The Moscow Helsinki Group has made public Document 20, “On the Violation of the Right of Citizens to Emigrate,” [1] signed by Malva Landa, Yelena Bonner, Naum Meiman and Vladimir Slepak.
After a description of the general situation, it describes specific cases of the violation of the right to leave.
*
12 ENTRIES
[1]
In a letter of 18 February 1977 to the Helsinki Group Yevhen Gritsyak (CCE 43.13 [1]), who is trying to emigrate, writes that on 1 January he was deprived of work.
On 10 February V. Maleiky, secretary of the collective farm Party committee, announced at a committee meeting that Gritsyak (Ukr. Hritsyak) and Abram Shifrin, who had sent him a formal invitation from Israel, had during the period when they were both in a camp together killed a guard. “This absurd announcement,” writes Gritsyak, “puts me on my guard, and I take it as a move to prepare public opinion for my arrest”.
*
[2]
Irina MacLellan (CCE 41.14 [10]) is still unable to obtain permission to leave for the USA to join her husband. In a letter of 31 December 1976 to President Carter she writes:
“For the last 18 months the authorities — in the shape of OVIR [Visa & Registration Department]— have refused altogether to give any kind of explanation.
“And now on 29 December 1976 Comrade Obidin [head of the All-Union OVIR] has announced to me that I must not go to OVIR or bring applications for review during 1977, since for the whole of the coming year a negative decision had been taken …
“My husband and I have not seen each other for two-and-a-half years. He has repeatedly been refused an entry visa for the USSR … The Soviet authorities do not hand over the medicines which my husband has sent from the USA … From time to time, I am subjected to harassment on the city streets… I ask you to help in reuniting my family, and in giving people the right to lead a normal life.”
*
[3]
Marija Jurgutiene (Vilnius), who is trying to obtain permission to join her husband in the USA (CCE 44.24). came to Moscow in May to continue her efforts. At OVIR she was told: ‘Your husband broke up the family himself — he is a non-returner”. CPSU Central Committee official Albert Ivanov (CCE 40.12) spoke briefly to Jurgutiene by telephone, but refused to see her personally.
*
[4]
Moscow pensioners Leonid Ignatievich Khmelevsky and his wife are trying for the third year to obtain permission to join their son in Belgium. He is a ’non-returner’. At the reception of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) Khmelevsky was told:
“If people like you are allowed to leave, then no one at all would come back from trips abroad.”
*
[5]
Vadim Grigorevich BARANOV, a Moscow bus driver, is trying to obtain permission to emigrate from the USSR. On 28 February 1977 he was summoned to the reception at the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD).
An MVD colonel showed him the US State Department’s statement on Sakharov and an article about him in the Soviet press and called him a ‘renegade’. Defending his right to emigrate, Baranov referred to Article 12 of the UN Covenant on Civil & Political Rights. However, point three of this Article was shown to him, which provides for the limitation of the said right out of considerations of State Security, social order or morality.
Nonetheless, as the colonel told him, Baranov would be permitted to leave for any country if he received a formal invitation from it.
*
[6]
V.V. Ilyakov (b. 1941), a resident of Kiev, has for a long time been trying to obtain the right to emigrate.
In 1959 Ilyakov was arrested, but released without being tried. In 1961 he was again arrested, and this time sentenced to seven years under Articles 70 & 72 (RSFSR Criminal Code). In 1971 he joined the editorial board of the journal Veche. In 1973 he was put into a psychiatric hospital.
In a letter to the Ukrainian Helsinki Group Ilyakov tells of continual threats from KGB officials and the police.
*
[7]
Inhabitant of Kiev E.A. Ryabov has for three years been trying to obtain permission to emigrate with his family.
In August 1976 his wife was allowed to join her sister in Australia. Now Ryabov is demanding permission to join his wife. Appealing to the Ukrainian Helsinki Group Ryabov writes that he has been brought to his decision to emigrate by continual persecution. Latterly he has also been experiencing pressure over his intention to emigrate. On 1 March 1977 he was forced to leave his job “of his own volition”.
*
8. Persecution of Soviet Germans
The persecution of Germans who during their struggle to emigrate have handed in their Soviet ID documents (passports) (CCE 41.10, ?? //CCE 42.3 [10]) continues.
*
In the town of Issyk (Alma-Ata Region, Kazakhstan) Yakov Peters and Kornei Shults have been arrested for “violation of the passport rules”.
On 6 January 1977 Helmut Martens, Albert Gerleman, Ivan Teirer and Valentin Klink, who has already spent two years in a camp (CCE 34.10) and is the brother of Victor Klink (CCE 34.10, CCE 41.10, CCE 44.24), were arrested in the same town.
