SEVENTEEN ITEMS
K0REKHOV
[1]
NIZHNY TAGIL (Urals). In May this year Sergei Korekhov (CCE 41.6) was arrested here. He is 21 years old.
In 1973 he was sentenced to three years in strict-regime camps for producing leaflets, the charges coming under Article 70 (RSFSR Criminal Code). He served his term in Perm Camp 36.
This time, too, Korekhov was charged with producing leaflets. He typed them on a stolen typewriter and pasted them up around town. The leaflets contained protests against the arrest of Alexander Ginzburg and the position of political prisoners in the Soviet Union, and appeals of a generally democratic nature.
This summer former prisoners in the Perm camps — Georgy Davidenko (CCE 33.6-2 [8], CCE 41.6), Victor Pestov [1] and Vladislav Uzlov (CCE 33.6-3, CCE 45.12 [3]) — were interrogated in the Urals in connection with Korekhov’s case. In connection with the same case, the former political prisoner Sergei Ponomaryov [2], his wife E. Ponomaryova and Svetlana Pavlenkova (CCE 42.4-4) were interrogated in August in Gorky.
In September Korekhov’s trial took place in Nizhny Tagil. He was sentenced to six years in strict-regime camps.
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[2]
DUSHANBE (Tajik SSR). Four months after the appeal in the case of Amner Zavurov (CCE 44.11) his father was informed that the sentence would remain in force.
There has been no answer to the defence counsel’s supervisory appeal for more than five months.
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[3]
LATVIA. The artist Jurgis Skulme (b. 1928) has been sentenced according to Article 183-1 (Latvian SSR Criminal Code = Article 190-1, RSFSR Code) to 2 ½ years deprivation of liberty. The sentence is suspended but subjects him to forced labour. His “knowingly false fabrications” consisted of his personal letters to people abroad, in which he “libelled the policies of the Party and the leadership of the Artists’ Union”).
Skulme was sent to work on a building site.
*
[4]
MOSCOW. At the end of October 1977 Tatyana Semyonovna OSIPOVA (123056 Moscow, 43, 2nd Brest Street, flat 90) and Victor Alexandrovich NEKIPELOV (Kameshkovo, Vladimir Region) joined the Moscow Helsinki Group.
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KIEV (5-7)
[5]
On 2 October Pyotr Vins, a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, was detained in the street and taken to KGB headquarters in Kiev.
There Major Izergin told him that if he did not put an end to his activities, a criminal charge would be made against him. After one and a half hours of discussion Izergin handed Vins a summons to appear on 10 October when he would have to give an answer: Did he intend to participate in anti-Soviet activities in future, or not? Izergin threatened that if he did not turn up, he would be brought by force and they would have a talk in the presence of the procurator, after his mother had been summoned.
On the appointed day Pyotr Vins did not go to KGB headquarters.
*
[6]
On 2 October Oksana Yakovlevna MESHKO was visited by the American lawyer Burton Hall.
He told Meshko that at the request of Maiya Grudko, a cousin of her son Alexander Sergienko (she is resident in the USA), he had taken on her son’s defence. During Hall’s talk with O. Meshko a policeman came into the house, explaining that he was checking up on observance of the residence regulations. After inspecting Hall’s documents, he said that foreigners were not allowed to be there and demanded that Hall should leave at once, which he did.
Two days earlier Hall was detained for 12 hours at the customs in Kiev. A draft of his statement in defence of Sergienko was confiscated, together with a letter by Leonid Plyushch and a statement by the well-known American lawyer Ramsey Clark (CCE 46.4) in defence of Rudenko and Tykhy.
*
[7]
During the ‘Constitution session’ of the USSR Supreme Soviet a night watch was set up in the institutes of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences.
On the night of 6-7 October about three thousand “public-spirited people” were on guard in the streets of the town. They had been warned that there were reports that people would be pasting up leaflets and writing posters.
