MOSCOW
As reported in the previous issue (CCE 44.25), the case started against Malva Landa for the fire in her room was sent in February 1977 for further investigation.
On 21 April the pretrial investigation was completed. The trial started on 16 May 1977. On 17 May the trial was postponed, at the request of M. Landa, until 24 May. The concluding stage of the investigation and the trial will be described in the next issue (CCE 46.1).
*
A Month of “Prophylactic Chats” in Moscow
[Cf. CCE 32.14 (1974)]
On 5 April 1977 Alexander Podrabinek, sentenced the previous day to 15 days in jail, was taken to the Dzerzhinsky district soviet executive committee to receive a ‘warning’ (see “Arrests, Searches, Interrogations”, CCE 45.10).
*
On 8 April 1977 Yury Gastev (CCE 43) was summoned to a police station for a talk about finding work.
Gastev said that he was engaged in literary work (for the Large Soviet Encyclopaedia) and had already been looking for a permanent job for several months. On the same day Gastev was summoned to the Dzerzhinsky district soviet executive committee. Committee secretary E. S. Gladkova talked to him. Deputy Frolov and the head of the Office for Utilization of Living-Space were also present. Gladkova said:
“We have reliable information that you are carrying on hostile activities. We are not going to enter into discussions with you, but we warn you that if you do not put an end to it we will hand over all the materials to the procurator’s office.”
*
On 8 April 1977, immediately after a search (see “Arrests, Searches, Interrogations”), an employee of the Office for Utilization of Living-Space came to Tatyana Khodorovich and said that she must go immediately to the district soviet executive committee. She did not go. During April the committee sent her several further summonses.
*
On 28 April Vadim Borisov came under summons to the KGB reception room (he had not responded to previous invitations).
KGB officials said that he would have to find a job, not live by casual earnings, and offered to help him in this. Borisov refused their help: “It will be enough if you do not hinder me.” Borisov was assured that the KGB would give no instructions forbidding that he be given a job.
The conversation also touched on the article by Borisov which was included in the collection From Under the Rubble (CCE 34). One of the people talking to Borisov, who turned out to be his ‘colleague’ (like Borisov he had graduated from the history faculty of the university), complained that the article was written in too complicated a style.
*
On 29 April 1977 economist L.N. Khokhlushkin, who works in the Vakhrushin Theatrical Museum as a joiner and restorer, was invited to the Moskvoretsky district soviet executive committee — for a talk, as the secretary of the Party bureau told him, about some kind of work with old furniture.
However, when he came to the committee’s deputy-chairman Khokhlushkin heard that they wanted to talk with him about certain acts of his, and about statements signed by him. Khokhlushkin replied that such conversations required mutual trust, but this could not exist because of the deceit to which his interlocutor had resorted for the summons. A man present in the office (he presented himself as a secretary of the district Party committee) then outlined some sort of proposal to Khokhlushkin, which was distantly related to his present speciality.
After this the secretary said that he would like to understand Khokhlushkin’s views and asked him to explain why he had signed a letter in defence of Sergei Kovalyov (dated 30 December 1974, CCE 34). After a discussion about the letter they wanted to ‘caution’ Khokhlushkin, but he said that he would not accept a warning.
*
Towards the end of April 1977 three people came to Valentin Turchin’s home.
Only one of them introduced himself: policeman Prudnikov, a district officer from the neighbouring police district (in which the homes of Ginzburg and Orlov are situated). Prudnikov explained his visit by the fact that he had “seen Turchin at the home of Irina Anatolyevna and wanted to get to know him better”. (Irina Anatolyevna Valitova is the wife of Orlov).
Prudnikov expressed an interest in why Turchin, a Doctor of Science, had not worked since 1974. Turchin said that he had better inquire about that in the Science Department of the Moscow Party committee. Prudnikov’s companions did not take part in the conversation.
*
In April two KGB officials came to see Sergei Genkin at work (one of them, Bulat Bazerbayevich Karatayev, had met Genkin earlier, at a search in the flat of Yury Shikhanovich in 1974).
They talked about Genkin’s signatures on collective letters of protest and asked what his attitude was to the fact that these letters had reached the West. They reproached him with having ‘bad’ friends.
KGB officials talked to Genkin’s mother as well. They told her that he was behaving badly and had suspicious acquaintances.
*
In April the chief of the district KGB came several times to Ilya Burmistrovich when he was at work.