All four of them declared a hunger-strike. After 30-40 days of the hunger-strike the wives of Martens, Gerleman and Valentin Klink were allowed a visit. The deputy head of the prison told Teirer’s wife: “Take your passport back and you’ll be allowed a visit.” (The others wives have also handed in their passports.)
There is news that Teirer has been put in a psychiatric hospital [2]. Martens, Gerleman and Valentin Klink have each been given a year in camp for “violation of the passport rules”. [Correction in CCE 46.9: Gerleman received a six-month sentence.]
*
On 10 March 1977, 28 Germans from Kazakhstan and Kirgizia went to the reception of the CPSU Central Committee in Moscow.
From here they were taken to a police station, where they were searched and subjected to insults and threats. Next day the police took the Germans to the railway station and put them on a train. They were accompanied by relays of policemen to the end of the journey.
*
Germans living in Kirgizia have sent an Open Letter to US Senator Henry Jackson.
Describing the assimilation they are threatened with, the oppressed status of Germans in the USSR, and the obstacles put in the way of those wishing to emigrate, they ask for help in emigrating to West Germany.
The authors of the letter oppose their own data to the official statistics given in Pravda on 20 February 1976. In the newspaper it was stated that in 1970-1975, of the total number of persons submitting applications for emigration, permission was given to 98.4 per cent. In 1973-76 in three villages of the Chuisky district (Kirgiz SSR), they say, 13 of 205 families trying to obtain permission to emigrate received permission.
On 28 August 1976 the Germans of Kirgizia who wish to emigrate to West Germany gathered in the capital Frunze in front of the Kirgiz SSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) building, but were driven away.
Roman Schumacher from the town of Tokmak was taken to a police station and beaten up. A short time later a building slab fell on him at the enterprise where he works. After the hospital he was taken to had been visited by officials, the attitude of the medical personnel towards him deteriorated sharply, Schumacher survived, but has remained a cripple.
The letter says that Genrikh Reimer (CCE 44.24) was badly beaten up by investigators.
Copies of the letter were sent to a number of State and public figures of the world and to Vladimir Bukovsky.
*
The letter was signed by 1,487 people representing 681 families (3,711 people).
93 per cent of these families have been trying to emigrate for more than three years, seven per cent for more than 10 years; half the people who signed have received a formal invitation from their immediate relatives (parents, brothers, sisters or children).
On 26 March the Moscow Helsinki Group made public Document No. 22, “On the Problem of the Emigration of Germans from the USSR to the Federal Republic of Germany”. It says in particular that at the present time in the Kirgiz SSR Visa & Registration Department (OVIR) alone there are about 10,000 ungranted applications by Germans for emigration from the USSR.
In April Erich Putnins (CCE 44.24) and Klaipeda resident Vale Belapetraviciene, whose father lives in West Germany, sent a request to the West Get man government to help Voldemar Suchkov (CCE 44.24).
*
9. Pentecostalists and Baptists
After the submission to the Supreme Soviet Presidium on 21 February 1977 of an application for emigration signed by 525 Pentecostalists and Baptists (in CCE 44 there is an inaccuracy here), the signatories have started to be summoned for interrogation and threatened that their children will be taken from them, or that they will be prosecuted.
*
On 21 March a similar application was sent to the Presidium from 484 Pentecostalists in Nakhodka (Soviet Far East).
*
On 23 March senior bishop of the Pentecostalists, Nikolai Goretoi, made a statement about this to the press:
“… In the name of the Pentecostalists and Baptists who wish to emigrate from the USSR I declare that we are free people, not captives and slaves. We appeal to President Carter as to a brother in Christ to help believers exercise the right to emigrate on the basis of the Covenants on rights, which have also been signed by the Soviet government, and of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“We address the same request to all international bodies concerned with human rights and also to the UN Commission on Human Rights.
“We are leaving a country where all rights and freedoms exist only on paper. We do not wish our children to suffer in the same way as their fathers and mothers have suffered and, in many cases, died.”
*
A “Statement to the Press and Radio from Pentecostalists and Baptists”, issued in May 1977, says that the number of Pentecostalists and Baptists who have submitted applications to the USSR Supreme Soviet requesting permission to emigrate is about 1,700.
“We ask to be allowed out without formal invitations on the basis of simple but clear international laws.” The statement was signed by Bishops N. Goretoi, I. Ponomaryov, P, Melnichuk and V. Bilyk, Deacons N. Bobarykin, V. Stepanov, S. Babichenko and A. Kovalenko, and Precentor V. Bibikov.
*
Pentecostalists from the central Siberian communities of Chernogorsk (Krasnoyarsk Region [Krai]) and Myski (Kemerovo Region) have sent a request to the UN Committee on Human Rights for help in emigrating:
“Religion in the USSR is held in derision. The Soviet government has incited the common people against religion. It is not regarded any better by eminent people (the intelligentsia, the ruling caste, scholars).”
