Statements (& Releases)
[1]
30 OCTOBER IS POLITICAL PRISONERS DAY
Tatyana Velikanova, Alexander Lavut, Petro Grigorenko, Naum Meiman, Yulia Zaks, Malva Landa, Alexander Podrabinek, Pinkhos Podrabinek, Irina Valitova-Orlova, Tatyana Osipova, Irina Zholkovskaya-Ginzburg, L. Ginzburg, Tatyana Khromova, Vyacheslav Bakhmin and Irina Kaplun
“Today this day was marked for the fourth time. The problem of political prisoners in the USSR is essentially a problem of human rights. People who have committed no offence, either political or criminal, in the commonly accepted sense of these words, are subjected to criminal punishment. They are condemned for their words, their thoughts, their faith, or for their unwillingness to live in this country.
“… Soviet political prisoners are watching with hope and anxiety to see if the defence of human rights will become the ruling principle of international relations.”
Pointing out that “the health of prisoners is being ruinously destroyed” in the prisons and camps, the authors of the statement appeal to Amnesty International and the International Red Cross to consider the problem of preserving the health of Soviet political prisoners, to try to carry out inspections of the camps and to try to send medicines to the prisoners, to obtain the right for them to consult doctors and the most elementary rights of all, sufficient food of good quality.
The statement also says that an important part of aid to political prisoners would be the ending of the isolation they are subjected to by the authorities, who try to keep their conditions of detention secret.
(For other statements on 30 October, see “Letters and Statements” this issue, CCE 47.15.)
*
[2]
Valentina Barladyanu: To the Ukrainian Helsinki Monitoring Group (20 July 1977)
Vasily Barladyanu’s wife writes that her husband’s trial was in fact held in closed court and its outcome was determined in advance. She also reports that:
“… as a result of a 4-month hunger-strike, Barladyanu’s life is in danger: he has begun to lose the use of one leg. In spite of this, he was first examined by a doctor only after the trial was over.”
Valentina Barladyanu asks the Helsinki Group to assist in her husband’s defence by publicizing the evidence in his case, and also to appeal for help to the International Red Cross.
*
[3]
Petro Grigorenko: To the International Congress of Psychiatrists (26 August 1977)
Come to the aid of your colleague, the doctor and psychiatrist Semyon Gluzman.
He is imprisoned in a camp just because he dared to openly oppose the false diagnosis which condemned me, a sane man, to five years imprisonment in a psychiatric prison.
Demand the immediate release of Semyon Gluzman, who at the risk of his own life upheld the high calling of a doctor.
*
[4]
Oksana Meshko, Z. Vivchar: Complaint to Strusov,
Head of the Medical Administration, USSR Ministry of internal Affairs (10 October 1977)
The mother and wife of Alexander Sergienko write:
“For participating in a protest hunger-strike on 8 October, he was deprived of the medical diet he had been prescribed by the medical section for the month of October.”
They also complain about other actions of Petrov, the doctor in Camp 36. On 30 May 1977 he took Sergienko off the list of tuberculosis (TB) cases, on his own authority, and in March he allowed him to be sent from a sickbed to serve 15 days in a punishment cell. They also complain about the incorrect treatment given to Sergienko in the hospital of Camp 35, which made his condition worse.
O. Meshko and Z. Vivchar ask that Sergienko be sent to a specialized hospital, as this is required by his present condition and the diagnosis he was given before his arrest: chronic disseminated tuberculosis of both lungs.
*
[5]
Petro G. Grigorenko: “Mykola Rudenko is being tortured!”
Open Letter to the Participants of the Belgrade Conference (18 October 1977)
Grigorenko writes that for Rudenko, who suffers from an illness of the spine (the result of a wound he received at the front during the War), the prison regime is the cause of constant physical pain, to which is added ‘moral torture’: attempts to make him repent and announcements that the Ukrainian Helsinki Group he led has broken up.
“Offers are made to him of freedom from physical pain and release from imprisonment at the price of falsehood and treachery. He has described this in the natural language of a poet — in a poem which, after a long and difficult two-month journey, has finally reached the person it was addressed to: myself.
“… Obviously these cunning tortures are intended to make M. Rudenko bear witness to his ‘repentance’, to state that the cruel and unjust sentence passed on Oleksiy Tykhy and himself, based on a fabricated charge, was just and humane.”
Grigorenko appeals:
“Demand an immediate end to the physical and moral torture being used on a war invalid! Demand the release from imprisonment of the unjustly sentenced Ukrainian poet Mykola Rudenko and his fellow-defendant Oleksiy Tykhy! [1]
Grigorenko attaches the poem by Rudenko to his open letter, in his own hasty translation (into Russian):
That’s all you have to do: repent,
And you’ll get the right to live… .
Just those ten tormented words,
Which you’ve mumbled out in the dark.
And you exist no more — there’s just the dark
Just the hidden prison inside.
*
[6]
Raisa Rudenko: Open Letter to Governments or States Participating
in the Belgrade CSCE Conference (1 November 1977)
Mykola Rudenko’s wife asks that the problems ‘of human fates and rights’ should not be forgotten ‘behind the great questions’ of peace and security.
