«No 47 : 30 November 1977»

The mass registration in the Crimea of Crimean Tatars, which representatives of authority promised in February 1977 (CCE 44), has so far proved by no means comprehensive.

From February to September 1977 the ownership of houses which had been bought was legalized, and about 200 families were registered. Amongst them were both those who had been living for several years in the Crimea without registration, and those who came in 1977. However, about another six hundred families are living without registration: several dozen of them have been there 3-4 years.

Altogether there are now approximately two thousand Crimean Tatar families (8-10,000 people) in the Crimea, 250-300 of which came under the ‘organized worker recruitment’ system. In mid-November 1977 twenty-five families were brought from Uzbekistan under this system, which was used for the first time since 1974.

The KGB took part in the selection of those being resettled: there are several thousand waiting in the queue.

***

EVICTIONS RESUME

In September 1977, after almost a year’s break, forcible evictions started up again (CCEs 41-44).

In Saki district F. Boiko, recently appointed chairman of the district soviet executive committee, stated: “There will not be a single Crimean Tatar in my district”. Four families were evicted in September.

In the village of Runnoye two elderly women, the sisters Nuriye and Kerime Kurtseitova, were driven out of the house they had bought together with their brother, Rustem Khalilov, an invalid of the Second World War.

This action started late in the evening of 7 September. It was directly carried out by Timchenko, an inspector of the passport section at the internal affairs office; the secretary of the Party committee of the Ozerny (Lakeside) State Farm; A. Marchuk, a legal consultant of the State Farm (he personally broke down the doors); and a large unit of policemen and voluntary police (druzhinniki; almost all of whom were drunk).

Kerime, who has a weak heart, fell unconscious when they burst into the house. After this the action was broken off.

The following day Kerime, who had not yet recovered, her sister and two other women – Khalilov at this time was at the office of the chairman of the district executive committee submitting a complaint – were pushed into a bus. Their property was piled on to lorries: much of it was broken and stolen. The sisters were handed over to the local hospital, while their things were thrown down in the State-Farm hostel.

The sisters Kurtseitova are registered in the neighbouring village of Lesnovka. Since they were living in cramped conditions there with other relatives, in February 1977 they bought a house in the village of Runnoye. They obtained the permission of the State-Farm administration to buy the house.

Khalilov was promised registration and work by soviet and Party agencies (he is a member of the Communist Party) if he bought a house.

At the beginning of September 1977, the former owner of the house was searched, detained at the police station for 24 hours and summoned to the procurator’s office on two other days, after which she signed a statement that the purchaser was ‘evading’ registration of the contract, and that she had sold the house a second time, to the Ozerny State Farm.

The same day the forced eviction began. The Kurtseitovas and Khalilov were unable to obtain the restoration of their rights to the house either from the local authorities, or from the USSR Procurator-General. In November 1977 they handed in to the court a suit against the State Farm and a complaint against the actions of the police.

*

In the village of Molochnoye (Saki district) on 20 September Zera Mustafayeva and her 10-year-old daughter were evicted.

They were forced to get into a bus — the little girl was taken from her lessons; their things were loaded in after the doors of the house had been broken down, and they were taken to the rail-station in Simferopol. Mustafayeva was told to send her things to Samarkand.

A letter was sent from Saki to the Samarkand regional soviet executive committee requiring that measures be taken against Zera’s husband D. Mustafayev, an official of the executive committee and a deputy to the regional soviet. After staying for a few days wherever she could at flats in Saki, Mustafayeva returned to her house. After she had submitted numerous statements the district procurator admitted that the eviction had been illegal and her things were brought to her from Simferopol; but she did not succeed in legalizing the contract of purchase and registering there.

In October 1977 the former owner of the house, who had left for the Arkhangelsk Region (Northwest Russia), was summoned to Saki. She was forced to write a statement that she agreed to the house being pulled down, and on 27 October this was carried out.

Mustafayeva and her daughter remained in a temporary building, standing in the yard. The State-Farm administration cut off the electricity to this building and liquidated the garden plot, dividing it up between the neighbours. Mustafayeva’s daughter, Zarema, twice wrote to the Pioneer Truth newspaper. In reply to her letters an Instructor of the Komsomol district committee came to her school: “Tell your mother to take you back to Samarkand — you’ve got a good flat there,” he said.

