Biographies
1.
M. P. LUTSIK
Mikhail Petrovich LUTSIK (CCE 39) was born in 1921 in the village of Volosyanka (Skole district, Lvov Region [West Ukraine]).
His father Pyotr Lutsik graduated from the Historical-Geographic Faculty of Lvov [Lemberg] University, knew eight languages, and wrote poetry and essays on historical subjects. In 1939 he was twice arrested by the Poles for nationalist (Ukrainian) activities. In spring 1941 he was arrested by the NKVD [USSR security services, 1934-1946] and sent into exile in the Krasnoyarsk Region [central Siberia], returning in March 1963. Four days after his return Pyotr Lutsik died, following a night attack by Captain Zaitsev, an official of the Skole district KGB.
Mikhail Lutsik’s mother graduated from the Philological Faculty of Lvov University, knew six languages, and wrote poetry; she died in 1935. Mikhail’s sister, Maria Lutsik (b. 1931), is now living in the Skole district of the Lvov Region [West Ukraine].
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In the spring of 1939, Mikhail and his father were arrested and detained for a few days by the Polish police for poems of nationalist content. In September 1939, after the Red Army entered the Western Ukraine, M. Lutsik crossed into Polish territory, which was occupied by the Germans.
At the beginning of November 1940, Mikhail was arrested by the Gestapo, but eventually succeeded in escaping from prison. In the summer of 1943 Lutsik defended his thesis at the Historical-Geographical Faculty of Lvov University.
In August 1943, Lutsik organized a fighting unit of young Ukrainians: it attacked a German concentration camp near the town of Skole (Lvov Region) and freed the prisoners. In August 1944, in a battle with the Germans, Lutsik was seriously wounded — his left hand was mutilated.
On 28 October 1944, the day the Red Army entered the village of Volosyanka, Lutsik was arrested by the NKVD. On charges of belonging to the OUN [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists] he was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment and 5 years’ exile. On 15 June 1956 he was freed by a Commission of the Supreme Soviet. In November 1956 he was rehabilitated.
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On 19 November 1957, Lutsik was arrested by the KGB in the town of Stryi (Lvov Region). In connection with his nationalist-patriotic poem “My Native Land”, which had already caused the Poles and the Germans to arrest him, Lutsik was charged with ‘anti-Soviet agitation’. Since he was also threatened with charges of organizational activity in the camps, which at that time carried the death penalty, Lutsik began to simulate mental illness on 21 November 1957.
A Lvov forensic psychiatric commission pronounced him sane, but Lutsik continued his pretence and succeeded in getting himself sent to Moscow for a second psychiatric examination. In August 1958 a diagnostic team at the Serbsky Institute reported that Lutsik had been sane at the moment he committed his crime but had become ill (a ‘state of reaction’) after his arrest. In April 1961, the Lvov Region Court sentenced Lutsik to 15 years’ imprisonment, the first 5 years to be served in prison, the remaining 10 years in a camp with strict regime (the prosecutor Starikov had demanded the death penalty).
In March 1970, referring to the Serbsky Institute diagnosis of 1958, Lutsik demanded to be classed as a Category 2 invalid. Psychiatrist Bozhkov of the Mordovian camps, who came to examine him, diagnosed Lutsik as suffering from “post-reactive development of the personality — psychopathy”, but did not grant him invalid status. In the summer of 1970, by saying that he was left-handed, Lutsik was granted Group 2 invalid status all the same, because of the mutilation of his left hand.
On 18 November 1972 Lutsik was released. He was sent to live in the town of Rybnitsa in the Moldavian SSR.
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Making use of the fact that his parents had been Austrian subjects, Lutsik refused after his release to accept a Soviet passport and applied for permission to emigrate to Austria.
On 31 July 1973, Lutsik was once again arrested. In September 1973 the Rybnitsa district people’s court sentenced Lutsik for “systematic vagrancy”, to 2 years in a strict-regime camp, the maximum penalty under Article 221, pt. 1, of the Moldavian SSR Criminal Code ( = Article 209 of RSFSR Code). As a result of an appeal, the Moldavian Supreme Court annulled the sentence and sent Lutsik for a forensic psychiatric examination. In March 1974, at the republican psychiatric hospital, Lutsik was diagnosed as suffering from “paranoidal schizophrenia with a continuous progressive course — paraphrenic stage” and it was recommended that he be sent for compulsory treatment to a Psychiatric Hospital of Special Type.
Lutsik immediately began writing to all conceivable institutions, claiming that he had been wrongly diagnosed and asking to be sent for another examination at the Serbsky Institute.
In July 1974 the Rybnitsa court ruled that Lutsik should be sent for compulsory treatment in a Special Psychiatric Hospital.
In January 1975 Lutsik arrived at the Dnepropetrovsk SPH. Immediately after his arrival he again began demanding to be sent to the Serbsky Institute for another examination. Between June 1975 and July 1977 Lutsik was examined by five visiting commissions and by a conference of doctors from the hospital. Lutsik answered the questions put to him like “a normal Soviet person”: he was not thinking of emigrating at all, he would gladly have a passport, he did not even consider any sort of political activity, let alone nationalist activity, etc. The first commission wanted to recommend Lutsik’s release on the grounds that he was in a state of remission, but Lutsik refused, saying that he wanted the diagnosis changed. In August 1977 a diagnostic team from the Serbsky Institute visited the hospital; it decided to send Lutsik to the Serbsky Institute for re-examination.
From February 1975 to July 1977 Lutsik had been forced to take Sidnocarb, Barbamyl, Milipromin, Cyclodol and Triftazin; he was given a course of insulin therapy.
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Lutsik did not arrive at the Serbsky Institute until May 1978. In July a commission presided over by Kira Lvovna Immerman annulled all Lutsik’s previous psychiatric diagnoses.