He asked how Burmistrovich was getting on, whether he was being offended at work, whether he needed help in any way. In 1971 Burmistrovich was released after serving a three-year term under Article 190-1 (RSFSR Criminal Code), imposed because he gave his acquaintances samizdat to read, CCE 8.
*
In April Irina Korsunskaya was called to the director of the institution in which she works. She was told that she must stop her correspondence with people abroad and with prisoners, and stop sending money to prisoners.
***
LENINGRAD
CCE 37 reported that in May 1975 a senior technical officer at the Mathematics and Mechanics Research Institute of Leningrad University, Sergei Levin, was declared by a qualifications commission to be “not suitable for the post that he occupies” since “by his attitude to the social activities carried on at the Faculty, he has a disturbing effect on the laboratory personnel” (see also CCE 43). However, after this proficiency check Levin remained in his post.
In mid-May 1977 a special proficiency check was set up for Levin.
There, as prescribed, the decision of the preceding commission was read out and Levin was told that, according to the findings of Leningrad University jurists, a decision formulated in this way could not serve as a basis for dismissal. The decision of the new commission, taken with one dissenting vote, differs from the previous decision only in the substitution of the word ‘productive’ for the word ‘social’, This decision was announced not 15-20 minutes after the meeting, as is usual, but several hours after.
*
In February 1977 Ilya Levin (CCEs 42, 44), who was in the Writers House cafeteria, left his place for a few minutes.
Returning, he sat down and soon experienced a burning sensation. The doctor who examined him stated that the burn was “very similar to that caused by mustard gas”.
*
RIGA
Aldis Almanis has been expelled from the Latvian State University when in his fourth year in the philosophy faculty.
In January 1977 he went to England with a student group. After the group’s return a student in the economics faculty, Lenberg, wrote a denunciation in which he said that Almanis had not opposed the English students in discussion with sufficient energy, and had also not wanted to visit Marx’s grave.
*
Several pupils of the 50th Secondary School, on 21 November 1976. the day of remembrance, lit candles on the grave of the first president of Latvia Janis Cakste (1859-1927).
For doing this Martin Krauklis, a pupil in the 10th class, was expelled from the school, Aiya Kalninya was expelled from the Komsomol, and four other pupils were reprimanded. The director of the school, Jundzis, secretary of the Party organization Kameneva, and teacher Deicmans also received reprimands.
*
MOSCOW
In May the director of Mathematical School no. 2, Aleksei Nikolaevich Rodionov, reprimanded mathematics teacher Valery Anatolyevich Senderov “for circulation of decadent literature”, a collection of the poetry of Nikolai Gumilyov, The Tent [note 1].
***
The Unofficial Song Club
On the morning of 26 April Sergei Belanovsky, who works in a research institute, was summoned to the deputy director for security and personnel. A. A. Polishchuk. The secretary of the Party committee, the head of the security department and the head of the section in which Belanovsky works, were also present in the office.
Belanovsky was asked about the Unofficial Song Club (CCE 41); they said that the institute management knew about his anti-social activities, that he was a ‘leader’ at the Club, and that “when they interrogated him, this conversation would be taken into account”. Head of the security department Timofeyev asked Belanovsky to give the surnames of his friends. Belanovsky refused.
At the end of the working day S. Belanovsky was again summoned to the same office. In the presence of Timofeyev and Z.A. Isandareva, the head of Belanovsky’s department, Polishchuk said that “they had received a fully official paper containing information about the antisocial activity of Belanovsky”. He asked what Belanovsky had spoken about at Firsanovka station (one of the club’s ‘Sundays’, CCE 41). Polishchuk refused to read the paper in full and to say where it came from. Belanovsky refused in his turn to give any explanations. Then they told him that he was placing himself outside society and that “apart from all the written laws there is one, the most important, which is nowhere written down — and society has the right to apply pressure to those who break the law.”
At the end of the conversation Polishchuk stated that there was an Article in the Code of Labour Laws under which the administration can sack an employee “for untrustworthiness”, and that the security pass which Belanovsky has “demands definite moral and political qualities, and therefore the administration is entitled to deprive him of the pass and dismiss him”. Then he added that this was “no mere threat, but an official warning”.
*
On 14-15 May 1977 the 20th rally of the Unofficial Song Club was held near Moscow, in the Pavlovskaya Sloboda district.
As in the previous three years, the rally took place under the supervision of the Moscow city Komsomol committee and the Moscow Trades Union Council. The rally was attended by several thousand people. Besides the central stage (where censorship operated), performances took place on several other platforms. The ‘Sunday’ group performed on one of them (CCEs 41-43). Censorship of the performances on the central stage was, on this occasion, moderate. Only Alexander Galich’s songs were subject to an outright ban.
