- 19-1. About Ginzburg, Orlov, Shcharansky; Christian Committee (18 items)
- 19-2. Georgia, Press, Roy Medvedev, Helsinki Groups (15 items)
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18 ITEMS
ABOUT GINZBURG, ORLOV & SHCHARANSKY (1-8, 10)
[1]
Vladimir Shelkov
“A Request to the President of the USA, Jimmy Carter” (23 Feb 1977)
Chairman of the All-Union Church of True and Free Seventh Day Adventists Vladimir Shelkov asks President Carter:
“… to raise your authoritative voice in defence of A. I. Ginzburg, Yu. F. Orlov, A. D. Sakharov and others — these who are condemned to death, selfless, self-denying, disinterested people, these truly great people, people of genius — determined fighters for human rights and the freedom of all people …”
The letter has been published in printed form (6 pp.).
*
[2]
Nikolai Goretoi & Boris Perchatkin
“An Appeal to the World’s Christians” (16 March 1977) [1]
“’Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friend’: Alexander Ginzburg, Yury Orlov and Anatoly Shcharansky have fulfilled this precept of Christ to the end …
“In the 1960s there were hundreds of trials of our brother Pentecostalists in the Soviet Union. We were sent to labour camps, to psychiatric hospitals and into exile, our children were taken away from us …
“When in 1975 we refused to register our communities officially… despite pressure from the authorities and the direct threat of sending us to camps, these threats would most probably have been carried out if we had not appealed for help to the Moscow [Helsinki] Group for the Observance of the Helsinki Agreements. And when this group, in particular Yu. Orlov, A. Ginzburg and A. Shcharansky, raised their noble voices in our defence, the local authorities drew back from us. If now we do not raise our voice in their defence, then by this we will commit a crime before God and before our conscience …
“On 27 March 1977 thousands of our brothers and sisters in the USSR… will be fasting, and will bow their heads in prayer for Yury Orlov, Alexander Ginzburg and Anatoly Shcharansky.”
This appeal, by senior bishop of the Pentecostalists Nikolai Goretoi and Boris Perchatkin, a member of the All-Union Council of Pentecostalists, was supported by 500 of their fellow-believers.
*
[4]
G. Rozenshtein
“To Believers” (16 March 1977)
“The cause that until yesterday Anatoly Shcharansky bravely and unstintingly engaged in was the cause of love for one’s neighbour …
“Today, Anatoly Shcharansky, Alexander Ginzburg and Yury Orlov need our help. Our active love. Our prayers …”
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[5]
“Appeal to the Workers of the Renault Factories in France”
(84 signatures)
“… Recently in our country arrests of members of Groups to Assist the Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements in the USSR were carried out … We call on you not to rely exclusively on the Soviet or Western press in forming your opinion on this matter, but to set up an authoritative workers’ committee which could:
1. Study all the necessary information on the work of the groups …
2. Study the materials connected with the arrests … of members of the groups.
3. Send representatives to the Soviet Union so that they could attend the trial (or trials) of members of the Helsinki Groups”.
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[6]
Malva Landa, Vladimir Slepak, Yury Mnyukh
“Fresh Arrests of Members of the [Helsinki] Groups to Assist the Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements in the USSR. Insinuated Espionage Charges” (1 May 1977)
Having described the persecution of the Helsinki Groups (CCE No. 44, this issue CCE 45.18 [19]), members of the Moscow Group Landa, Slepak and Mnyukh write:
“During the last months Soviet propaganda agencies have been carrying on a smear campaign against the participants in the struggle for human rights in the USSR in our country and abroad — in lectures and talks, in publications in the Soviet press and in newspapers published in the USSR for emigrants, in TASS reports sent to the West …
“Insinuated charges put out by Soviet mass information agencies relate, in particular, to Article 64 (RSFSR Criminal Code: ‘Betrayal of the Motherland’), which provides for deprivation of freedom for a period of up to 15 years and even execution by firing squad …
“Espionage, foreign currency operations, the possession of firearms, and so on and so forth, and also slander, and also immoral behaviour, base instincts and unworthy motives. With the help of this arsenal the protectors of the Soviet State and social order are trying to discredit the information that has been and is being given on the violations and non-observance of human rights in the USSR.
“Using insinuated charges and terror, they intend to root out the very idea of human rights in our country, and those who maintain it.”
