled from the Academic Council of the Institute. This request was granted.
Polikanov suddenly learnt that he was no longer secretary of the Institute’s general seminar.
Finally, Institute director N. N. Bogolyubov issued an order on the necessity of focusing on the physics of higher energy. In accordance with this directive, the section headed by Polikanov would be disbanded.
Polikanov became a Senior Research Fellow.
A notice quoting the Law Code on Labour appeared on the Laboratory wall, stating that every employee in our land should be at work every day from start to finish. Now Polikanov, a Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, began to receive warnings for being absent.
*
WARNINGS
One of these was for spending a few days outside the trial of Yury Orlov (CCE 50.1). Not one of the warnings was signed by N. N. Bogolyubov. They were signed, instead, by deputy directors from fraternal countries, the Hungarian Kiš and the Pole Sawinski.
In spring 1978, Polikanov learnt that he had received a prize from the American Physics Society. He sent a declaration to OVIR, asking permission to go and receive the prize.
From spring 1978 onwards, Polikanov became actively involved in measures to defend the rule of law in the USSR. He spoke out in defence of Yury Orlov, Alexander Ginzburg and Anatoly Shcharansky. He often journeyed to Kaluga to find out what was happening to Ginzburg (CCE 50.3) and stayed there throughout the trial.
Polikanov voiced his support for the boycott organized by Western scientists after the trial of Yury Orlov. He appealed to psychiatrists throughout the world to fight for the release of Alexander Podrabinek.
On 15 July 1978, Polikanov announced that he was joining the Moscow Helsinki Group.
In summer 1978, Polikanov wrote a letter to Brezhnev, stating that it was impossible to do scientific work in the USSR and expressed his desire to emigrate to any capitalist country.
On 21 August 1978, A. G. Zotov, Deputy Head of Moscow OVIR, summoned Polikanov and suggested he name a particular country to which he wished to emigrate. Polikanov named the USA.
On 7 September 1978, Polikanov was called in by S. A. Fadeyev, Head of Moscow OVIR, who told him that the answer to his request for emigration was positive.
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EMIGRATION
On 15 September 1978, a meeting of the Academic Council of the Laboratory took place.
It demanded that Polikanov be deprived of both his degrees, as Candidate and Doctor of Sciences, because of his unpatriotic activities, in accordance with Article 104 of the USSR Higher Degrees Commission regulations. He should also be deprived of his Lenin Prize and title of Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Two hours after the Academic Council meeting, the directors issued a directive that
“For actions incompatible with the title of Soviet scientist and with his work at the United Institute, Polikanov is to be dismissed from the Institute.”
The next day, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet deprived Polikanov of all his government honours.
On 10 October 1978, S. M. Polikanov and his family left the USSR.
*
[3]
VICTOR KORCHNOI
In July 1976, after a win in an international tournament in Amsterdam [6], chess Grand Master Victor Korchnoi declared that he did not want to return to the USSR.
Korchnoi explained his decision by referring to the political stance of the USSR Chess Federation, which prevented him from leading a normal creative life as a player.
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FAMILY
In August 1977 his wife Bella Korchnaya and his 18-year-old son applied to the Leningrad OVIR for permission to visit relatives in Israel. Before this, for over two months, OVIR had refused to accept their application, demanding a note from her husband renouncing all material claims on his wife and giving his consent to her emigration from the USSR. In November 1977 B. Korchnaya received a refusal, on the grounds that the relatives were too distant.
In April 1978 Korchnaya sent a letter to L.I. Brezhnev asking for permission to leave the USSR. On 3 September Bella Korchnaya received a telephone call from OVIR, informing her that her request had been refused again: “We can’t boost his morale” (i.e., that of the defector V. Korchnoi, Chronicle).
On 19 October Bella Korchnaya gave a press conference for journalists at which she read out a declaration setting forth the above-mentioned facts.
On 13 November Korchnaya applied to the newly elected President of FIDE [Fédération Internationale des Échecs], Grand Master Olafson, asking for help in emigrating from the USSR.
On 14 November Bella Korchnaya appealed to MVD Minister Shchelokov and Brezhnev in letters asking for permission to leave the USSR.
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[4]
GRIGORY TOKAYUK
From December 1977 to May 1978, four invitations were sent to the Kievan Grigory Tokayuk (CCE 48.17) — but he did not receive a single one. At the Ministry of Communications Tokayuk was told that no invitations had come addressed to him.
Tokayuk wrote complaints to Brezhnev and Andropov.
In July he met French journalists in Moscow and asked them to help him emigrate.
In August Tokayuk was summoned to the Kiev KGB Department.