Police and KGB officials (a minimum of about 20), were present at the rally.
West German television men Fritz PIeitgen and Jurgen Weber were detained by them about an hour after their arrival at the rally. Many participants in the rally expressed their indignation at this police action. One of them, who began to photograph the scene of the foreigners ‘abduction’, was forced to expose his film under threat of “going along for a ride”. Since the place where the rally took place was within the limits of the zone where foreigners are permitted, Fritz Pleitgen sent a protest to the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A few days later he received an official reply in which the police actions were described as incorrect.
*
On 22 May 1977 a ‘Sunday’ was held at Firsanovka station. In the programme were the songs of Pyotr Starchik. This time there were also foreign (French) guests. A policeman and vigilantes removed them: 55 km from Moscow, Firsanovka is outside the zone permitted to foreigners.
During the last year the number of people harassed in one way or another in connection with the ‘Sundays’ has reached at least 25.
KGB investigator Vitaly Ivanovich Mikayev is dealing with the ‘Sundays’ (it is possible that the surname has been distorted). His telephone number at work is 224-54-71.
***
From 17 to 20 April 1977 a ‘jubilee’ session (marking the fifth year) of the unofficial scientific seminar “Collective Phenomena in Physics” took place.
The majority of the seminar’s participants are Jewish refuseniks. Many of the session’s foreign participants were unable to attend. Ten French scholars, including Nobel prize-winner Kastler, were refused visas. (They wrote a protest to the USSR Academy of Sciences.) Nobel-prize winner G. Wald and another scholar, who arrived on tourist visas, were “thrown out” when they were in Leningrad. Nevertheless, 12 foreign scholars came to the seminar and gave papers.
The authorities also took measures against the attendance of Soviet participants from outside Moscow. Apart from Kislik (see “The Jewish Movement” CCE 45.16), who lives in Kiev, Gurfel was detained in Tallinn and Salansky in Vilnius. Tsinober managed to come from Riga.
While the seminar (which met in M. Azbel’s flat) was in progress, several cars with ‘observers’ stood around the house, but entry to the flat was not obstructed (compare CCE 32).
Twenty-five papers were read at the seminar, amongst them a paper by Yu. Golfand on Yu. Orlov’s work on wave logic. Andrei Sakharov took part in the first day of the seminar.
***
Professor Vinberg’s Thesis
About four years ago an Assistant Professor in the Department of Algebra at Moscow University, Ernest Borisovich Vinberg, defended his higher doctoral thesis.
The thesis was in the Higher Degrees Commission as formerly constituted for more than two years, and in the new Commission for a year. In 1977 the thesis was sent for a supplementary report to the Steklov Mathematical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. A few months before this, Vinberg’s work was sent to one of the leading mathematicians in the world, Frenchman Armand Borel [note 2].
The supplementary report procedure took place in April 1977. It began with the chairman asking ‘outsiders’, among them Professor V.I. Arnold and A. Fomenko to leave the hall. When the thesis was discussed one of the first to speak was Professor Yu.I. Manin. He read Borel’s testimonial, in which the thesis was described as an important contribution to mathematics.
Vinberg was asked why the thesis had been sent abroad for a testimonial. He replied that he had wanted to get an unprejudiced testimonial, and that all the Soviet specialists in this field were his personal friends. Academician L.S. Pontryagin, who spoke next, said that Vinberg’s appeal to Western opinion was very reminiscent of the actions of “dissidents not unknown to us”. After this, those who spoke talked not about the thesis but about Vinberg himself.
The result of the vote was one in favour, the rest against.
***
KRASNOYARSK
On the night of 15-16 April 1977 the slogan “All Power to the Soviets, Down with the Party!” was written on the bridge being built by the Krasnoyarsk Hotel.
On the night of 16 May the slogan “We will Arrive at Anti-sovietism. L.I. Brezhnev” was written in pink paint on the side of the Party Regional committee building that faces on to Lenin Street.
It is known that at different times in various parts of the city the slogans “Our Ideal is Lenin — We don’t Need any Others” and “Boycott the Elections” have appeared. Leaflets have been scattered in the north-west district of the city. Their content is not known. To all appearances, the people who wrote the slogans have not been detained. The security organs are drawing into the search communist pensioners and directors of enterprises, asking them to report any facts that might be related to the slogans and leaflets.