*
[7]
“To the Chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet” [the KGB]
30 March 1977, 34 signatures [2]
“The recent arrests of well-known activists of the movement for the rule of law in our country, which have been carried out by the KGB, have once more attracted the concentrated attention of the Soviet and world public to the activity of this organization …
“Although the Committee for State Security (KGB) in its present form was set up by Order of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet as long ago as 13 March 1954, a ‘Statute’ for this Committee has to this day not been published: this is in contrast, for example, to the USSR Ministry of internal Affairs (MVD), the ‘Statute’ for which was adopted by the USSR Council of Ministers on 16 June 1972. As a result, citizens of our country can only guess the functions of this organization, its rights and duties.
“And since in making these guesses one can only refer to sad historical experience, an enormous number of citizens are convinced to the present day that for the KGB all is permitted and that it is virtually the supreme power in our country.
“A number of events over the past years do not, unfortunately, dispel, but only serve to deepen this popular conviction. Ever more frequently, individual citizens and public organizations bring against the KGB reasoned charges that it has performed actions which, in any state where the rule of law obtained, would be considered criminal.”
The letter enumerates charges against the KGB and proposes both the speedy publication of a ‘Statute on the Committee for State Security attached to the USSR Council of Ministers’, and that an Investigating Commission of the USSR Supreme Soviet be appointed to look into the enumerated charges.
*
[8]
“To the democratic public of the world”
30 March 1977, 67 signatures
“… the most terrible aspect of the legacy of the past is the concealment from relatives and the public of the pre-trial investigation and the total isolation of the person under investigation from the outside world.
“Where is the guarantee that under these conditions Stalinist methods of investigation will not begin to be used?
“The time has come to demand from the agencies of State Security and the procurator’s office that every day of the investigation and of the detention in prison of the person under investigation should be known to his relatives and the public, as is the practice in the whole of the civilized world.”
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[9]
D. Babich, Vyacheslav Bakhmin, Irina Kaplun, Felix Serebrov, Pyotr Grigorenko, Sophia Kalistratova
“They Cover up the Traces of Crimes” (14 March 1977) [3]
This statement by the Working Commission was provoked by a search at which the manuscript of the book Punitive Medicine (CCE 44.12-15) was confiscated. The statement says that Alexander Podrabinek had been working on it for three years.
“As in the case of Bukovsky, so now with the search and persecution oF Podrabinek, the KGB demonstrates its readiness to crush people who try to publicize the facts of the torture of dissenters by the agencies of the KGB with the help of hangmen in white coats.
“The world ought to know that Alexander Podrabinek may pay with his freedom for the freedom of others. We call on all progressive organizations, and especially doctors, to defend Podrabinek.”
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[10]
Tatyana Khodorovich and Malva Landa
“To Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Ginzburg and Participants in the Russian Public Fund in the USSR [4]: our Heartfelt Gratitude and Sincere Appreciation!” (5 April 1977)
“On 5 February 1977 [CCE 44.3] we took upon ourselves the difficult but honourable, and vitally necessary obligation of carrying out the distribution of money from your fund.
“A person wants to eat every day. Therefore, we set about it quickly, at a moment that was bitter for us — the arrest of Alexander Ginzburg, a man of the highest integrity, fair-mindedness and intelligence. Our warmest respects to him for the accuracy and clarity (fantastic in the conditions of our life) with which the affairs of the Fund have been conducted, and which we discovered on getting down to work. Our warmest respects to him for the fair-minded and intelligent distribution of the resources of the Fund entrusted to him.
“As soon as we had begun this complicated business, we understood the truly colossal significance of the existence of the Public Fund for aid to the persecuted and imprisoned, their needy and harassed families and their weeping children.
“Precisely because of this, we, living in a State where compassion for captives is forbidden and consciously rooted out, decided to fulfil our primary duty, that of thanking all those who took and are taking part in the organization of the Social Fund and in its augmentation. Accept from us simple human gratitude.”
Khodorovich and Landa also speak of the moral support that the fund gives to prisoners, and of the fact that the fund’s existence saves them from a sense of rejection and loneliness, from the feeling that they have been forgotten.
Further they write:
“In the 1960s, when open resistance to the authorities appeared, people in our country who did not directly participate in resistance developed a timid desire to do at least something to help them, the others, those who were going ‘to the block’. Thus, there appeared the first shoots of the Social Fund inside the country …
“However, with the deterioration of the internal situation these started to wilt, and probably would have wilted, if it had not been for the fund set up outside our State …
“The compassion which was so zealously rooted out by our authorities has reawakened and overcome its fear: the Public Fund has started to be augmented by resources from our fellow-citizens as well.