There he was scolded for his active support of Pyotr Vins (CCE 49.4), his contacts with members of the Moscow Helsinki Group, with Tatyana Velikanova and Alexander Podrabinek, and his ‘links’ with foreigners. If he became ‘a recidivist’, he was warned, ‘stricter measures’ would be taken: “You know, don’t you, that we’re all-powerful?”
Tokayuk’s father was a Polish citizen; all his relatives on his father’s side live in Poland, the USA or Argentina. His uncle on his mother’s side is a German Jew; he has a grandmother and aunt on his mother’s side living in Israel.
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[5]
RIGA. Yury Maximov, a resident of Riga, has been trying to get permission to emigrate since 1974.
In October 1978 he was told by the Riga OVIR; according to existing legislation emigration can be permitted only to those who have invitations from relatives abroad; in addition, on presenting such invitations it is also necessary to show the envelope in which this invitation has arrived. When Maximov quoted the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights (1966), he was told
“The International Covenant operates between States, but internally they use different rules from those laid down in the Covenant.”
When he asked for a written reply, he was told that written replies might be used to compromise the State.
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[6]
GLUKHOV
Anatoly Leonidovich GLUKHOV (b. 1946) and his mother have been trying to obtain permission to emigrate for 14 years.
On 31 August 1978, Glukhov was forcibly interned in the Chelyabinsk Psychiatric Hospital, apparently for writing a letter to Kovalyov, a Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs. One of the doctors told Glukhov that If he continued trying to emigrate, he would “earn himself some schizophrenia”.
In 1972 and 1974 Glukhov had twice been in a psychiatric hospital (34 days altogether) because of his wish to emigrate.
On 9 October Glukhov was discharged from the hospital with a diagnosis of “reduced energy potential’. He was ordered to visit the local psychiatrist every month.
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[7]
KANSK. Nikolai Maslennikov (b. 1943), a resident of Kansk, was put in Krasnoyarsk Psychiatric Hospital for trying to get in touch with the Canadian Embassy by post.
A few weeks later Maslennikov was transferred to Krasnoyarsk Region Psychiatric Hospital No. 1 (in the Poimo-Tiny settlement), where he stayed for about a month.
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[8]
TSURIKOV
In June 1974 Vladimir Alexeyevich TSURIKOV (b. 1947) was placed in Krasnoyarsk Psychiatric Hospital for writing a letter to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, applying to emigrate.
The doctors ‘explained’ to him that “The sulfazin injections are to cure you of thinking about emigration from the USSR, and the insulin injections are to restore a sense of patriotism in you.” After three months of treatment Tsurikov was released from the hospital and told, on being discharged, that his wish to go to Israel was a symptom of his illness.
For a year he was regularly invited to the psychiatric clinic and warned that, if he started to make a fuss about emigrating again, he would end up back in the psychiatric hospital.
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[9]
MINSK. On 25 May Lydia Valendo of Minsk (CCE 49.15 [1]) was released from a psychiatric hospital, where she had been subjected to treatment.
On 16 November Valendo appealed to the UN Secretary-General, in a letter asking him to use his influence with the Soviet government to facilitate her emigration. She has been trying to emigrate since 1975.
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[10]
PRIVOLZHSK. Sergei Belov, a resident of Privolzhsk (Ivanovo Region, Central Russia) has been sending telegrams for a long time to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, asking for permission to emigrate.
He gives as his reasons for wanting to emigrate: (1) his beggarly existence — he has a university education as a lawyer, but is working as a motor-scooter driver, transporting food-products; and (2) the violation of human rights in the USSR.
*
BAPTISTS & PENTECOSTALISTS. GERMANS. JEWS
*
PENTECOSTALS AND BAPTISTS (11-13)
[11]
VASHCHENKO FAMILY
Seventeen-year-old I. Vashchenko from the town of Chernogorsk (Krasnoyarsk Region, central Siberia) has sent a declaration to the UN Committee of Human Rights. The Vashchenko family has been trying to get permission to emigrate since 1961.
In April 1978 they received an invitation from the USA. In Chernogorsk their applications were not accepted and the Vashchenkos travelled to Krasnoyarsk.
At the Krasnoyarsk OVIR they were told that their invitation was of no use. The Vashchenkos travelled to Moscow. There they tried to enter the US Embassy. During this attempt Vashchenko was beaten up he was taken away, interrogated and sent back to Chernogorsk accompanied by KGB officials. Only there did I. Vashchenko learn that his parents and three sisters had managed to break through to the embassy (where they still are).
The Pentecostals of Chernogorsk have appealed to President Jimmy Carter, asking him to help them emigrate.