*
SOVIET ARMY
Anatoly Botsyan from Berdichev, in 1974, and Ivan Chorny from Chernovtsy, in 1975, each received three years in a labour camp for refusing to serve in the army.
In reality, when they were already in the army they followed the biblical precept “Do not swear!” and refused to take the oath. They spent their term of punishment in a camp near Ryazan (Stenkino settlement). When they had completed half their term they were sent ‘to chemistry’ (conditional early release with obligatory enlistment for labour).
*
ZHITOMIR REGION (Ukraine)
The community of Pentecostalists in the village of Zhitintsy (Lyubarsky district, Zhitomir Region) numbers 60 people.
On 26 September 1976 the village authorities visited a religious gathering of the community and fined them the sum of 500 roubles for “illegal assembly”.
*
KIEV
Before the Easter service on 9 April the Cathedral of St. Vladimir was surrounded by a cordon of police and vigilantes. “The principle is not to allow any young people to enter,” one of the policemen explained. Old women were allowed in without obstruction. Apart from this, people were allowed in with passes given out by the exarchate.
One of the policemen amused his comrades with foul language chanted in the manner of a church service. Another knocked down worker V. Nadyuk, who was trying to tell people standing near the cathedral about the Resurrection. One of the vigilantes struck a lad who was asking to be allowed into the cathedral such a blow that he lost consciousness, and first aid had to be called for.
In the cathedral, contrary to the official version of “Old-Lady Orthodoxy”, there were many young people. It is not known where the crowd of tipsy youths and loose girls, several of them wearing red armbands, appeared from. They behaved in a provocative fashion, pushing and jostling the crowd.
On 8 April, in an official cafeteria of the KGB, Easter cakes were sold. On 9 April, a Saturday, opposite the KGB building, stood a stall with Easter cakes. There was an enormous queue at the stall.
*
TAMAN (Krasnodar Region [Krai])
In March 1977 Seitkhalil Azizov (b. 1949) and Rustem Karashayev (b. 1954) were summoned to the procurator’s office over the collection of signatures to an appeal to the government by the Crimean Tatars in connection with the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution.
*
CRIMEA
CCE 41, CCE 42 & CCE 43 recounted the story of the family of Resmie Yunusova.
Until October 1976 she was living with a sick child in a tent near her ruined home. It has become known that from November a neighbour (a Russian woman) offered to let the family live in her home. When Yunusova received an assurance from the village soviet that her neighbour would not be penalized, she accepted the invitation. In March or February 1977 Yunusova’s family obtained registration.
*
LENINGRAD
In March 1977 criminal proceedings were instigated against Lev Alexandrovich Rudkevich (CCE 42).
He was accused of ‘embezzling’ money he had been given for a business trip, and an undertaking not to leave the city was taken from him. At the same time, he submitted documents for emigration from the USSR.
On 5 May 1977 Rudkevich was summoned to a police station and informed that the investigation was being prolonged until 25 May. The same day he was summoned to the Department of Visas & Registration (OVIR), where, in his turn, he was informed that he was permitted to leave the country, moreover he must leave before 25 May. However, as long as he is “under signature” not to leave town, he cannot travel to Moscow to put his documents in order.
The investigator gave him verbal permission to go to Moscow for two days, but refused to put the permission in writing. Rudkevich did not, on such conditions, go to Moscow.
*
MOSCOW
Alexander Zinoviev, recently dismissed from the Institute of Philosophy (USSR Academy of Sciences; CCE 43 & CCE 44), received an invitation from the university of Munich to give a course of lectures on logic. He applied to OVIR.
On 16 May 1977 he was received by deputy head of the Moscow City OVIR, Zotov. He told Zinoviev that in order to arrange a ‘production’ trip a reference was required from his place of work, but that Zinoviev could receive permission on a ‘guest’ invitation. Zinoviev replied that if he went on such an invitation (he has been invited to France for three months), then it was possible that after three months he would ask for political asylum. Zotov then agreed to accept the documents with the invitation from Munich and without a reference.
*
On 27 April 1977 member of the Moscow Helsinki Group Yury Mnyukh (CCE 44) was summoned to a police station for a talk about ‘parasitism’. Police officials agreed with Mnyukh that the commission on parasitism would scarcely help him, a Candidate of Science, obtain work.
On 11 May Mnyukh was told that he and his family had been given permission to emigrate to Israel.