“And this is the second fundamental merit of the Social Fund: the awakening of compassion and the lessening of fear.”
***
GRIGORENKO. CHRISTIAN COMMITTEE
[11]
Pyotr Grigorenko
“An Interview with a Correspondent of the Associated Press” (4 April 1977)
Asked “How do you evaluate the statement about ‘dissidents’ in the speech” by L.I. Brezhnev, General-Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, at the 16th Congress of USSR trades unions [5], Grigorenko replied:
“The statement is anti-democratic. It is an undisguised threat to all who speak out for human rights …
“Personally, I was waiting, as the 60th Anniversary of the October Revolution approaches, for a statement about a general political amnesty: in 60 years there has not been one such amnesty. Now I am thinking with sadness that the arrests of honest and courageous people will continue.
“It is very unpleasant that the Secretary-General has repeated the libels against ‘dissidents’ which are being spread by the Soviet press. Unfortunately, we cannot rebuff these libels – about our being connected with the CIA and other anti-Soviet centres – as there is not a free press in the Soviet Union.”
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[12]
Pyotr Grigorenko
“Statement at a Press Conference for Foreign Journalists” (4 April 1977) [6]
“… Recently my wife and I spoke out against the open attempts by the authorities and the propaganda agencies to revive Stalinist methods of crushing free thought.”
[see their appeal “To the Soviet and World Public” in CCE 44.27 [6], Chronicle].
“Since then, the situation has changed for the worse. The General-Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee himself has now joined in the general smear campaign against participants in the movement for the rule of law. His statement on this matter at the 16th Congress of the Trade Unions gave off the odour of the dreadful Stalinist dungeons.
“This statement provoked a fresh paroxysm of malicious slander in the Soviet press against the movement for the rule of law, and an increase in the authorities’ illegal acts of repression …“Dissidents, of course, need means of communication. And since it is impossible to make use of such things within the country, it becomes necessary to turn to the West, to those who will agree to circulate our information, and not some kind of ‘spy’ or ‘slanderous’ materials thought up in the bowels of the KGB. But we do not limit ourselves to distributing information via the West. Even in our intolerable conditions an enormous publishing activity goes on — uncensored — within the country. Everyone knows the uncrushable Moscow samizdat and its periodical, the Chronicle of Current Events.
“The experience gained by Moscow samizdat is spreading. Samizdat has appeared in Leningrad, Kiev, Tbilisi and a number of other cities. A large amount of publishing is carried out by Christians: Catholics, Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists. The example of the Moscow Chronicle has given rise to other regular publications: the Georgian Chronicle [Herald], the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church, the Bulletin of Relatives of Imprisoned Baptists and even the typographically printed [Baptist] Messenger of Truth.
“Dissidents primarily defend their movement themselves. And the means of defence, essentially the only ones, are: Steadfastness, Courage, Self-sacrifice, and Refusal to Compromise in defence of human rights.”
Grigorenko goes on to speak of the existence in the USSR of an opposition. Pointing out that it has a latent character, Grigorenko enumerates various forms of opposition and affirms that the government’s only sensible line of conduct would be dialogue with the opposition.
***
[13]
Andrei Sakharov
“An Interview with Swedish Television”, 4 April 1977 [7]
[Q. 1-3 … ]
4. What is the situation with regard to the struggle for human rights in the USSR and Eastern Europe? What are the difficulties and possibilities?
The situation is extremely dramatic. The traditional violations of fundamental civil and social rights, involving the widest sections of the population, continue …
Indications have appeared of ever greater activity on the part of the agencies of oppression, of those circles which are incapable of an open and honest discussion. In the Soviet press and that of East European countries there has begun an intensive campaign of slander against all who speak out for human rights in these countries: ‘Charter-77’, the Workers Defence Committee, the Helsinki Groups and others.
A new and important factor is that this campaign is supported or sanctioned by statements by the leading political figures in these countries, which indicates the State direction of the policy. Simultaneously with the press campaign, acts of repression have increased.
In the USSR between February and March [1977] five members of Helsinki Groups have been arrested: Orlov, Ginzburg, Rudenko, Tykhy and Shcharansky.
To defend them – and there is a danger that they will be punished extremely harshly – is the duty of people of integrity the world over: scholars and cultural figures who take part in contacts with our country, workers, statesmen. I call on you to act most energetically. Neither can I fail to speak of the danger of an increase in underground, criminal and Mafia-like activities by the repressive agencies. At present we are living through a critical period whose outcome is important not only for our countries, for the fate of dissenters, but also for the whole world, for the whole style of international relations …
[Q. 5-6 … ]
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7. Do you think that the human rights movement will lead to a relaxation of the system?