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[12]
NAKHODKA
Pentecostalists in Nakhodka, a city in the Primorsky Region (pop. 127,000, 1976; Soviet Far East) have now been trying to emigrate for 13 years.
They made their first attempt to do so in 1965, when Vasily F. Patrushev (CCE 47.8-2), the preacher in their congregation, sent the United Nations a list of those wanting to emigrate. Patrushev is a Second World War veteran who has already served three years in camps (his co-defendant Sidenko got 4 years). Attempts to obtain permission to emigrate were renewed in 1974, when members of the congregation compiled a series of documents about the unlawful actions of the authorities and sent them to the West.
The activities of the Nakhodka Pentecostalists led to more cruel repression, also to a desire by the authorities to break off all contacts between the members of the congregation and people outside the Far Eastern Primorsky Region. Local Pentecostalists are hindered in every way from travelling to the European part of the USSR from Nakhodka.
Photographs and ‘reports’ on members of the congregation like Boris Perchatkin [7] and Vladimir Stepanov, Presbyter of the Nakhodka Pentecostalists, have been sent to all railway stations and airports in the region. Congregation members are often detained on the way to Moscow and sent back. Letters are also intercepted. Since 1977 a special group of KGB officials has been operating in Nakhodka to combat the Pentecostalists: Major Rudmitsky (the leader), Senior Lieutenant Malyukovich (who recruits informers among the believers), Captain Volkov and Senior Lieutenant Lukashin.
About 40 members of the congregation already have invitations from the USA. All of them have been turned down, on the grounds that the invitations are not from relatives.
Patrushev is in a particularly difficult situation: in the camp he contracted glaucoma, as a result of which he now has vision (about 10%) in only one eye. He has more than once received invitations from abroad for treatment. The last time was in 1978, from Italy, but he has always been refused permission to go.
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[13]
CHERNOVTSKY (Ukraine). Sixteen families of Baptists from the town of Chernovtsy (UkSSR) submitted a declaration in August, asking to be allowed out to any non-Socialist country. They have received no reply.
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GERMANS (14-19)
[14]
FRUNZE. in August 1977, Tilman, a resident of Frunze (Kirgiz SSR), applied to emigrate.
In February 1978 he received a refusal on the grounds that “you have more relatives here than in the Federal Republic of Germany” (Tilman has two brothers in West Germany, from whom he had received the invitation). In September 1978 Tilman again applied for permission to emigrate.
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[15]
KURAGINO (Siberia). Yakov Wagner, a resident of Kuragino in the Krasnoyarsk Region (central Russia), has been trying to get permission to emigrate since 1976.
The “higher authorities’ (the Krasnoyarsk department of internal affairs, the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and the CPSU Central Committee) direct him to the Kuragino department of internal affairs, while M. I. Sviridenko, its head, says: “I don’t decide your fate. I only accept your applications. The regional authorities decide.”
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[16]
In August Alexander Miller (CCE 49.15) received a routine refusal.
He then sent his passport and a declaration renouncing his Soviet citizenship to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet.
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[17]
Pyotr Josifovich EBEL (b. 1937) has been applying for permission to emigrate since 1972. He has submitted his documents five times already.
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LITHUANIA.
[18]
38 Germans living in Lithuania have put their signatures to an appeal addressed to “Members of the American Trades Unions”. The appeal lists the political, economic and cultural restrictions and repressions to which Soviet Germans are subjected.
The signatories ask for help in emigrating from the USSR.
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[19]
SAKHAROV’S LETTER
To:
Comrade Brezhnev, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet
President Scheel of West Germany
Chancellor Schmidt of West Germany
“On the eve of a visit to West Germany by L. I. Brezhnev, Chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, a court in Moldavia sentenced Ivan Wagner, a worker of 32 years’ experience, who is trying to get permission to emigrate to West Germany, to one year’s imprisonment for so-called parasitism.
“I appeal to you, and through you to the governments of the USSR and West Germany, to intervene in Vagner’s case and restore justice …”
Andrei Sakharov
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, 4 May 1978.
*
On 6 May 1978, Sakharov delivered this letter in person to the West German Embassy and to Brezhnev’s Kremlin office.
On 26 June 1978, Sakharov was informed by the USSR Procurator’s Office that the case of Wagner had been returned for re-examination.
On 2 August 1978, A.D. Sakharov was informed by the Moldavian SSR Procurator’s Office that:
“In the case of Ivan Ivanovich WAGNER an oversight review has been demanded by the Moldavian SSR Procurator’s Office and accepted in part by the Presidium of the Moldavian SSR Supreme Court.
