CHISTOPOL PRISON.
Anatoly SHCHARANSKY’s three-year prison term (for his trial, see CCE 50.4-3) ended in March. He was then transferred to a camp in the Perm Region (see below, ‘The Perm Camps’).
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Yury SHUKHYEVYCH is having trouble with his eyes and gums.
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MORDOVIA.
Camp 1 (special-regime).
On 25 December 1979, Oleksiy TYKHY’s wife sent a telegram addressed to both Brezhnev and Shchelokov, the Minister for Internal Affairs:
“My husband… is enduring inhuman suffering and humiliation. As a result, he set fire to himself. I ask for permission to visit him, or to attend his funeral.”
On 27 December, Olena TYKHAYA went to the Main Administration for Corrective Labour Institutions, where she was received by Kazantsev. Unless she was allowed to see her husband, Tikhaya said, she, too, would set fire to herself — in Red Square. Kazantsev asked her to leave the room for a while.
Oleksiy Tykhy, 1927-1984
When she returned, he told her that Tykhy had not set fire to himself (some reports say that Fyodorenko set fire to himself in protest against the humiliation of Tikhy). Kazantsev told Tykhaya she could visit her husband on two conditions: she did not talk about his health, and would confirm afterwards that he had not set fire to himself. After the visit, Tikhaya replied, she would say whatever her husband told her to say. It was suggested that she think it over.
In January-February 1980, Tykhy spent about 40 days in the cooler, with small intervals between. For ‘unbecoming conduct’ he was deprived of a long visit, due in January; for ‘contravening prison regulations’ he was deprived of a short visit, scheduled for July 1980.
Odintsov, an official of the RSFSR Procurator’s office, told Tykhy’s wife that her husband was being punished for tearing off his number tag, not standing up for officers, demonstratively refusing to work, and being a bad influence on his fellow-prisoners.
At this time, according to a reply from Z.V. Kalenchits, Deputy Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs medical administration, Tykhy “was receiving prophylactic treatment”. Kalenchits also wrote that at the moment there was no evidence that Tikhy needed hospital treatment. Tikhy is not permitted to write about his health, but it is known that in the winter his tubercular scars reopened.
On 30 January 1980 Tykhy’s mother (M.K. Tykhaya) appealed to the UN Human Rights Commission:
“… At the moment he is unable to work because he is seriously ill, and yet he is being severely punished for not working.
“My son is in mortal danger. As a mother, I beg you to help.”
M.K. Tykhaya sent a similar appeal to the Red Cross [note 1].
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Anatoly MARCHENKO and Genrikas JASKUNAS have refused to work and to wear their number tags.
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Ivan HEL (Gel) now weighs 42 kilograms (see also CCE 54.13).
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In the space of five months, August 1979 to January 1980, REBRIK received three letters from his daughter; it is known that she writes every week. Other prisoners are also finding that letters arc not reaching them.
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On 26 February 1980, prisoners in Camp 1 were informed that the ‘special zone’ was being transferred to the Perm camps (see below “The Perm Camps: Camp 36 “special-regime” ‘ [note 2]).
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Camp 3.
Vladimir OSIPOV and Sergei SOLDATOV sent the following telegram to President Carter:
“We sympathize with the plight of the American hostages. We are disturbed by the Tehran bandits’ mockery of American honour. You have our advance support for all your actions.”
On 20 January 1980, Osipov was taken away somewhere; some reports say he was transferred to Vladimir.
On 23 January a letter from Soldatov to Dmitry Leontyev (CCE 50.1) on philosophical subjects was confiscated.
In March 1`980, Soldatov’s wife came to visit him, but the visit did not take place because Soldatov was in Saransk for a ‘prophylactic session’. Before her departure she wrote to the administration to ask about the date of the visit, but had received no reply.
During the winter a notebook containing scientific notes was confiscated from R. NAZARYAN (he is a physicist). He is trying to have it returned to him.
On 21 March 1980, Yu. Badze arrived at Camp 3 (for his trial, see CCE 55.1 item 5; his name was spelt wrongly in previous issues).
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PERM.
Camp 35.