*

In the same district in September 1977 the family of war veteran Seitmemet Ametov, was evicted from Mityayevo village and taken to a forested area. The family of Amet Ganiyev were also evicted from Trudovoye village.

***

Evictions also took place in other parts of the Crimea.

On 31 August 1977 the family of Nuri Mustafayeva, including one child aged three and another aged one and a half, was taken out of Sadovoye village (Nizhnegorsk district).

They were dumped at a place in the open not far from the town of Dzhankoi. Crimean Tatars living in their neighbourhood found them and took them home. The family has already been living for a year without registration and without work.

*

In the village of Semisotka (Lenin district) there were three evictions in September 1977.

Sh. Bekirov with his wife and two young children; A. Karayev, a war veteran; and S. Khodzhiametov with his wife, three children and old mother. The head of the Lenin district internal affairs office and his deputy Kuznetsov played a direct part in these actions. A criminal returning from the camps, who had served 10 years for raping juveniles, was billeted in the house of Khodzhiametov.

*

The parents of Mustafa Dzhemilev (see this issue’s “In the Prisons and Camps” CCE 47.9-2), Makhfure and Abduldzhemil Mustafayev, moved to the Crimea in July 1977 after buying a house in the village of Muromskoye (Belogorsk district). This is not far from Mustafa’s sisters Dilyara Seitveliyeva (CCE 46, “Miscellaneous reports”) and Gulizar Abdullayeva, who had moved there previously with their families.

They are all being refused registration. In August the administrative commission of the district soviet executive committee decided to warn the Mustafayevs that they must legalize the purchase of their house within three days and that they were violating the residence regulations. In November they were sent a summons to the procurator’s office “on the matter of the illegal purchase of a house”. A criminal case was brought against Dilyara’s husband, Riza Seitveliyev, under Article 196 (Ukrainian Criminal Code: “violating residence regulations”) after the purchase of their house was ruled illegal by a civil court.

In November 1977 the police carried out an inquiry; the trial is expected in December.

*

A criminal case under Article 196 was also brought against Nuretdin Useinov in the village of Batalnoye (Lenin district) where he has been living there without registration since 1974, and against Seidamet Memetov (Lesnovka village, Saki district). The trial of Memetov was scheduled for 9 November 1977, but on 6 November the deputy head of the district internal affairs office told Memetov that the trial would not take place. Asked whether the case had been closed and if Memetov fell under the amnesty, he received no definite answer.

Some Crimean Tatars convicted under Article 196 (Ukrainian Criminal Code: “violating residence regulations”; CCE 43) and now released under the amnesty have returned to Stary Krym.

*

In the middle of November 1977, a group of Crimean Tatars (mostly women) arrived at the Belogorsk district soviet executive committee.

The police proposed that they should enter one by one, not through the main entrance but at the side of the building. A police van was standing there. The first two women were seized. The rest ran to a car. A skirmish broke out, in the course of which both Crimean Tatars and policemen were hurt. Two people (a man and a woman) each received a 10-day jail sentence.

*

A.V. Tikhonovsky, married to a Crimean Tatar, lives on the Solnechny (‘Sunny’) State Farm in the Simferopol district. Recently his telephone was cut off. The head of the telephone exchange, Urmus, explained the reason for the disconnection to Tikhonovsky: “You talk in Tatar on the telephone and we can’t understand.”

Two years ago, when the family moved to the Crimea from Uzbekistan, it took Tikhonovsky (at first, he arrived on his own) a single day to legalize the contract for the purchase of a house, and to register. Later, when he came to the passport office to register his wife, they began to shout at him: “You’re a Party member but you’re deceiving the State.”

*

Among the measures taken against the ever-growing stream of Crimean Tatars returning to the Crimea are the following: unregistered Crimean Tatars are not given special transport for conveying the containers of their things which have arrived in the Crimea. The head of the loading point at the rail-station in Simferopol, N.G. Smirinsky, says he received verbal instructions about this from the KGB.

At the same time, Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan are being hindered from sending containers. The Crimean State Motor-Vehicle Inspectorate is hunting down private cars belonging to unregistered Crimean Tatars (one sign is that they do not have Crimean number plates) and punishing the owners under various invented pretexts even to the point of depriving them of a licence for a period of up to two years. Several owners of cars who helped evicted Tatars to return home have been deprived of their licences.