In August Lutsik was taken (under guard, as before) to Kishinyov. On 1 September the Moldavian Procuracy removed the detention order on Lutsik, and he was set free.
At the beginning of November Lutsik was informed in the Moldavian Procuracy that the 1973 charges of ‘vagrancy’ had been quashed (According to Article 48 of the Russian Criminal Code, the statute of limitations for prosecution under Article 209 of the Code is one year).
At present Lutsik is trying to obtain a residence permit in the town of Skole.
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2.
N.I. Budulak-Sharygin [Scharegin]
Nikolai Ivanovich BUDULAK-SHARYGIN was born in the Ukraine in 1926. In 1941 he was deported to Germany to work. The end of the war found him in the American Zone [of occupation]. The Americans sent him to the Soviet Zone. Here he began work. In 1947 Budulak-Sharygin went over to the British Zone [thereafter he spelt his name Scharegin]. Later he was sentenced to death in his absence for defecting, but the verdict was subsequently annulled.
In the British Zone Budulak-Sharygin married a Russian woman. In 1948, he left for England with her and her daughter Anya. The girl later effectively became his adopted daughter. In 1957 his wife (they had separated earlier, although Budulak-Sharygin continued to bring up Anya together with his own daughter, she was aged 12) returned to the USSR, where she was soon employed by Intourist.
Budulak-Sharygin received a technical education in England and began to work for a firm dealing with electronic apparatus. On commercial business for the firm (he also became a company director) Budulak-Sharygin travelled to a number of countries, and in September 1968 he came to the USSR. Here various insistent attempts were made, not without the indirect participation of his former wife, to recruit him into the KGB. (The ‘recruiters’ even included the Deputy Minister whom Budulak-Sharygin had come to see on business). Budulak-Sharygin determinedly resisted all these offers. On 20 September 1968, the twelfth day of his stay in the USSR, he was arrested.
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One of the first interrogations was attended by [KGB chairman] Andropov himself. He told Budulak-Sharygin, who was demanding that the British Consul be summoned: “The Queen of England won’t declare war for your sake.” (Budulak-Sharygin had not yet obtained British citizenship, although he had submitted the relevant application to the British authorities. His passport was ‘incomplete’, so he was not guaranteed protection on the territory of the Soviet Union or East European countries.)
The investigation lasted 14 months. Initially, as a foreigner, Budulak-Sharygin was charged with ‘Espionage’ under Article 65 of the RSFSR Criminal Code; later this was changed, and he was charged under Article 64 with ‘Treason to the Motherland’ in the form of “flight abroad” and “aiding a foreign government to carry out hostile activities” during the period when he lived in England: he was accused of having links with the NTS [Popular Labour Alliance] and Ukrainian emigre organizations. The first investigator threatened that Budulak-Sharygin’s former sentence – execution by shooting – would be carried out. When, after Budulak-Sharygin’s insistent protests about falsified charges, the investigator was replaced, he learned from the second investigator that his first sentence had long since been revoked.
While he was studying the case, defense lawyer B. A. Roginsky, who was appointed by the investigators, submitted a number of petitions. A month before the trial, without Budulak-Sharygin being notified, the lawyer was changed. Budulak-Sharygin refused to have anything to do with the new lawyer, Rausov. He also refused his services in court, but his refusal was not accepted.
The court referred the case back for further investigation five times. Eventually Budulak-Sharygin was sentenced to 2 years in a prison (practically all of which he had already served while under investigation) and 8 years in camp. He was not handed a copy of the verdict.
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In 1974, along with many others, Budulak-Sharygin was transferred to prison for three years for participation in a hunger-strike (CCE 32). After Vladimir [Prison] came Mordovian Camp 19, where he once again took an active part in protests by political prisoners, in particular in the campaign for “political prisoner status” in the summer of 1977 (CCEs 45-47).
A few months before his release, Budulak-Sharygin managed to re-establish contact with his adopted daughter A. Kotelnikova. Officials of the Kalinin KGB did not let this fact escape their attention. Whereas previously they had told Kotelnikova that she was in no way related to Budulak-Sharygin, now they not only acknowledged the family relationship, but even helped her to come for a visit (in May 1978).
At the beginning of September 1978, Budulak-Sharygin was taken from Mordovia to Kalinin [Tver]. On 20 September he was driven from an investigation prison to the district police station, where it was proposed that he accept a Soviet passport and he was told that he was being placed under a year’s surveillance, during which he would live in his daughter’s flat. However, the terms of surveillance did not include the usual requirement that he be at home from evening till morning — the only specification was that he should not leave the city. Budulak-Sharygin refused to accept the passport, declaring that he was not a Soviet citizen and that he intended to return to England as soon as possible. The police official did not insist.
A few days later, Budulak-Sharygin set off for Moscow with someone who was going that way by car; the car was stopped and a road-traffic policeman told Budulak-Sharygin that he must return to the city.
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At the beginning of October, A. Kotelnikova visited the British Embassy, where the Consul explained that the granting of British citizenship ten years after the submission of an application was not possible; he advised Budulak-Sharygin to take the Soviet passport and to try and arrange his departure through OVIR. The Embassy also issued a document confirming that Budulak-Sharygin’s entry into England was authorized. On their part, officials of the Kalinin KGB promised that there would be no obstacles to his departure.
At the end of October Budulak-Sharygin agreed to accept the passport and submitted his documents to the Kalinin visa & registration (OVIR) office. On 13 November he received a Soviet passport valid for foreign travel and was released from surveillance; on 19 November he flew to London.
Throughout the two months in Kalinin, both the police and the KGB were especially courteous towards Budulak-Sharygin.
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