For striking on 10 December 1979, “Human Rights Day”, Paruir AIRIKYAN, Yu. BUTCHENKO, P. PLUMPA and Mikhail KARPYONOK were punished with eight, seven, six and five days in the cooler, respectively (it was stated in CCE 54.13 that Karpenok had been transferred to Mordovian Camp 3; this was evidently a mistake).
D. Verkholyak was put in the cooler for five days for renouncing his citizenship for the second time.
On 21 January 1980, Airikyan was sentenced to five days in the cooler. On 31 January he was sentenced to six months in the punishment block, for “blackmailing the doctor”. The real reasons were probably Airikyan’s protests against the exiling of Sakharov and his participation in memorial ceremonies for Zatikyan, Stepanyan and Bagdasaryan (CCE 52.1).
Butchenko was sentenced to six months in the punishment block for receiving a parcel through unofficial channels.
On 9 February 1980, Airapetov arrived back from the psychiatric barrack, to which he had been transferred after taking part in a strike; he spent three months there.
In December 1979, M. Slobodyan was told that he would be given medical treatment “if he behaved well” (see CCE 51.9-1).
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On 7 January 1980, camp head Osin informed Nikolai Matusevich’s sister that the date of his next long visit would be 13 December 1980; his next short visit, 18 April 1980. In a statement dated 9 January, addressed to the Head of the Main Administration for Corrective-Labour Institutions, Tamila Matusevich asks to be informed (for the beginning of the exchanges over visits, see CCE 54.13) of the following:
- which particular visit Matusevich was deprived of by the resolution of 14 August 1979; the reasons for this punishment; and the legal basis on which Osin informed me about this punishment even before the resolution was promulgated;
- if there is a resolution depriving Matusevich of his long visit If so, then on what is it based? (and if he was deprived of his long visit on 14 August, then where is the resolution depriving him of his short visit?);
- the way in which the dates of the visits as quoted by Osin were decided upon.
In February 1980, Matusevich was sentenced to six months in the punishment block (the April visit was therefore postponed until October). On 5 February his mother was summoned to the district Soviet, where a KGB official from Kiev told her that she would be able to visit her son if she agreed to ‘influence’ him.
Anatoly Shcharansky arrived from Chistopol Prison. He now has to serve a ten-year camp sentence.
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Camp 36 (strict-regime).
For the second year running, Miroslav MARINOVICH has been deprived of his long visit (CCE 51.9-1).
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Sergei Adamovich KOVALYOV was put in the punishment block for six months.
As before, no letters arrive from him (CCE 54.13). In December 1979, his wife Ludmila Boitsova wrote to the camp enquiring about her husband’s letters. In January camp head Zhuravkov sent the following reply:
“During the period August to December 1979, registered letter No. 952 and a chapter of Marcinkevičius’s narrative poem The Cathedral were confiscated [from him].”
At the end of March 1980, Ivan KOVALYOV wrote to the camp head enquiring about the following: the reasons for the confiscation of his last letter to his father; whether he had been given two greetings telegrams and a regular letter; and also about the reasons for, and the length of, his sentence in the punishment block. In April he received a reply from Zhuravkov: … the reasons for the confiscation of letters to prisoner S. A. Kovalyov have been told him; the administration is not obliged to inform relatives about confiscations:
“You may find out from S.A. Kovalyov himself whether he received the greetings telegrams and registered letters.
“Prisoner S.A. Kovalyov has been placed in the punishment block for contravening the regulations on imprisonment.
“In future, address such questions to S.A. Kovalyov.”
Zhuravkov did not reply to Kovalyov’s wife’s earlier enquiry about her husband’s confinement in the punishment block.
Nikolai YEVGRAFOV has been transferred here from Mordovia ‘special-regime’ Camp 1 [see CCE 46, “Political Prisoners in the USSR, 1977“].
Zinovy KRASIVSKY has arrived here to ’serve out’ eight months (see “Events in Ukraine”, CCE 56.15); he then has to spend five years in exile.
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Camp 36 (special regime).
A special-regime zone has been constructed within the territory of Camp 36 (CCE 54.13). Political prisoners from Camp 1 in Mordovia arrived here at the beginning of March 1980.