“The case has been returned for further examination, to establish I. I. Wagner’s state of heath and the source of the sums of money he possesses.
“I. I. Wagner has been released from detention.”
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JEWS (20-27)
[20]
WOMEN REFUSENIKS
On 15 November 1978, B. Shumilin, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, received in turn a large group of Moscow women refuseniks [8] and some of their husbands.
During the conversation he told Gyuzel Khait that in December her family would receive exit visas.
Shumilin refused to show the women the reports from their places of work, on the basis of which OVIR had refused them visas “on security grounds”. He said it would be the same in future.
Shumilin stated that there was no maximum term for obtaining permission to leave and that no such term would be fixed. He gave them to understand that there were people who would never be given permission to emigrate. At the same time, he said that refuseniks who had been waiting for over five years were special cases and should be given particular consideration.
Shumilin promised to end the illegal practice of some OVIRs of demanding that schoolchildren provide references from their schools.
At the time of Shumilin’s conversation with the refusenik women, there were American senators in Moscow, On 21 November (when the senators had gone) Shumilin did not receive three refusenik women whom he had earlier promised to see.
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[21]
In June 1978 Sergei Ruzer from Moscow (CCE 45.10) was refused permission to emigrate.
At an interview after this refusal Colonel S. A. Fadeyev, Head of the Moscow OVIR, looked very embarrassed and said, “I do understand that you have every reason to complain”, but did not deign to disclose the reason for the refusal.
It was only in November, during a talk with Shumilin, that Ruzer managed to discover that the reason for the refusal had been a “security ban” from his last place of work: the Centre for Scientific Organization of Labour in the Chemical Industry.
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[22]
ISAI GOLDSTEIN (TBILISI)
In January 1978 the employment bureau in Tbilisi sent Isai Goldstein (CCE 48.5) to the Tbilisi Section of the Electrical Technology Research Institute. The Institute director, Lekishvili, refused to accept him as an employee, however, because of the secrecy of research at the Institute.
On 18 January officials of the Lenin district OVD in Tbilisi issued a statement that I. Goldstein was avoiding work.
*
All attempts by Goldstein to obtain work in his specialized field have been unsuccessful.
In April he appealed for help to M. Gudushauri, Head of the Lenin district OVD. In June the latter replied that Goldstein should apply to the Employment Bureau. I. Goldstein followed this advice, but Senior Inspector Sokolov told him that there was no employment opening for him.
In a declaration to M. Gudushauri, dated 11 September, Isai Goldstein writes:
“I bring to your notice the fact that I am continuing to try and find work, without ceasing to be involved in socially useful activity without pay. If my work savings run out, I shall apply to the USSR Ministry of Finance, asking that it give me unemployment benefit.”
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[23]
ILYNKA VILLAGE (VORONEZH REGION)
On 21 December 1977 a meeting of representatives from the Rossiya collective farm in Talovaya district, Voronezh Region (Central Russia), refused to allow four families of Matveyevs — in Ilynka village the Matveyevs are not necessarily relatives — or the Piskarev family to leave the collective farm (CCE 49.15; the date of the meeting there is incorrectly given).
(During the years from 1974 to 1976, twelve families left Ilynka. Another 14 families have applied to leave. The above-mentioned five families are actively continuing their campaign to leave, while the others have “fallen silent”. Since 1976 no one has been allowed to leave.)
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In the spring and summer of 1978, they tried to obtain justice in Moscow.
At the RSFSR Procurator’s Office they were told that they should have been released from the collective farm but were refused any kind of help. In the waiting-room of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet they were told: “If you were pensioners, we would let you go, but as it is — who would be left to do the work?” The Deputy Head of OVIR at the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs explained to them that “Letting you go, wouldn’t be in our interest”’.
In September the heads of the five families agreed to travel to Moscow again.
On 18 September 1978, the chairman of the village soviet handed them an invitation to come to the district soviet executive committee on 20 September; on 19 September they were given summonses to the district military enlistment office.
However, all five family heads (Yakov Isayevich Matveyev. Yakov Mikhailovich Matveyev, Samuil Morafeyevich Matveyev, Moisei Einovich Matveyev and Ein Mikhailovich Piskarev) travelled to Moscow and spoke of their situation regarding emigration at a press conference.
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[24]
MOSCOW. On 3 April 1978, the Moscow refusenik Grigory Rozenstein (CCE 50.8-1 [3]) was given an official warning at Police Station No. 27 to end his “parasitic way of life”.
In reply Rozenstein wrote a declaration stating that this sanction was against the law and was one of the elements of the anti-Jewish and anti-religious campaign which had been promoted in the Soviet Union.