Mnyukh demanded the return of the money (3,600 roubles) and the objects that had been taken from him at a search on 7 February (CCE 44). The money was given back to him — at the same time 80 roubles taken at the same search were returned to Malva Landa.
On 18 May, however, his driving licence was taken away. At the State Car Inspectorate the director, whom Mnyukh told about the strange zeal of ‘his men’, admitted: “Those aren’t our men”.
*
VLADIMIR
On 6 April 1977 Kronid Lyubarsky submitted a suit to the Frunze district people’s court of Vladimir city, requesting the recovery from Vladimir Prison of the sum of 122 roubles, 97 kopeks (the value of 75 books returned to him in a mutilated state on his release). Their bindings had been ripped off, they had been slashed from one side to the other with a knife, they had had their corners cut off, or some other damage had been done to the books …
A representative of the prison administration, Captain A.A. Doinikov admitted the damage and stated: “The prison is rich, it will pay, we have already prepared for your suit”. He also said that the damage had been inflicted by censor N. Mityukova.
On 15 April people’s judge S.V. Dmitrieva refused to accept the suit, ruling that “this dispute is not within the court’s jurisdiction; you should apply to the procurator’s office in its supervisory capacity”.
*
A Talk with a Procurator
CCE 41 (section “Arrests, Searches, Interrogations”) described the search to which, on the night of 24-25 May 1976, Ernst Orlovsky was subjected at Leningrad’s Pulkovo airport, and the confiscation from him of various documents.
On 28 May Orlovsky sent a complaint to the Leningrad transport procurator demanding that those guilty of illegal search and confiscation should be punished and criminal proceedings instigated against the man who led the search, who had shown an identity card in the name of police major I.A. Ivanov. Receiving no reply, on 6 June Orlovsky sent a statement to the USSR Procurator-General.
*
On 21 June 1977 a senior detective of the Leningrad KGB, Captain M.Ya. Mikhailov, invited Orlovsky to the KGB and returned him part of what had been confiscated, including an English detective story and a manuscript list of leading functionaries of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) and the CPSU. A summary of the UN Covenant on Civil & Political Rights compiled by Orlovsky was not returned to him.
On 30 June a senior assistant Leningrad procurator responsible for supervising KGB investigations, I. V. Katukova [note 3], invited Orlovsky to see her.
The Leningrad City Procurator had directed her, she said, to convey to Orlovsky the reply to his complaints. In the course of their conversation Katukova said:
“You see, several issues of the Chronicle of Current Events have been found in your possession. They contain distortions. Even about cases in Leningrad, which I know well. [Despite Orlovsky’s request, Katukova was unable to give a single example.]
“And the extracts from the Covenant that you have copied out are accompanied by exclamation marks and question marks, and by notes in the margin … so it is, of course, banned literature… You have compared our times with those of Stalin. But after all, in the list of leaders of the CPSU that was confiscated from you and then returned, it has been noted how many of these leaders perished in Stalin’s time. And now that doesn’t happen. As you read regularly the Chronicle of Current Events, which in this connection can be believed, you know that in Leningrad, say, there’s hardly even one trial a year, only rarely two …
“No, I don’t consider you a fool. I read your letter to Valery Chalidze. It is written with extreme restraint. Only an intelligent man could write like that. There is nothing anti-Soviet in it.”
[Orlovsky] “So why do they not return it to me?”
“Well, nonetheless it’s not got a good flavour…
“… Under no circumstances will you receive a written reply. The law prescribes the obligation to reply to a complaint, but a reply can also be verbal … We are not, of course, going to start criminal proceedings as you ask. And I am not going to issue any resolution about a refusal to instigate criminal proceedings …”
Nonetheless, on the same day Katukova sent Orlovsky a written reply in which she declared that everything that had taken place on 24-5 May 1976 had been legal.
*
In January-March 1977 the above-mentioned KGB Captain Mikhailov and his immediate superior Captain A. Ya. Chukhonin came five times to see Orlovsky at work and talked to him for several hours. In the course of five long conversations “about everything under the sun” they also talked to Orlovsky about the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and handed Orlovsky a commentary on the first 14 Articles in it, which, according to them, had been compiled by a prominent specialist on international law.
====================================
NOTES
[1] See documents on the episode involving Senderov in CCE 47.
[2] Born 1923 in Switzerland, Borel had gained a Ph.D. from Paris, and since 1957 was teaching at Princeton University in the USA.
[3] Katukova was prosecutor in many Leningrad trials involving those charged under Article 70.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 