Prisoners in this camp are not permitted to address two people in a single letter. Here, however, Tykhy will not be prohibited from writing about his health.
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IN OTHER PRISONS AND CAMPS.
On 2 April 1980, Vasyl STRELTSOV (trial, CCE 55.1 item 1) was transferred to a camp.
Although legally entitled to do so, his brother was not permitted to visit him after the trial. Vasyl Streltsov is serving his sentence at a camp in Ukraine’s Poltava Region (315040, p/o Bozhkovo, penal institution OP-317/16). His letters have not been reaching their addressees.
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Petro SICHKO (trial, CCE 55.1 item 2) works in a pipe-cutting workshop in a camp. The camp bosses are displeased because he demanded that the safety regulations be observed. On 6 March 1980, he was beaten up by criminal prisoners.
Vasyl SICHKO (trial, CCE 55.1 item 2) is in a camp in central Ukraine: 257000, Cherkassy, penal institution ECh-325/62. He works as a labourer, digging trenches, and is unable to fulfil the norm.
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Yury LITVIN (trial, CCE 55.1 item 3) was initially sent to serve his sentence in Belaya Tserkov (Kiev Region). In February 1980 he was transferred to another camp in the same part of Ukraine (Bucha, penal institution YuL-45/85): the journey across the Kiev Region took a week. Litvin suffers from a stomach ulcer and an intestinal complaint [note 3]. He has been given a special diet in camp.
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Sergei YERMOLAYEV (trial, CCE 54.12) is serving his sentence in east Siberia: Buryat ASSR, Ulan-Ude, penal institution OV-94).
In mid-January 1980, Alexander GOTOVTSEV (trial ‘Rossiisky’, CCE 54.12) arrived in a camp in Vladimir (east-central Russia).
In late January 1980, Nikolai NIKITIN (trial, CCE 54.12; see also CCE 55.3) was sent from Leningrad’s Kresty (Crosses) Prison to a camp in the west Siberian Kemerovo Region.
In April 1980, Georgy MIKHAILOV (trial, CCE 54.12) has arrived in a Far Eastern camp in Kolyma: 686310, Magadan Region, Susuman, penal institution AV-261/5. It is headed by N.M. Lomakin. Mikhailov has been put in the sewing shop as an apprentice.
Ivan KORCHNOI (trial, CCE 55) is in a camp in the Urals: 641970, Kurgan Region, Ketovsky district, Prosvet station, penal institution OF-73/2. He is working in an agricultural unit. Adventist Arnold A. Spalin (CCE 55.7) is serving his sentence in the same camp.
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A. STASEVICH (trial, CCE 55.1-2) is serving his sentence in the Kirov Region of the Volga Okrug (612270, Verkhnekamsky district, Lesnoi settlement, penal institution K-231/25.) On 12 March 1980, Stasevich was sentenced to 15 days in the cooler for refusing to go out and fell trees.
After his release from the cooler, he was transferred to construction work. The camp administration confiscated two of Stasevich’s letters because they were ‘tending towards’ offences under Article 190-1 (RSFSR Criminal Code).
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Vladimir MIKHAILOV (trial, CCE 55.1-2) has arrived in a camp in Northwest Russia (164006, Arkhangel Region, Konoshsky district, p/o Sovza, penal institution 233/23).
Myroslav SIMCHICH (CCE 53.19) was granted his request for a transfer. In February 1980 he was sent from Perm to a camp in Ukraine: Zaporizhzhia Region, Orekhovsky district, Malaya Tokmachka village, penal institution YaYa-310/88.
In March 1980, Reshat DZHEMILEV (trial, CCE 55.1 item 7) arrived in a central Siberian camp, above the Arctic Circle: Krasnoyarsk Region (Krai), Norilsk, penal institution 288/15. He is working as a warehouse assistant. At the end of April 1980, he informed his wife that he was being sent to hospital because of liver failure.
In early January 1980, Yevgeny BUZINNIKOV (CCE 54.13; trial CCE 51.3) was again moved to another camp, this time in Northwest Russia: 169200, Komi ASSR, Knyazh-Pogost station, penal institution AN-243/8-1.