The Rozensteins’ home is traditionally the place where Jewish refuseniks in Moscow hold Jewish religious festivals. It was also here that the symposium on Jewish culture was held (CCE 43.12).
At the beginning of 1978 Rozenstein was taken to the central KGB office and warned: if his religious activities continued, a criminal case would be initiated against him.
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[25]
KARL WARMBRAND
Karl Warmbrand (Varmbrand), a resident of Tashkent (Uzbekistan), is 68 years old. He was born, brought up and educated in Germany.
In 1939, to save himself from the Nazis, he fled from Germany and ended up in the Soviet Union. There he was sentenced for illegally crossing the frontier. In 1941 he was amnestied as a political emigre but permitted to live only in Uzbekistan. In 1943, under pressure from the police, Warmbrand became a Soviet citizen.
*
In 1974 Warmbrand wanted to emigrate to East Germany — he was not allowed to and his letter of complaint to Honecker about this refusal remained unanswered. In 1975 Warmbrand discovered that his sister and brother were in Israel, and a year later that his twin sisters were in West Germany.
His relatives sent him an invitation.
On 10 February 1977, Warmbrand and his wife handed in applications to the Tashkent OVIR for emigration to Israel. On 14 June 1977 they received a refusal, without a reason being given.
They appealed against the refusal in letters to the All-Union OVIR and to Brezhnev. Later they were informed by the Tashkent OVIR that Moscow had confirmed the refusal. No reasons for the refusal were given.
*
A year later, in February 1978, Warmbrand sent in a fresh application for a review of the original decision. The next day he was told that the refusal remained in force.
On 6 March Karl Warmbrand wrote a complaint to General Khasanbayev, Uzbek SSR Minister of Internal Affairs. He emphasized that he and his relatives were all advanced in years and that further lobbying would be difficult for them. Although neither Warmbrand nor his wife had ever been involved in secret work, Khasanbayev said that Warmbrand had been refused emigration on security grounds.
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[26]
NOVOSIBIRSK. The violinist Valery Shevchenko-Lerner (Novosibirsk; 104 Gorky St., flat 11) was refused permission to emigrate in September, “because it is inexpedient”.
He managed to discover that his ‘emigration file’ contained a letter from the Khabarovsk KGB stating that, as his brother was doing political work in the Army, his emigration was undesirable (as it might injure his brother’s reputation).
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[27]
PRIZE-WINNERS
In June-July 1978, two junior research officers at the Institute of Mathematics, USSR Academy of Sciences (Siberian Section) applied to emigrate to Israel: Josif Krass (Cand.Sci., Physical & Mathematical Sciences), and Galina Kolesova.
Krass is a junior research officer at the modelling laboratory of Productive & Biological Processes of the Department of Theoretical Cybernetics, Institute of Mathematics (USSR Academy of Sciences, Siberian Section).
So is Kolesova.
*
When Kolesova handed in her application, she was asked to produce written consent from her child’s father to permit his son’s emigration.
She explained that the father of her child had already emigrated from the USSR and was living abroad.
In spite of this, Novosibirsk OVIR insisted. The child’s father must send a telegram in which he “gave his consent” and asked that Kolesova be allowed to leave as soon as possible.
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In August 1978, Leningrad’s Kirov Factory production unit transferred a sum of money to the Institute of Mathematics, USSR Academy of Sciences (Siberian Section): it was to be paid as a prize to Krass, to Kolesova and to engineer Larisa Kononenko for fulfilling their contracted work.
I. A. Poletayev (Cand.Sci., Technical Sciences) and head of the modelling laboratory, confirmed the proposed prize. However, the head of the Academy’s Siberian Section, V. T. Dementyev (D.Sc., Physical & Mathematical Sciences), and V. L. Makarov (D.Sc., Physical & Mathematical Sciences), deputy director of the Mathematics Institute, refused to counter-sign the document.
On 20 September Makarov informed Krass that the district Party committee had banned them from receiving the prize, because of their intention to leave the Motherland.
On 22 September S. L. Sobolev, Director of the Institute, signed the proposed award and sent it to the personnel section of the Institute for inclusion in instructions.
*
On 26 September 1978, at a reception to mark the opening of an international conference on “Differential Equations and Mathematical Calculation”, Dementyev said in the presence of witnesses to Yu. I. Gildernum, a Senior Research Officer of the Laboratory (Cand. Sc., Physical & Mathematical Sciences):
“Yids should be throttled! Yids will never get any damned prize from me!“
On 27 September A. V. Sychov, Secretary of the Institute’s Party bureau, confiscated the award from the personnel section, declaring that Sobolev had changed his mind.