***
ODESSA (8-10)
[8]
GOLUMBIEBSKAYA
On 29 June the Odessa Regional Court issued a special order concerning the secondary-school teacher A.V. Golumbievskaya (CCE 46.3), at the same time that it passed sentence in the case of Barladeanu.
Golumbievskaya appealed against the special order. It had established no facts about her ‘illegal activities’ or ‘incorrect behaviour’, she said, which (according to the Court order) had assisted ‘the criminal activities of Barladanu”. Neither was there any proof of talks “of the above-mentioned nature”, which had allegedly taken place between Barladyanu and Golumbievskaya, as none of the people close to them who could have heard such talks had given such evidence in court or had even been allowed into the courtroom.
On 25 August the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR repealed the decision of the Regional Court to send the special order to secondary school 130 and to the District Education Department “for their reactions”, and decided to remit the case for further investigation with a view to instituting criminal proceedings against A. V. Golumbievskaya.
On 30 August the KGB ‘warned’ Golumbievskaya in accordance with the Decree of 25 December 1972. Golumbievskaya refused to sign, stating that she did not consider her activities illegal and that she had a right to her own views and beliefs and a right to express them. She also stated that she would continue to sign declarations on behalf of people who needed such support.
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[9]
In August employees at the workshops where Leonid Sery (CCE 42.3) works were summoned for ‘chats’ and asked to sign statements that Sery had spread “slanderous fabrications defaming the Soviet State . . .” In Sery’s reference, which the workshop administration gave to the KGB, it was stated: “He ignores in every way the political measures carried out in our country, expressing his dissatisfaction with the existing socialist system and order, and demanding to emigrate to the USA , France or Canada.
On 9 August the medical histories of Sery’s children were confiscated from a children’s polyclinic, and L. Sery’s own medical history was confiscated from the district polyclinic.
On 12 September Valentina Seraya (CCE 42.3, CCE 45.6) was taken off a bus going into Kiev.
On 3 November KGB Major Shiganovsky ‘warned’ Sery in accordance with the Decree of 25 December 1972. He also called Golumbievskaya, Danielyan, Igrunov and Tymchuk “anti-Soviet characters”.
Sery refused to sign a record of the warning.
*
[10]
IGRUNOV
On 18 October 1977 two men in civilian clothing came up to Vyacheslav Igrunov (CCE 40.5) in the train from Kiev to Odessa and asked him to show them his documents.
What reason did they give? Somebody resembling him had stolen a suitcase. At Igrunov’s request one of the men showed an identity card attesting that he was V.P. Khveshchenko, a police captain. The other refused, stating that Khveshchenko’s card was enough. However, it was this anonymous ‘other man’ who took charge of ensuing events (Khveshchenko later said of him that he worked for “another organization”).
Vyacheslav Igrunov (b. 1948)
Igrunov’s belongings were searched, without any witnesses. After discovering a typewritten letter, the searchers took Igrunov off the train at the Fastov rail station. There, in the presence of witnesses, his belongings were searched once more. They were going to proceed to a body search, but later agreed on a ‘compromise’. There was no body search and some confiscated papers were returned to Igrunov: for his part, he did not demand a record of the search.
Igrunov wrote an ‘explanatory note’, in which he stated that, as a result of a search carried out without a warrant, certain papers had been confiscated from him; the address of Pyotr Vins and a letter from Natalya Gorbanevskaya. After this Igrunov was released.
*
On 28 October an ambulance drove up to Igrunov’s home, with a policeman and a nurse from a psychiatric clinic inside. The nurse showed an order to hospitalize Igrunov “because of his worsening state of health”. Igrunov’s relatives protested sharply, but the ambulance drove away only after Igrunov’s mother had signed an undertaking that on 31 October they would come to the clinic together.
On 31 October Doctor Timoshkina at the clinic told Igrunov’s mother that he must be taken to hospital, regardless of his state of health, because he had been “released too early from the hospital” (from compulsory treatment, Chronicle). When his mother would not agree, Timoshkina said that Igrunov would be hospitalized forcibly, without her consent.