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Vasily BARLADYANU’s three-year camp term (trial, CCE 46.3) ended on 2 March 1980. He was not released from the camp.
On 29 February 1980, he was transferred to an investigations prison in Rovno (Ukraine). He is accused of writing “a lampoon on Soviet reality” and sending it out of the camp. Outlines of a cultural seminar led by Barladyanu were confiscated from fellow-prisoners.
After a search in September 1979 (CCE 54.11), Valentina Barladyanu was summoned for questioning by the KGB on several occasions. In connection with Vasily Barladyanu’s case searches were carried out at the homes of Tatyana Rybnikova and two other people in Odessa. Evidently Barladyanu is being charged again under Article 187-1 (Ukrainian SSR Criminal Code = Article 190-1, RSFSR Code).
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Mikhail KUKOBAKA (CCE 54.13) has not been allowed to attend a lathe-operator’s course, nor may he borrow a German-Russian dictionary from a school library, or buy books at the bookstall.
Operations Section officials have confiscated all addresses from him (including the addresses of officials at the procurator’s office); copies of complaints, statements and letters; notes on the receipt and sending of letters; a list of his personal belongings; and some books in English.
Kukobaka has been transferred to a new job, making nets. He is being punished in the cooler for failing to fulfil the norm. In November or December 1979, he was sentenced to six months in the punishment block for turning away from the screen at the cinema (attendance is compulsory) and blocking his ears with cotton wool.
Kukobaka is trying to obtain a transfer to another camp. On 23 April 1978, he was taken to hospital In Minsk with an oedema in his leg and pains in the antrum of Highmore (or maxillary sinus).
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In March 1980, Kirill PODRABINEK (trial, CCE 49.1) has been sent to the prison hospital, suffering from open tuberculosis. His doctor O.V. Khadayeva says he has had TB for about a year. His sentence is due to end on 29 June.
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A copy of the verdict and the appeal in the case of Alexander BOLONKIN (trial, CCE 51.7) have been confiscated from. On 22 December 1979, he was taken to the town hospital with a severe attack of appendicitis. They did not operate on him, and a few hours later he was brought back to the camp hospital (CCE 55.3). Fifteen days afterwards, while he still had a temperature, Bolonkin was taken to the cooler straight from the hospital cell.
From a letter by Bolonkin:
“The charge is a standard one: I supposedly wanted to send out illegally a letter of mine to the censors, which I actually handed over to the administration before I was taken to hospital (it was a registered letter with a card for notification of receipt and with my address on it).
“As far as I am concerned, banishment to the cold cells of the cooler after a stay in hospital has become a normal occurrence. In May I was in hospital with pneumonia and high blood pressure, and immediately afterwards I was sentenced to a month in the cooler: 15 days for illegal correspondence, and another 15 days because during a conversation with the camp head I said to him: ’Fascist!’
“As a result, I now suffer from chronic bronchitis, cystitis of the colon, constant stomach pains and blood in the stools. In 1979, I had five X-rays.”
In accordance with the new regulations (CCE 48.10), Bolonkin’s next visit has been postponed for eight months: he has now spent a total of six months in the punishment block and 68 days in the cooler. His next visit will now take place in October or November this year. On 5 February 1980, Bolonkin was released from the punishment block.
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In December 1979, KGB officials asked several prisoners to testify that Josif ZISELS (CCE 54.13 & CCE 55.3) has been promoting anti-Soviet propaganda in the camp: they were promised privileges in exchange. In response to a statement by Zisels’s wife, the Chernovtsy Region Procurator’s senior assistant N.S. Shcherbina wrote:
“since you refuse to give the name of the person who informed you about this your statement will neither be verified nor receive a reply.”
In response to a similar statement, V.P. Orinchuk, head of the oversight department for places of imprisonment at the Chernovtsy Region Soviet’s executive committee, replied that Irena Zisels’s information “has not been confirmed”.
In February 1980, Zisels was sentenced to five days in the cooler. In March he was deprived of his scheduled short visit (it was due to take place in May) because he had visited a prisoner in another section. Zisels was also denied access to the camp shop, because he possessed a clean change of underclothes.
Zisels is not receiving the medical treatment needed for his stomach ulcer. The camp medical section often has no Almagel; in these circumstances Zisels is given Besalol.