On 28 September the Party bureau decided to recommend to the local trades union committee that the prize be given to Kononenko, but not paid to Krass or Kolesova because of their low level of morality, as expressed in their wish to leave the Motherland.
On 2 October the union committee decided unanimously (except for one abstention) to ‘support’ the parallel proposal by Dementyev and the recommendation of the Party bureau. Kononenko was paid the portion of the prize allotted to her.
At the beginning of October Major-General Slanetsky of the Novosibirsk city Department of Internal Affairs (UVD) invited Kolesova to meet him. He was refusing her permission to emigrate, he told her, because she had more close relatives in the USSR than in Israel.
In the middle of October Krass and Kolesova brought an action against the Institute of Mathematics in the Soviet district people’s court (Novosibirsk). Judge N. G. Mozina accepted the case for investigation.
*
On 25 October 1978, at a pre-trial discussion, a legal representative of the Institute — junior research scientist A. A. Batishchev — gave a completely new reason why the prize had not been awarded: the low quality of the work done.
When the judge said that this version did not correspond to the documents submitted to the court, Batishchev declared that a special commission would be set up which would confirm the low quality of the work, and that the corresponding documents would be submitted later. The judge fixed the hearing for 10 November.
On 26 October Kolesova received a phone-call from the father of her child in Canada, who told her he was beginning a campaign for her emigration.
On 2 November Kolesova was told at the Novosibirsk OVIR that she had permission to emigrate. She was given three weeks to do so.
*
At the request of the Institute of Mathematics, the court hearing was transferred to 24 November.
On 20 November the lawyer engaged by Krass refused to carry on with the case he had accepted. On 22 November the Novosibirsk OVIR gave Krass permission to emigrate. On 23 November Krass asked the court to defer examination of the case, as he could not find a lawyer.
Meanwhile the union committee ‘established’ yet another new reason for the non-payment of the prize money: the work had not been finished.
*
At the end of November 1978, Kolesova left the USSR. Krass is due to leave in December.
*
THOSE WHO HAVE LEFT (28-34)
[28]
KAZAKHSTAN. In May and June 1978, the Kazakh Germans Ivan and Nelli Teirer, Valentin Klink and Helmut Martens (CCE 49.15) left the USSR.
*
LENINGRAD. The Leningrad residents Vadim Nechayev and Marina Nedrobova (CCE 49.16), Kirill Kostsynsky (CCE 49.16), Andrei Filippov (CCE 47.13 [2]) and Lev Konin [9] have all emigrated from the USSR.
*
In September 1978, Olga Joffe [10] and her mother Nadezhda Ya. SHATUNOVSKAYA left the USSR.
*
[29]
The following Jewish refuseniks have been allowed out of the USSR.
Six Muscovites: Abram Nizhnikov (CCE 50.8-2), Yanella Gudz (CCE 47.8-4 [4], 48), Liliya Schastlivaya (CCE 47.8-1 [5]), Josif Ass (CCE 43.12), B. Kats (//CCE 50) and V. G. Levich (Corresponding Member, USSR Academy of Sciences);
— plus Mark Pekker from Leningrad (CCE 49.16) and Yefim Pargamanik from Kiev (CCE 47.8-4, CCE 48.12).
*
[30]
The following ex-political prisoners have left the USSR.
Gunars Rode, CCE 45.11-3, CCE 47.15 [26];
Victor Kalnins (CCE 50.5);
Yury Mashkov (CCE 50.3);
Nadiya Svetlichnaya [11] left with an invitation from the USA;
Vladislav Uzlov [12];
“aeroplane man” Izrail Zalmanson (see ‘Releases’, CCE 51.9-2);
Nikolai Budulak-Sharygin (CCE 51.9-2, CCE 51.22); and
Mikhail Makarenko (CCE 46.10-2, CCE 48.13-2).
*
[31]
ALEXANDER ZINOVIEV
At the beginning of August 1978, Alexander Zinoviev [13] was allowed out of the USSR.
Not long before he was given permission to emigrate, he had once again been refused.
Zinoviev was not allowed out “to Israel for permanent residence” but to West Germany, on a visitor’s invitation. He left, therefore, while still a citizen of the USSR. But the 13 September Gazette of the USSR Supreme Soviet (No. 37) announced that “for activities which dishonour the title of citizen of the USSR”, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet had deprived Zinoviev of Soviet citizenship.
On this occasion the decree depriving him of citizenship was not itself published, nor was the date of its issue given in the Gazette.
*
[32]
AYSHE SEITMURATOVA
In November 1978, Crimean Tatar activist Aishe Seitmuratova (CCE 47.8-1 [9], CCE 49.12) left the USSR.