I would not like to assess the activities of those who carry on this struggle in pragmatic terms. We simply cannot do other than what we do.
But I consider that open statements in defence of human rights, which are becoming widely known to millions of people thanks to foreign radio broadcasts, are creating the psychological preconditions for the inner emancipation of people, and, through this, for vitally necessary democratic changes in the country in the future.
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8. What are the possibilities for you at present of continuing the struggle for human rights, or do you see further difficulties?
The only means for my public activity and its continuation is publicity. This is always complicated by the lack of international telephone and postal communications.
The difficulties are continually increasing. I have close friends who are imprisoned and exiled. There is increasing pressure on me and on my family, whose life is already placed beyond the limits of human existence. Not so long ago I was summoned by deputy Procurator-General Gusev; then I accompanied my son-in-law to an interrogation; and now I am chatting to you — here are my difficulties and possibilities.
***
THE CHRISTIAN COMMITTEE (14-16, 18)
[14]
Gleb Yakunin, Varsonofy Khaibulin, Victor Kapitanchuk
“A Statement for the Press” (7 February 1977, 7 pp.)
Members of the “Christian Committee for the Defence of Believers Rights in the USSR” write about the second edition of the book Diversion without Dynamite (Moscow, Gospolitizdat, 1976). Its authors are journalist A. Belov and KGB Lieutenant-Colonel A. Shilkin: Shilkin is deputy head of department in the Operations Division, Moscow City & Region KGB Administration.
“Belov and Shilkin’s book is remarkable for its open expression of the State’s basic aim in its struggle against the spread of religious ideology and in general of ideas not corresponding to Marxist-Leninist doctrine: this is to declare the spread of such ideas a political act, a diversion which undermines the socialist world, and to carry on the struggle by corresponding methods …
“The sanctioning of the republication in a mass edition of a book which expresses such a point of view on the eve of the conference to review the implementation of the Helsinki agreements, provokes serious anxiety: it bears witness to the presence in our country of certain forces which would like to put obstacles in the way of bringing the principles of the Final Act to life, would like to obstruct the true realization of the process of detente, and to restore in our country the atmosphere of the ‘Cold War’.”
Belov and Shilkin write in their book, about Father Dimitry Dudko (p. 100), that “he was sentenced not in the least ‘as an innocent man’, but according to the law … and he was not rehabilitated, but released … under an amnesty”.
The authors of this Statement comment: “A certificate in the possession of Father Dimitry, No. 056382/46605, issued on 9 May 1956 by the Commission to Review Prisoners’ Cases, testifies to the libel by Belov and Shilkin.” [8]
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[15]
The Christian Committee for the Defence of Believers Rights in the USSR
“A Statement for the Press” (4 April 1977)
In connection with the published Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU of 16 June 1971 “On strengthening the atheistic education of the population” (see the collection “The CPSU on the Formation of the New Man”) [9] the Committee states:
“1. The fact itself of giving publicity to this document six years after its initial publication confirms the presence and operation in the USSR of all kinds of unpublished secret instructions, resolutions, directives and orders concerned with the struggle against religion.
“2. By its contents the Resolution confirms the fact of the growth of religion in the USSR.
“3. Through the Resolution is acknowledged not only a decline in the anti- religious sentiments of communists and Komsomol members, but also their participation in religious life.
“4. The Resolution bears witness to the increase in the influence of religion on young people.
“5. With the existence in the country of a powerful system of anti-religious propaganda, and an almost total lack of religious teaching, even the momentary showing in films or on television of ‘religious ceremonies or church life’ … (as a rule, moreover, from an anti-religious angle) has, as becomes clear from the Resolution, a religious influence.
“6. The Resolution calls, for the purposes of the struggle with religion, for an increase in the application of the legislation on religious cults; this confirms the discriminatory, actively anti-religious character of the legislation in force in the USSR.
“7. Among other measures the Central Committee of the CPSU obliges Party organizations from the Central Committees of the union republics down to the regional committees ‘to work out and put into practice concrete measures for the strengthening of the atheistic education of the population*, and, in particular, to activate anti-religious propaganda in print, on television, by radio and in the cinema.
“One of the responses to the Resolution is an innovation in the methods of using the cinema for the struggle with religion. In Moscow Cinema Week No. 14 (3 April 1977) is an advertisement for a special showing in Moscow cinemas of light foreign films on the night of 9-10 April. This device is aimed at enticing away the young people who on Easter night try in large numbers to get in to a church service.”