*

Asan Mamut, a war veteran [note 1] and Group I invalid, spent eight years in hospitals after being injured. Since then, he has been in the care of his sister, who now has six children. Recently Mamut wrote to Red Star, the newspaper of the USSR Ministry of Defence.

On 17 April 1977, having bought a peasant house in the village of Balki (Belogorsk district), the family returned to the Crimea. The chairman of the village soviet and the local policeman immediately gave the garden attached to the house to the neighbours. Mamut appealed to the district soviet executive committee, the regional soviet executive committee, the district Party committee and the district military enlistment office, but did not succeed in getting registered.

Mamut’s son-in-law, a driver and carpenter, is without work; Asan himself is not being paid a pension. Kravets, chairman of the district soviet executive committee, whom Mamut went to see, called the police and drove him out of the office.

Asan Mamut ended his letter to Red Star: “That’s what I defended my country for.”

*

Teacher Zera Shabanova in Belogorsk has not been given a job in either a school or even a kindergarten for a period of three years.

*

Paediatrician Fera Muslyadinova, registered in the village of Nizhny Oreshnik since spring 1977, is unable to find work according in her profession even though there is a serious shortage of paediatricians in the district.

*

Engineer Nariman Deshevin, who has been working in Uzbekistan as head of a construction bureau and is laureate of a State Prize, is unable to find work in the Crimea.

Engineer-mechanic Redvan Dzhemilev, who is willing to take any job, for example as a driver, is in the same situation.

*

Nadzhis Babayeva has been admitted to study in a sewing training school only after numerous complaints right up to the regional Party committee.

*

Gulnara Mustafayeva, who finished secondary school this year in Krymsk, Krasnodar territory (her family moved to the Crimea and were registered), has not been admitted to the history faculty of Simferopol University after she was given a grade two for an essay (she received a grade five for history). The university refused point-blank to show her the marked essay. The director of the school where Gulnara was one of the best pupils wrote a letter to the university, but this did not help.

***

MUSTAFAYEVA, MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

Adzhimelek Mustafayeva (58) and her daughter Afife Mustafayeva (33), who live in Simferopol, were convicted at different times under Article 196 ( (Ukrainian Criminal Code: “violating residence regulations”) and sentenced to two years exile (CCEs 37, 38, 41).

They did not leave their house, the purchase of which had been ruled illegal by the civil court, and continued to try to obtain registration. In March 1977 they were both convicted for not submitting to the sentence of exile (Article 185, Ukrainian Criminal Code) and fined 150 roubles each. At the trial they started that they would pay the fine when they were registered and had received work.

*

On 13 October 1977 bailiffs appeared at their house accompanied by a local policeman and six other armed policemen.

Having presented two court orders, only according to the first of which property to the value of 300 roubles had previously been distrained, the bailiff and policemen began to appropriate things. At the same time a de facto search was organized: locks were broken, suitcases were shaken out. Both women, as well as the husband of Afife (he is registered and lives in another town and was in Simferopol on an official trip) began to show resistance to this lawlessness.

The policemen used force: they twisted their arms, pushed and beat the owners of the house, even the pregnant Afife. Witnesses were summoned only to sign the act of confiscation (inventory); the things were taken away without a copy of the inventory being left behind. (The Mustafayevas obtained this in the court only on 19 October 1977). After their complaint to the procurator, to which was attached a certificate confirming they had received ‘light bodily injuries’, they were summoned to the procurator’s office and interrogated as defendants in a case of “resisting the police”.

*

Both women set off for Moscow.

When Afife Mustafayeva complained that even with higher education she still could not find work in Simferopol (though specialists of her sort were needed by many enterprises), a woman official at the reception of the USSR Procurator’s Office told her:

“What’s the point of strutting around with your higher education if you can’t understand that it’s impossible for you to live in the Crimea?”

The official wouldn’t start discussing Afife’s objections to the 1967 Decree, saying she was more literate juridically than Afife.

*

On 31 October 1977 Adzhimelek Mustafayeva sent a statement to Brezhnev.

It described their ordeals over the past four years: trials, fines, summonses, and the imprisonment to which she had been subjected in 1975 (she was held in jail for 25 days before her trial under Article 196, CCE 38). The statement also quoted pronouncements by police officials. The head of the passport office, G.E. Kupchenko, told her: “You will never be registered here, you were deported from here in 1944.” District police inspector V.I. Yefimov declared: “I won’t allow a single Crimean Tatar to live in my district”. Deputy chief of the Simferopol City police M.V. Zayats: “You should be exiled again, like in 1944.”