*
At the end of June 1978, she submitted a new appeal to the CPSU Central Committee.
On 26 June she was received by Filatov, Head of the Central Committee reception office. He said that she could talk about emigration to K. I. Zotov, Head of OVIR at the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). The next day (not a reception day) Zotov received her and suggested she should write a declaration asking for a review of the refusal to allow her to emigrate.
During the conversation Seitmuratova said that the invitation from relatives in Israel, which she had submitted to the Samarkand OVIR, was an enforced formality, but that she could submit an invitation from her real relatives (cousins) living in the USA. Zotov replied that there was no need for this.
In July, when Seitmuratova was living with her brother in the Crimea — he is one of the few who came to the Crimea ‘legally’, as part of organized labour recruitment — she was sought out there and told that she had permission to emigrate and could draw up the documents in Samarkand.
At the end of October, she received her emigration documents (to Israel) and decided to fly to Moscow on 3 November. At the airport, however, before boarding, certain persons told her she would not be flying: “Your presence in Moscow over the next few days [i.e., during the public holidays] is undesirable.”
*
On 20 November 1978, Seitmuratova flew to Vienna.
During the customs inspection at Sheremetyevo Airport various items were not allowed through.
Typed copies of the ‘International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination’ and of the ‘Convention Against Discrimination in Education’, as well as a group photograph of Crimean Tatar delegates (about 40 people) on Red Square in the summer of 1967. (A few people from that delegation, including Seitmuratova, were received by Andropov, Mikoyan, Shcholokov and Procurator-General Rudenko in 1967.)
*
[33]
MIKHAIL MAKARENKO
Around 20 January 1978, Mikhail Makarenko escaped for the 3rd time the surveillance of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and the KGB (CCE 48.13-2).
His son-in-law Ye. Murashov (CCE 46.5-1) was seized on the street on 28 January 1978 and taken to the Leningrad KGB. A man who refused to give his name demanded that Murashov ensure: by 13.00 on 31 January Mikhail Makarenko would either be at the KGB or, at least, that he would phone to say he was on his way.
If Makarenko agreed, the ‘man’ promised: he would get a residence permit in Leningrad, the surveillance order would be repealed, he would receive a visa to leave the USSR and a series of other ‘benefits’.
If not, Makarenko would be captured in five days at the most, and would get a new ‘term’ of imprisonment — under Article 190-1 (on the basis of testimony from his former cell-mates, with whom he had shared a cell for a month in October-November 1977); or for evading surveillance; or for slandering the ballerina Kolpakova (CCE 48.13-2).
Letters asking Makarenko to drop by were also sent (to Murashov’s address) from: I. A. Kolpakova; two researchers from the Leningrad Region Party Committee; the Procurator of Leningrad; the Head of Leningrad OVIR; a number of other officials.
*
In June Murashov was summoned to the Leningrad Region Party Committee and told to “Clear out!” On 9 June Leningrad OVIR accepted applications to emigrate from Murashov on his own behalf, and also for his wife and son and Makarenko himself.
On 20 June Murashov was told they had permission to emigrate and he was asked to give a written guarantee that they would leave by 10 July. Murashov replied that his father-in-law, who had not expected such a quick decision, had gone south for a rest and that he would not be able to get in touch with him.
On 24 July 1978, G. V. Romanov (1st Secretary of the Leningrad Region Party Committee) received from Makarenko a list of his legal claims against the KGB, the MVD and various courts concerning the theft of his money and property to the sum of 11,298 roubles, 9 kopecks. (Some of these claims were listed in CCE 48.13-2.)
On 7 August Colonel Bokov, Head of Leningrad OVIR, told Murashov that the surveillance of Makarenko had been repealed and that they should leave by 31 August.
*
On 3 September Makarenko left the USSR.
On leaving, Makarenko circulated in samizdat a volume entitled about Pavel Filonov: “Some letters, telegrams and reviews of the exhibition of works by Pavel Nikolayevich Filonov (1883-1941), held in Akademgorodok from 18 August to 27 September 1967”. (At that time, Makarenko was director of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Siberian Section, art gallery.)
The volume contains 45 of the 200 complaints and declarations he wrote in the 14 months after his release (“A Report from the Socialist Middle Ages”), and a short account of his life during those 14 months entitled “Information in Case of Need”. (This account is dated 30 August 1978; it contains many interesting details left out of //CCE 48 and this issue.)
Makarenko has described his life from his birth to his arrest (1969) in a book titled The Story of my Life: An Answer to Provocateurs: A supplement to my appeal to the RSFSR Supreme Court. It was written at the Lefortovo KGB Investigations Prison and smuggled out. The book was published and circulated in samizdat in 1970-1971. It was published abroad in 1974 [14].