Letters appended to the appeal describe how the leader of the Chemogorsk community Roman Roda is mocked by workers at his work-place; how P.S. Smykhalov and A.P. Makarenko, who renounced their Soviet citizenship, are being tried for “violation of the passport regime”; how P.S. Smykhalov, a miner who has worked underground for 19 years, his wife who worked for 15 years, of which eight underground, and A.P. Makarenko, who worked 22 years, of which 13 underground, are not being paid their pension (evidently because they have no ‘passports’ [Soviet ID documents], Chronicle); how the leader of the Myski community Petunin is constantly being fined; how the authorities in the town of Myski encourage attacks by hooligans on prayer meetings; and how the children of Pentecostalists are mocked in school.
*
The Kubai and Krivitsky families (Otrada-Kamenka village, Kherson Region, south Ukraine) have appealed to President Carter to help them to emigrate.
“… to any capitalist country where it is possible freely to believe in and serve God, which possibility does not exist in the Soviet Union, since believers who honestly wish to observe the Word of God are persecuted and repressed by every means …”
*
VLADIMIR SKLYARENKO
In January 1974 Baptist Vladimir Mikhailovich SKLYARENKO (b. 1923; address: Krasnodar Region, Maikop, Krasnooktyabrsky, 13 Lenin Street) began to seek permission for himself and his family to emigrate from the USSR.
He sent many statements to the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, to L.I. Brezhnev, the 25th Congress of the CPSU, the World Council of Churches, the US Embassy, US Presidents Ford and Carter, Senator Jackson, the US Congress, the UN Committee on Human Rights, and to fellow-believers abroad. In one of them he writes:
“We are people who deeply believe in God and do not wish to live in an atheistic country which is building communism, building a godless society. Its ideology is alien to us. The laws on religion contradict God’s Law, contradict our convictions and our conscience.
“You communists are striving to live according to the precepts of Lenin. We Christians, according to the precepts of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
“Living in the USSR, we are becoming involuntary violators of the legislation on religion and for its violation in the Soviet Union we are persecuted …
“Therefore, there is only one way out for us — to leave the USSR for a country whose ideology does not contradict our convictions, our conscience and God’s Law…
“We do not understand why you do not want to let us go abroad; after all we, believing Baptists, are your ideological enemies.”
*
From the outset, 29 January 1974, Sklyarenko and his family renounced Soviet citizenship.
On 9 March 1975, with the seventh application, he sent off his documents (passport, birth certificate, Sklyarenko’s own pension book, etc.).
In OVIR a formal invitation was demanded from them, but their letters to people abroad asking for an invitation did not reach their destination. Lieutenant-Colonel Beltyukov told them in the Krasnodar OVIR: “We’ve got all your letters, we won’t allow one of your letters abroad. If you want to, then go on trying to get an invitation.” On 6 September 1974 Lieutenant-Colonel Makarkin from the Krasnodar UVD said:
“You’ve been refused permission to emigrate. Neither the UN nor your brothers in Christ will help you. You will never go anywhere. We raised you, we fed you — we’ll put you in a cage and re-educate you.”
On 12 April 1977, when Sklyarenko arrived in Moscow, he was detained as he left the train and taken to a police station; there people in civilian clothing took away all the documents he had brought with him to give to the Helsinki Group.
Of Sklyarenko’s five daughters, three were not able to stand the pressure and have renounced their intention to emigrate. Sklyarenko asks that he, his wife Nadezhda Filipovna (b. 1920), and his daughters Anna (b. 1952) and Vera (b. 1962) should be sent a formal invitation.
*
[10]
Women Baptists from Kiev, Nadezhda Vasilyevna LEBEDEVA, mother of four children, and Yevgenia Sofronovna FEDORCHAK, mother of five, want to emigrate to the USA in order to bring up their children in their faith, unhindered.
They both wrote appeals to President Carter (Lebedeva on 12 February, Fedorchak on 11 March 1977) and sent copies to the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. They refer to the Covenants on Human Rights and the Helsinki Agreement.
*
[11]
Valery Graur (CCE 40.9-2), who was released in spring 1976 from the Mordovian camps, emigrated in spring 1977 to Rumania, where his parents live.
*
[12]
On 3 May Kestutis Jokubinas from Vilnius left at last to join his brother in Canada (//CCE 42, CCE 44.22). For the last few months, a Canadian minister had been making representations about his emigration.
==========================================
NOTES
- See full text in Reports of Helsinki Accord Monitors, note 2, Vol. 2 (pp 42-45). Documents 20-25 were not mentioned in the Chronicle.
↩︎ - Ivan Teirer was subsequently given one year in the camps (CCE 48.17-1).
↩︎
==============================
A Chronicle of Current Events 