The statement reads:

“We have been deprived of absolutely all our civil rights …

“Articles 34, 36, 40, 41, 42, 44, 53, 54, 57 and 64 of the new USSR Constitution are being violated . . . We earnestly entreat you to save us from the tyranny and violence of the executive agencies, and to register us, so that we can work and live normally, like all people.”

A copy of the declaration by Russian and Ukrainian neighbours of the Mustafayevas, addressed to the first secertary of the Crimea Regional Party committee V.S. Makarenko, was appended to the statement. The neighbours express their indignation at the action of 13 October 1977 and request that the Mustafayevas be registered.

*

On 4 November 1977 the Mustafayevas talked about their situation at a press-conference held in Moscow at the flat of Pyotr G. Grigorenko. A statement by the Helsinki Group on discrimination against Crimean Tatars (Document 28) was also made public at the press-conference, see below.

After the Mustafayevas returned to Simferopol, an MVD (or KGB) official called Yakovlev came to their house.

He asked why they had given an interview; who had given them Grigorenko’s address; and he wrote down the addresses of their relatives. Yakovlev admitted that at least the confiscation of their property according to the second court order was illegal: the bailiff should have just taken an inventory of it. On 30 November 1977 Adzhimelek Mustafayeva was summoned to the passport office of the City Department of Interfnal Affairs for ‘a chat’.

***

AMETOV, STATEMENT FOR THE PRESS

In October 1977 Enver Ametov wrote a “Statement for the Press” in which he described the situation of his family after they arrived in the Crimea in 1976.

The head of Belogorsk KGB, Ilinov, told him immediately that his family would be evicted. This was because Ametov “stirs people up”, maintains relations with Sakharov and Grigorenko, and has described the situation of Crimean Tatars to foreign correspondents. On the subject of his conviction under Article 196 to 2 years exile (CCE 43 & CCE 44) Ametov said:

“I repeatedly addressed the USSR Procurator’s Office with complaints against my illegal conviction.

“On the basis of my complaints the Regional Procurator established that the house bought by me in the village of Melikhovo had been demolished illegally, and that my family was illegally evicted. A declaration was also made by the Procurator about the punishment of the guilty parties. However, no one has been punished.

“I did not carry out the decision of the Belogorsk [district]court about the eviction, because: one, it is illegal; and, two, I have two young children – my son is three, my daughter is five months old. Out of moral considerations I cannot leave them.

“On 1 September 1977 a protocol against me for violating the residence regulations was drawn up by Kharchenko, the same person who participated in the eviction of my family.

“On 6 September I was summoned to the administrative commission.

On 26 September the same First Lieutenant Kharchenko warned me that a criminal case would be brought under Article 185 [not submitting to a sentence of exile], threatening me with exile for a period of two to five years. Besides criminal persecution, as a father of two children, I have not found work.

“This summer the collective-farm management and the village soviet tried to deprive my family of its last source of subsistence. The chairman of the collective farm, the chairman of the village soviet and the secretary of the Party committee stated that the garden adjoining my house would be ploughed up. This garden plot, attached to the house bought by me, turned out, after I moved in, to be ‘collective-farm land’.”

Ametov also touched on the general situation of Crimean Tatars in the Crimea. Citing facts about eviction and other forms of oppression, he reported:

“All complaints by Crimean Tatars against the actions of local agencies come back to the same local agencies.

“The repressive acts carried out by the local authorities against our nation take place under the patronage of the KGB. On 27 September [1977] Zhitov, an official of the Regional KGB administration, with an official of the district KGB, came to see Mukhsum Osmanov, a Group I invalid, who is blind and lives in Belogorsk. Zhitov called Mukhsum an extremist and stated: ‘If there is trouble from the Crimean Tatars during the 60th anniversary celebrations [of the October 1917 Revolution], then you and Bekir Osmanov will be held responsible; and we’ll imprison Enver Ametov and Eldar Shabanov as anti-sovietists.’ Bekir Osmanov lives in Simferopol district. He is a former partisan and was expelled from the Party for wanting to live in his national homeland.