*
[34]
IGOR POMERANTSEV
In August 1978, Kiev literary critic Igor Pomerantsev (CCE 48.17-1) emigrated from the USSR.
*
In August 1976, he was detained on the beach in Odessa. He was interrogated for six days by KGB officers Lieutenant-Colonel V.P. Menshikov and Major V.N. Melgunov. They accused him of having given his acquaintances: Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, the collection From Under the Rubble, and Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading (these were confiscated from his friend Josif Zissels: CCE 44.15, CCE 49.18 [4]).
Pomerantsev rejected all these accusations as baseless and unproven.
He refused to talk about his acquaintances or friends. Towards the end of the sixth day Pomerantsev was informed that he was under arrest and would be transported to Kiev, after which he was unexpectedly released. During the six days Pomerantsev spent the nights with his ‘interviewers’ at the Novaya Moskovskaya Hotel.
*
In October 1977, Kiev KGB officials interrogated no fewer than 16 of Pomerantsev’s acquaintances, trying to obtain the same kind of evidence from them (see above).
Those interrogated included: Grigory Tokayuk (CCE 48.17), engineers T. Korchagina and N. Sagalovskaya, translator M. Levina, Ya. Borodovsky (an employee of the Nuclear Research Institute), the doctor L. Sheindlin, linguist A. Lesovoi, patents specialist V. Karmazin, music-teacher M. Nezabitsovskaya, orchestra leader A. Smarichevskaya, woman student L. Oleinik, V. Matyukhin (a member of the Kiev Chamber Orchestra), and the critic’s mother R. Pomerantseva.
During his interrogation, Matyukhin stated that Pomerantsev had disseminated libellous anti-Soviet fabrications: stating, for example, that a creative personality could not realize his or her potential in the USSR.
*
In November 1977 Major Melgunov gave Pomerantsev a warning “in accordance with the 25 December 1972 Decree”. The text of the warning mentioned dissemination of libellous fabrications “defaming …”, storing and disseminating harmful literature, regularly listening to hostile radio broadcasts and having contact with foreigners. Pomerantsev refused to sign the warning.
In November 1977 Pomerantsev’s friends Grigory Tokayuk (CCE 48.17 and above) and Mark Belorusets (CCE 48.3 [4]) also received warnings “according to the Decree”’.
At the same time KGB Major Izorgin advised Pomerantsev to emigrate.
========================================
NOTES
- In the USSR the corrective-labour camps were sometimes referred to as the ‘small zone’ [malaya zona], as distinct from the entire country outside the camps, ‘the large zone’ [bolshaya zona], which, many felt, contained little more freedom than the penal system.
(A similar contrast was drawn by opposition-minded Germans living under the Third Reich.)
↩︎ - Dubna (Moscow Region) had a population of 54,889 in 1979.
↩︎ - On Polikanov, see Name Index and V.K. Bukovsky, Chapter 4: “Deportation or the Madhouse“, Judgement in Moscow (2016).
↩︎ - A reference to the collective letter criticising Sakharov after he received the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize (CCE 38.1 [7]). It was signed by many fellow members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
↩︎ - Bruno Pontecorvo (1913-1993) was an Italian-Soviet nuclear physcist. A convinced Communist, he defected to the USSR in 1950.
↩︎ - Korchnoi tied for first place in Amsterdam with Grand Master Tony Miles.
↩︎ - On Perchatkin, see CCE 46.9, CCE 47.8-2 and CCE 48.17-2.
↩︎ - On Moscow women refuseniks, see CCE 47.8-4 [4], CCE 48.17, CCE 49.15 and CCE 50.8-1.
↩︎ - On Lev Konin, see CCE 45.14, CCE 46.13 and CCE 47.14 [13].
↩︎ - On Olga Joffe, see CCE 11.7, CCE 15.2, CCE 18.1 [8] and Name Index.
↩︎ - On Nadiya Svetlichnaya (Ukr. Svitlychna), see CCE 43.17, CCE 44.27, CCE 45.6, CCE 46.11, CCE 47.10 and Name Index.
↩︎ - On Uzlov, see CCE 46.5-1, CCE 47.3-1, CCE 48.2 and Name Index.
↩︎ - On Alexander Zinoviev, see CCE 43.14, CCE 44.26-1, CCE 45.18 & CCE 48.18 [2].
↩︎ - Makarenko’s “The Story of My Life” was published in full in Volnoye Slovo (Possev publishers, Frankfurt), 1974, No. 12.
↩︎
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A Chronicle of Current Events 