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On 26 February 1980, Vladislav BEBKO (CCE 54) was beaten so badly by other prisoners that he was taken to hospital with concussion and cracked ribs.
At first, they placed him in the hospital in his own camp. Later he was transferred to the psychiatric section of the central camp hospital in southern Russia (445015 Kuibyshev Region, Togliatti, penal institution UR- 65/16).
In March 1980, as an exception, Bebko’s wife Marina Ryabova (CCE 51; they registered their marriage on 17 December 1979) was granted a short visit to her husband. In a telegram to the Procurator’s office she stated that she had been shaken by his appearance:
“His mental and physical health are in a critical state. I have no hope that my husband will survive until the end of his camp sentence. I beg you to help him.”
Ryabova also appealed for help to Amnesty International.
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In Defence of Political Prisoners
Ivan Kovalyov: “To the International Court in Strasbourg” (27 December 1979)
[note 4]
“Five years ago, my father Sergei Adamovich Kovalyov … was arrested on a charge of ‘anti-Soviet Agitation & Propaganda’. In December 1975, the Supreme Court of the Lithuanian SSR sentenced him to seven years imprisonment in a strict-regime camp and three years exile.
“My father was charged with:
- participating in the Action Group for the Defence of Human Rights;
- collecting information, and producing, editing and sending abroad issues 28-34 of the Chronicle of Current Events,
- with using in it the contents of three issues of the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church,
- with passing information about the camps to foreign correspondents, and
- with circulating Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago.
“The seven issues of the Chronicle of Current Events with which he was incriminated contain 694 episodes. The prosecution investigated 172 of them. My father admitted the possibility of mistakes in 11 episodes (however, he intended to prove that none of them was of a deliberate, slanderous nature). Eighty-nine episodes were pronounced accurate even by the prosecution; in 72 cases my father intended to prove that the Chronicle report contained no mistakes.”
After explaining that “all possibilities of defence through official channels have been exhausted,” Ivan Kovalyov requests that his father’s case be examined by the Court of Human Rights.
Ivan Kovalyov: “History of a Hunger-Strike. Sergei Kovalyov”,
December 1979, 25 pp (CCE 53 & CCE 54).
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Releases
In December 1979, the Baptist Ya.Ya. Fot from Dzhambul in Kazakhstan (CCE 52) was released from the camps after serving a two-year term.
In January 1980, the Baptist V.V. Peredereyev from Shakhty, Rostov Region, southern Russia (CCE 46) was released from the camps after serving a three-year term.
On 4 March 1980, German Ushakov, a native of Leningrad, was released after serving a five-year term. Some days before his release, he was dispatched from Mordovian Camp 3 to the Leningrad KGB Investigations Prison. His certificate of release gave his destination as Novgorod.
At the beginning of March 1980, Teodor Reinhold (CCE 46) was released from Mordovian Camp 3 on completion of his 25-year sentence. He has a serious kidney disease.
On 4 March 1980, Sergei Grigoryants (CCE 48) was released from Verkhne-Uralsk Prison in the Urals after serving a five-year sentence.
On 28 April 1980, A. Ivanov (CCE 48 & CCE 52) was released from the Kresty (‘Crosses’) Prison in Leningrad after serving a three-year sentence. He spent the whole of his sentence working in the prison.
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NOTE
[1] Oleksiy TYKHY died of stomach cancer in 1984. See USSR News Update, 1984, 10-1 (“The death of Tykhy”).
[2] In March 1980, a new ‘special-regime’ zone opened as part of Camp 36 within the Perm complex and inmates of Camp 1 in Mordovia were transferred there.
[3] Yury LITVIN (b. 1934) was imprisoned in the camps from the mid-1950s to 1965 under Articles 58:10 and 58:11 for “counter-revolutionary crimes” (CCE 37.13 and CCE 39.2). He was arrested again in the mid-1970s and sentenced to four years in an ordinary-regime camp.
[4] Kovalyov is referring to the European Court of Human Rights.
In the 1990s, after Russia and other Soviet successor states became signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights, hundreds started applying to Strasbourg as the court of last instance.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 