She describes the successive acts of persecution against the members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, concluding with the confirmation of the sentence passed on Rudenko and Tykhy by the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR on 15 September 1977.
“Even since the sentence was confirmed he is still being held in Donetsk Prison, where they continue to torment him morally. During a short visit from his wife (about one hour long), which was conducted through a double-paned window, with the aid of a telephone, he was not allowed to talk about anything except his health.
“At the same time, other people unrelated to him have had access to him for unlimited conversation face to face, across a table. And no one interrupted their conversations. All because these people were offering a peculiar bargain: if Mykola Rudenko would announce the abolition of the Group in the press and condemn its activities, then he would be pardoned and released! They also threatened that if he didn’t do this, his wife would face the same fate!
“My husband does not receive many letters, although they are not returned to me. Neither have I received any letters from him, although by law correspondence has been allowed since the Supreme Court trial.
“A few days ago, I learned Donetsk Prison administration had not sent a letter addressed to me and had returned it to Rudenko merely because he had written to his wife, in Ukrainian. A striking example for a discussion on human rights! Mykola Rudenko, a war-invalid who suffers from many serious illnesses, ‘is threatened with death every day that he remains in prison’.
“Gentlemen! Demand the immediate release of Mykola Rudenko, Oleksiy Tikhy and other members of the Group!”
*
[7]
Ivan Kovalyov: Open Letter (October 1977)
S. Kovalyov’s son gives some details of his father’s detention in a camp: how he was punished for protesting against an order forbidding the wearing of warm boots (CCE 44); the absence of necessary medicines; the confiscation of a letter (in draft form, Chronicle) to the Procurator-General; the ‘disappearance’ of letters that had been passed by the censors. He writes about two visits (that took place on 7 June and 7 October):
My first, ‘short’ visit was limited to two hours because of the ‘bad behaviour’ … of L. Boitsova, my father’s wife, during a ‘long’ visit. My second visit was also limited to two hours, for unknown reasons. I shared this visit with L, Boitsova.
After the usual ‘instructions’ from a security official, we were personally instructed by the camp commandant Zhuravkov, His instructions to us included: a prohibition on ‘conveying dirt from abroad’, ‘talking about Sakharov’, ‘giving messages from other people’ . . , permission ‘to talk for the whole of two hours, if necessary, about the health of our grandmother’.
We were not told the legal basis for the limitations placed on the subject-matter of the conversation, despite all our requests; we merely received assurances that this was a personal order from Zhuravkov.
Similar conditions are made before visits to any prisoner. As we found out, my father had been forbidden to talk about his correspondence at all, but at this he refused to participate in the visit, and so the prohibition was lifted.
The visit was broken off after 1 hour 50 minutes, without any clear reason being given. The day of the visit — 7 October — was the fourth day of a protest hunger-strike to mark the beginning of the Belgrade Conference.
I. Kovalyov declares:
“I consider that, if I had kept quiet about this, I would have been cooperating with the punitive organs … in trying to keep their criminal activities secret.”
*
[8]
Ivan Kovalyov: To the Procurator General (28 November 1977)
Reporting his father’s renunciation of the right to correspondence (see above ‘Perm Camps’), I. Kovalyov quotes his own words: ’For correspondence to be resumed, it will be quite enough for me to receive a guarantee from you that legality will be observed.* On his side, I. Kovalyov asks that the five Most* letters should be taken out of the place where they ’disappeared* and sent to the people to whom they were addressed; I ask that the senders of letters addressed to my father, which were confiscated by the camp administration, should be informed of their whereabouts.
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Releases
*
On 5 November 1977 Nikolai Bondar’s seven-year term of imprisonment came to an end (CCEs 23, 33, 44). Before the end of his sentence, he was transferred from Vladimir Prison to the Ukraine.
*
Vladimir Afanasev (CCEs 33, 36, 44) has been released from Vladimir Prison before his sentence was up. (His term was due to end in 1980, not in 1984, as stated in CCE 44.)
*
Antanas Burbulis has been released early from Mordovian Camp 19. He was serving 15 years for “treason to the motherland”. His sentence was due to end in 1979 or 1980. Burbulis is an invalid (he has only one leg).
In the same camp Mikhail Zhurakovsky (of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army [UPA] & the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists [OUN]) was released on 16 November at the end of a 25-year sentence.
*
After a pardon, one of the leaders of VSKhON (or ASCULP, the All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People), Mikhail Sado (CCEs 1, 19, 33), has been released early from Perm Camp 36. His 13-year sentence was due to end in 1980.
Alexander Litvinenko (given five years for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”) has been released early from the Perm camps.
*
Yury T. Lytvyn (1934-1984)
On 14 November 1977 Yury Litvin (CCEs 37, 39 and this issue) was released from an ordinary-regime camp in the Komi ASSR at the end of his three-year sentence.
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NOTES
- The Russian forms of these first names are, respectively, Nikolai and Alexei.
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