“Our Crimean Tatar national movement for returning to our homeland is peaceful in character and based on the Constitution. We are not demanding the overthrow of the government or the Soviet system, we want one thing: to have equal rights, as proclaimed by the basic law of the Soviet Union, to live and work in our national homeland, to be able to study in our native tongue, and to enjoy our culture and art.”

***

PETITIONS

More than 90 Crimean Tatars signed an “Appeal to the Central Committee, the Supreme Soviet and the USSR Council of Ministers” on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution (there was a report on the collection of signatures for it in CCE 44).

In the appeal, as in many other documents of the Crimean Tatar movement of recent years (see for example CCE 31), the 1944 eviction and the subsequent actions of the authorities against Crimean Tatars are interpreted as a liquidation of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary conquests by the forces of imperialism and chauvinism, which have simply disguised themselves with the mask of a socialist State.

The power of the soviets could never under any conditions have organized a night robbery with the aim of grabbing territory from its ally, a small socialist nation, and then of turning this territory into an object to be given to and shared amongst peoples who are greater only in numbers.

The appeal describes the fatal state of national culture and the lack of any conditions for the national existence of the Crimean Tatars.

Referring to former mass petitions handed in to the Central Committee, the appeal demands an organized return to the Crimea, the restoration of the Crimea Autonomous Republic, the return of personal and national property, the criminal accountability of the “organizers, inspirers and executors of the counter-revolutionary action and its consequence — 33 years of injustice, repression and persecution in the Crimea and in the places of exile”, and the annulment of legislative acts which discriminate against Crimean Tatars, The appeal calls on the Party and State leadership to resolve the Crimean Tatar question “urgently, in a Leninist way”.

*

A document entitled “Appeal Statement” has been addressed to L.I. Brezhnev.

The basic content of the “Appeal Statement” is the demand that all legislative acts concerning Crimean Tatars promulgated between 1944 and 1978 be repealed. The decree of 5 September 1967 “On citizens of Tatar nationality living in the Crimea”, although it ‘rehabilitated’ the Crimean Tatars, did not liquidate discrimination. The authors of the statement direct attention to the fact that in this decree preceding decisions are revoked only “as regards the wholesale accusations”; in this way, the decree of 28.4.56, which abolished the regime of special settlement of the Crimean Tatars, but established that this “does not entail the return of their property confiscated during deportation” and that “they do not have the right to return to the places from which they were deported” remains in force to this day. The “Appeal Statement” notes that with regard to other deported peoples restrictions in their choice of place of residence were abolished by special decree, and that Crimean Tatars are now the only juridically unequal nation.

The collection of signatures under the “Appeal Statement” has been going on since March 1977, mainly in Uzbekistan. Copies of the ‘Statement’, each one signed by 15-20 people, were sent by post with the return address of one of those who had signed. As they did not receive replies, in August the Crimean Tatars sent their representatives to Moscow: E. Fazylov (Tashkent), K. Useinov (Samarkand) and D. Tokhtarov (Bekabad). On 11 August these representatives released “Information Sheet No. 1”, a report of their work, in which they also explain the meaning of the campaign being conducted:

“… the spontaneous departure of Crimean Tatars for the Crimea is not diminishing, but becoming more frequent from day to day. Already many Crimean Tatars have begun to understand that the main barrier preventing them from returning to the Crimea and re-establishing the national equality of their people is not ‘illegal actions’ by local agencies, but all the State decisions taken in relation to the Crimean Tatar nation between 1944 and 1976: with reference to which the representatives of authority in the Crimea have been acting.”

The representatives report that they visited the CPSU Central Committee and demanded a reply from Brezhnev or from an official whom Brezhnev personally commissioned to reply.

Central Committee staff who received them said that the Crimean Tatar question had been resolved by the decree of 5 September 1967 and only a small group of people was artificially stirring up the Tatar nation. The representatives replied that they had not been sent to hold a discussion but exclusively to receive a reply to the “Appeal Statement”.

By August more than 4,000 people had signed the “Appeal Statement”.

The representatives of the Crimean Tatars (in mid-August Party member E. Kalafatov joined their number) remained in Moscow and continued to insist on receiving a reply to the “Appeal Statement”, sending telegrams and statements to the Central Committee.

The texts both of the “Appeal Statement* itself and of the Information bulletin (three issues have already come out) are written in extremely loyal terms and contain expressions of devotion to the Party and government.