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Igrunov’s mother, Apollonia Polyanskaya, wrote to the head doctor at the clinic, saying that she was herself a doctor and psycho-neurologist and thus could judge her son’s state of health; that there was no medical foundation for his hospitalization at present; and that therefore his forcible hospitalization would be contrary to legal and medical norms. She declared that the time had come to re-examine the question of her son’s alleged ‘illness’.
The head doctor, after inviting Igrunov and his mother to meet him, apologized for what had happened and promised that it would not be repeated and that the clinic would try to get Igrunov taken off the register of psychiatric patients. Meanwhile the head doctor asked Igrunov to come to the clinic twice a month. Igrunov agreed, as he had done when released from the psychiatric hospital.
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[11]
OREKHOVO-ZUYEVO (Moscow Region). On 14 October a local KGB official, V.I. Chechenev, standing at the entrance of a factory, tried to hand a KGB summons to engineer Vladimir Tyulkov (CCE 46.6 [7]). The latter categorically refused to accept the summons, basing his refusal on its illegality.
On 21 October 1977 Tyulkov was summoned to the town procurator’s office, where in the presence of deputy procurator Zadorozhny, the same Chechenev read out to him an official warning in accordance with the Decree of 25 December 1972. Tyulkov refused to counter-sign a record of the warning and declared the proceedings unlawful.
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[12]
In mid-July the Kharkov newspaper Red Banner published “A Life of Refusal”, an article by N. Solovyov. It mentions Vladimir Albrekht, the acting secretary of the Soviet group of Amnesty International and, in particular, stated that he was schizophrenic.
At the beginning of August Albrekht [3] sent a letter of protest to the paper’s editor:
“… I am not on the list of patients at the district psychiatric clinic, I have never suffered from any mental disorder in the past, but even if this had not been so, any spreading of rumours in the press about a man’s mental illness should not be regarded as normal . . . “
He asked the editors to inform him for what reason this had been done. No reply followed. In early September Albrekht appealed to the Kharkov Regional Procurator’s Office, asking that the editors be told it was their duty to answer letters.
*
[13]
Lev Konin from Leningrad (CCE 45.14, CCE 46.13) has received a summons from a psychiatric clinic where he is on the list of patients.
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[14]
In August 1977 Avtandil Papiashvili, a psychiatrist from Georgia, did not return from abroad [4].
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[15]
On 25 July Judge V. A. Korchanin of the Frunze district people’s court in the city of Vladimir refused to hear a claim by Yevgeny Pashnin (CCE 43.3), who is serving a term of exile in Vorkuta, against the Vladimir Prison administration for damaging his books while examining them.
His reason for refusing was that the matter was “not under the jurisdiction of the judicial organs”; compare this with the claims made by Suslensky and Lyubarsky (CCE 46.11).
*
[16]
In September-October 1977 officials of Comecon and of various Soviet ministries (Foreign Affairs, Communications, and Foreign Trade) read a secret letter from the Central Committee, which spoke of the necessity of uncovering secret dissidents and Zionists.
*
[17]
Academician Andrei Sakharov and Natalya Shtiglits, wife of A. Shcharansky, have been awarded the 1977 prize of the “International Committee for Combatting Slander” [5].
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NOTES
- On Pestov, see CCE 33.6-3 [11], CCE 41.5 [8], CCE 45.12 and CCE 50.3.
↩︎ - On Ponomaryov, see CCE 13.3, CCE 15.4 [4], CCE 32.12 and CCE 47.3-1.
↩︎ - On Albrekht, see CCE 30.14 [7], CCE 36.2, CCE 44.16 and Name Index.
↩︎ - Papiashvili gave a press conference in London, see British and world press, 1 September 1977.
↩︎ - A reference, perhaps, to the Anti-Defamation League (formerly B’nai Brith)? [email enquiry, 12 February 2024].
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A Chronicle of Current Events 