In Leningrad, at the end of March 1980, Vladimir Borisov was forcibly interned in a psychiatric hospital. In mid-April he was sent for an expert examination (CCE 56.23).
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On 3 May Borisov was discharged from hospital: the psychiatrists pronounced him no longer a ‘psychiatric invalid’. On 3 June 1980, Borisov was taken out of his relative’s car in Moscow, put in another car and driven away.
His wife Irina Kaplun tried to find her husband through the police; she reported the number of the car which drove off with her husband, and was told that there was no police car with that number. Kaplun went to the USSR KGB. There she was told that they did not know where Borisov was, but that she and her husband ought to emigrate.
On 11 June Kaplun was summoned to the USSR KGB; this time she was told that Borisov had been arrested and that the matter they had to discuss with him would be resolved in a few days; she was reproached with reporting false information about her husband to Western correspondents, to which she replied that she told only the truth.
It later transpired that Borisov had been taken to Leningrad and put in prison for 15 days, after which his arrest had been extended for another 10 days.
According to Borisov, on 22 June 1980 he was forcibly put on an Aeroflot plane departing for Vienna.
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In Vienna Borisov refused to leave the plane until the Austrian police arrived.
His demand was satisfied; his escort handed the Austrian police Borisov’s exit visa, which had been filled in as in the case of Soviet citizens emigrating from the USSR of their own free will in order to live permanently in Israel.
Unexpectedly for Borisov, his brother Oleg, who had applied for permission to emigrate on 2 June, came out of the same plane.
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Vladimir Borisov is a member of the Action Group (to Defend Human Rights in the USSR; CCE 8.10): at present not a single member of the Group is still free in the USSR.
Borisov has been a prisoner in psychiatric hospitals for many years [1].
Borisov also belongs to the Council of Representatives of FIAWP, the Free Inter-trade Association of Working People (CCE 51.19-2).
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Irina М. Kaplun (1950-1980)
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On 23 July 1980, Irina Kaplun was killed in a car accident.
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While still a schoolgirl in the 9th class Irina Kaplun circulated leaflets.
In November 1969, then a 1st-year student in the Language and Literature Faculty of Moscow State University, Kaplun was arrested: in December 1969, she intended to scatter anti-Stalinist leaflets (CCE 11.7) ‘in honour’ of the 90th anniversary of Josif Stalin’s birth.
In September 1970, when her case had already been handed to a court, she was unexpectedly pardoned (CCE 16.10 [3]).
*
Kaplun was one of the founders of the Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes (CCE 44.10).
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NOTES
- On Borisov in psychiatric hospitals, see CCE 8.12 [13], CCE 10.4, CCE 11.10, CCE 19.3, CCE 24.4, CCE 27.6, CCE 30.9, CCE 32.13, CCE 43.7 [11] & CCE 44.20.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 