*
[16]
Gleb Yakunin, Varsonofy Khaibulin, Victor Kapitanchuk, Lev Regelson
“A Statement for the Press” (14 April 1977)
On 13 April the first half of an article by Boris Roshchin, “Freedom of Religion and the Slanderers”, was published in Literaturnaya gazeta [10]:
“… The article is the latest action directed towards the total annihilation of free thought in the USSR … This time the threat of arrest hangs over the participants in the Christian social movement …
“Believers have long been awaiting Russia’s turning towards God … It is precisely with these expectations, and not in connection with the supposed end of the world, about which Literaturnaya gazeta writes in mocking tones, that the pilgrimage to the ecumenical shrines of the New Athos in 1968 was also connected …”
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[17]
Lev Regelson; “Reply to a Slanderer (20 April 1977, 3 pp.)
Regelson shows up numerous slanderous allegations about him contained in Boris Roshchin’s article “Freedom of Religion and the Slanderers” (Literaturnaya gazeta, 13 & 20 April 1977).
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[18]
Gleb Yakunin, Varsonofy Khaibulin, Victor Kapitanchuk
“Appeal to the Christian Public of the World” (12 April 1977)
“… Not long before the arrest of Gamsakhurdia and Kostava an unprecedented campaign of misinformation and slander was conducted in the Georgian press, by radio and on television against participants in the movement for the rule of law in Georgia.
“In print there appeared an article, over the signatures of Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church David and three bishops, which contained what was effectively a political denunciation of participants in the movement for the rule of law in Georgia.
“And now a few days later Gamsakhurdia and Kostava have been arrested, arrested on Maundy Thursday, the day on which the Christian world remembers the betrayal by Judas of Jesus Christ.
“Does not the fact that a Judas kiss is given to the champions of freedom from the Georgian Church by its leader and his fellows indicate a similar situation — the captivity of the Georgian Church?”
The Christian Committee for the Defence of Believers Rights, calling the Christian world to unity, states: “The surest path to obtaining this unity is active help to our suffering brothers in the faith.”
The appeal is dated:
“12 April, Holy Seventh Tuesday: Moveable Feast of the Iverian icon of the Mother of God, the protector of Georgia; Day in Commemoration of the Holy Martyrs of the David-Garedzha monastery, slain in the 17th century.”
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NOTES
Reports of Helsinki Accord Monitors, Vol 1 (Feb 1977), Vol 2 (June 1977), Vol 3 (1978)
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- The full text of Goretoi and Perchatkin’s appeal was published in Helsinki Accord Monitors, Vol 2, note 2 (pp. 27-28).
↩︎ - Full text of 30 March 1977 appeal was published in Helsinki Accord Monitors, Vol 2 (pp. 77-80).
↩︎ - Full text of appeal to protect Podrabinek was published in Helsinki Accord Monitors, Vol 2 (p. 65). Documents on the formation of the Working Commission and its early activities are also in Helsinki Accord Monitors Vol 2 (pp. 53-64).
↩︎ - The full text of the statement by Khodorovich and Landa was published in Helsinki Accord Monitors, Vol 2 (p. 70). There is more on the Fund in Helsinki Accord Monitors (Vol 2, p. 69) and in CHR No. 27, note 13, 1977 (pp. 36-41).
Elsewhere on this website the Fund is referred to as the “Relief Fund”, see Arrest of Ginzburg CCE 44.3.
↩︎ - Brezhnev’s speech at the 16th trade-union conference was published in Pravda, 22 March 1977.
↩︎ - Full text of Grigorenko’s statement to foreign journalists was published in CHR, 1977, No. 26 (pp. 44-47).
↩︎ - A much fuller version of Sakharov’s interview was published in CHR, 1977, No. 26 (pp. 16-18).
↩︎ - Dudko “was arrested in 1948 for a poem he had written, criticising the destruction of Russia’s holy places; he was subsequently sentenced to ten years hard labour. Dudko was released in 1956 and ordained in 1960,” explains P.W. Koenig (1980) and OrthodoxWiki.
↩︎ - Full title: The CPSU on the Formation of the New Man: A collection of documents and materials (1965-1976) [“KPSS o formirovanii novogo cheloveka. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (1965-1976)”], Politizdat: Moscow, 1976.
↩︎ - Most of the text of Roshchin’s article was published in English, with a commentary, in Religion in Communist Lands, 1977, No. 3 (pp. 186-191).
↩︎
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A Chronicle of Current Events 