The account of the case of Genrikas Jaškunas (CCEs 44 and CCE 48.15) can now be clarified and filled out.
Investigators from Moscow and Leningrad, as well as from Lithuania, participated in the pre-trial investigation. The trial took place in the police headquarters in the town of Jonava. On the eve of the trial the building was examined with mine-detectors. During the trial armed soldiers with dogs stood in the corridors. The witnesses were escorted into the courtroom by two soldiers when they had been questioned, they were immediately led out again. In the dock, Jaskunas had three guards, one of whom held an automatic pointed at him.
Jaškunas was charged under Article 62 of the Lithuanian Criminal Code ( = Article 64 of the Russian Code) and part 2 of Article 68 of the Lithuanian Code ( = Article 70 of the Russian Code).
Besides a “Manifesto of the Union of Organizations of Independent Peoples”, Jaškunas was charged with authorship of articles and leaflets in which it was proposed to transform the Soviet Union into a federation of independent republics with their own armies; this, according to the author, would guarantee their sovereignty and right to self-determination. Jaškunas was sentenced to 10 years in a special- regime camp and 5 years’ exile; his co-defendant Davivtas [Danetas in CCE 48] to 5 years in a strict-regime camp and 2 (or 3) years’ exile.
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Several statements submitted by Lev Lukyanenko (CCE 50.6) during his pre-trial investigation have become available.
On 21 December 1977, nine days after his arrest (CCE 48), Lukyanenko wrote to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet renouncing his Soviet citizenship and asking for permission to leave the USSR. On 21 January 1978, he complained to the Procurator of Chernigov Region that his investigator, Captain Polunin, had refused to send to the US Consulate Lukyanenko’s request that “a lawyer and US citizen from the Association of Ukrainian Lawyers in the USA (formed in the second half of 1977)”, be sent to him. Lukyanenko shows, in a reasoned, professional way, that his requests are not contrary to Soviet law.
On 20 February, because Memorandum No. 1 of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (CCE 43), concerning the premeditated annihilation by repressive means of 10 million Ukrainians, was termed “slanderous” by the investigation, Lukyanenko submitted a petition asking that the following figures be obtained from the Statistics Department of the Ukrainian SSR Ministry of Internal Affairs:
- the number of Ukrainians who died from starvation in 1933 and in 1947;
- the number of Ukrainians who were repressed from the 1920s to 1941; and
- the number of residents of Western Ukraine who were suppressed in 1939-41 and from 1944 to 1954.
Levko Lukyanenko, 1928-2018
With the aim of refuting the charges of “disseminating slanderous fabrications”, he petitioned in March 1978, for a few more figures to be obtained: the number of Ukrainians and the number of Russians living in Chernigov and the number of schools where the respective languages are taught; also the average number of pupils in each type of school; how many churches have been closed in Chernigov recently and how many are still functioning (one remains, Chronicle), how many petitions requesting the opening of another church had been submitted and how many people had signed them.
In connection with the Ukrainian Helsinki Group’s intention to register itself officially (Lukyanenko’s arrest interrupted the pursuit of this aim), on 3 April Lukyanenko asked the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR:
“Is a dialogue between the Group and the authorities in the Ukrainian SSR possible … or is it sufficient for certain Party or government officials to reach a conclusion about the Group’s unconstitutionality for the result to be not a discussion about rights, but arrest?”
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Before leaving the Soviet Union, the English psychiatrist Gery Low-Beer (CCE 49.18) was searched and addresses and photographs were confiscated.
Yevgeny Nikolayev’s wife was not taken to the police station on 12 March (CCE 48 and CCE 49.18). She was only summoned to the reception booth at the hospital gates, where her documents were checked, and she was allowed to go.
Attempts were not made to recruit Felix Serebrov and his wife as informers (CCE 47); his step-daughter was the target.
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The rumours put about in Perm Camp 36 by KGB Captain Chepkasov were false: a plea for clemency had not been submitted by Yu. Dzyuba, but by his parents (CCE 48.10).
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During the trial of Marinovich and Matusevich (CCE 49.3) Moscow Helsinki Group member Tatyana Osipova and member of the Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes Alexander Podrabinek were detained outside the courtroom. They were kept for three hours at the police station, then they were driven from Vasilkov to Kiev Station, where an attempt was made to put them aboard the train to Moscow, but they managed to escape from the platform.
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The Article proclaiming that the ’native’ language is the official Ianguage of the relevant republic is included not only in the Constitution of the Georgian SSR (CCE 49.17), but also in the Constitutions of the Armenian and Azerbaijani Republics. There is no analogous Article in the Constitutions of other [Soviet] Republics.
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Endnotes
Published in Russian in Sbornik dokumentov Obshchestvennoi gruppy sodeistviya vypolneniyu khelsinkskikh soglashenii, Khronika Press, New York, vol. 4, 1978, pp. 69-71.
Published in English in The Right to Know, the Right to Act: Documents of Helsinki Dissent from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, U.S. Congress, May 1978, pp. 106-112,
In June 1979 Morozov was sentenced under Article 70 to 5 years* exile.
Grigory Pomerants, Moscow samizdat writer and author of the collection of essays Neopublikovannoe, Possev, Frankfurt, 1972. Probably the Ukrainian Vladimir Yurkov (or, in transliteration from Ukrainian, Volodymyr Yurkiv) mentioned in CCE 25 as having, by 1972, already served 22 years in captivity. See more details in Michael Browne, Ferment in the Ukraine, London, 1971. Published in full, with Sakharov’s introduction, in Kontinent, 1979, No. 19.
The mistake was corrected in the English edition.
No. 11, wholly devoted to A. Podrabinek’s trial, was used in CCE 50,
For a long and revealing document written by Tairov see A Chronicle of Human Rights in the USSR, New York, Nos. 5-6. 1973.
According to the Encyclopaedia Lituanica, Boston, Vol. 4, 1975, Bishop PranciSkus Ramanauskas (1893-1959) was allowed to return to Lithuania in 1956 but could not exercise his episcopal duties. He died in Telšiai.
Ogorodnikov was sentenced to 1 year in camps in early 1979, The Chronicle is correct.
Plus notes 17 to 19.
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