*

In September 1977 an “inter-regional meeting of representatives of action groups of the Crimean Tatar movement for restoring national equality” took place in Uzbekistan.

In the resolution adopted at this conference it is proposed to develop the movement on the basis of the idea of the “Appeal Statement”, which is in complete accord with the USSR Constitution and Party policy. The resolution was signed by 14 people, three of whom are members of the Communist Party. Amongst those who signed are Dzheppar Akimov (CCE 31) and Rollan Kadiyev (CCE 8 & CCE 22) who were both previously convicted for taking part in the national movement.

*

On 4 November 1977 the Moscow Helsinki Group published its Document No. 24: “Discrimination against the Crimean Tatars Continues” [note 2]. The document is signed by the following members of the group: Pyotr Grigorenko, Sophia Kalistratova, Malva Landa, Vladimir Slepak, Naum Meiman and Tatyana Osipova, and also by Alexander Lavut, who took part in compiling it.

Associating himself with the authors of the document, Andrei Sakharov stated:

“The solution of the problems posed in this document is absolutely imperative. The delay in solving them increases human tragedies, lawlessness and tyranny daily and without interruption and covers our country with shame.”

*

The document describes the scale and character of the losses inflicted on the Crimean Tatar nation as a result of its deportation.

The decree of 1976, it notes, “under the guise of fine words about withdrawing wholesale accusations” did not repeal the ban on returning to the Crimea and reinforced the dispersal of the nation. The Helsinki Group stresses that the current laws and practice regarding the Crimean Tatars contradict the prescriptions of the Final Act (Principle VII) of the Helsinki Accords and other international agreements.

The document describes the situation of Crimean Tatars who have returned to the Crimea – about two thousand families: especially those families who are unable to obtain registration, about six hundred families. Facts are cited concerning cruel and illegal actions by representatives of authority. The authors of the document express special anxiety for the fate of Enver Ametov, a long-standing activist of the national movement, who is being subjected to constant surveillance and threats on the part of the KGB.

• Appendix 1 to the document provides the texts of decrees concerning Crimean Tatars and other deported peoples. In particular it cites the secret decree of 3 November 1972 on the withdrawal of restrictions on the choice of a place of residence for Germans and other nations (CCE 34), which did not include the Crimean Tatars.
• Appendix 2 gives individual statements by Crimean Tatars.

*

In February 1977 Andrei Sakharov received a letter signed by 52 Crimean Tatars from Andizhan.

The authors of the letter accuse him (“with the help of individual Crimean Tatars who have broken their ties with their people, such people as Reshat and Mustafa Dzhemilev, Aishe Seitmuratova, Seityagya Bilyalov and others”) “of trying to do things that are not approved by the people”, and of circulating information received from these individuals with the aim of ‘harming the State’. Stating further that Crimean Tatars are filled with enthusiasm for work and have achieved great successes in social and economic life, the authors write:

“The time is not so far off when, in a normal atmosphere, we shall go to our sunny Crimea by the roads of international friendship, but there is a time for everything, …

“Citizen Sakharov . . . don’t interfere in our affairs, don’t harm our people, we shall find the road to the Crimea without you and your friends.”

A few of the 52 wrote to Sakharov, saying that their signatures had been obtained by deception: retired lawyer Samedinov who visited their homes showed them another letter. (Samedinov was the only Crimean Tatar in 1944-1946 who worked for the special commandant’s office, administering the punitive regime imposed on the deported nation.)

In June 1977 Sakharov received the following letter signed by 549 Crimean Tatars living in Uzbekistan:

“To Nobel Prize laureate, Academician A.D. Sakharov:

“We, the undersigned Crimean Tatars, are very grateful for your support for the aspirations, expectations and thoughts of the Crimean Tatar people of returning to their lawful homeland, the Crimea.

“We do not support the letter of the 52 Crimean Tatars from Andizhan who signed it in their naivety, thanks to a trick.

“We categorically reject this letter as unworthy, as not reflecting the opinion of the Crimean Tatar people.”

============================

NOTES

[1] “War veteran” refers to those who fought in the Patriotic War against Nazi Germany (1941-1944) and in some cases, perhaps, to soldiers from the earlier Finno-Russian campaign (1939-1940).

[2] For the full text in Russian, see Sbornik dokumentov Obshchestvennoi gruppy sodeistviya …, Khronika Press: New York, vol. 4, 1978 (pp. 12-26).

===================