- 19-1. About Ginzburg, Orlov, Shcharansky; Christian Committee (18 items)
- 19-2. Georgia, Press, Roy Medvedev, Helsinki Groups (15 entries)
*
15 ENTRIES
GEORGIA; THE MESKHETIANS (1-3)
[1]
Zviad Gamsakhurdia
“To the Georgian SSR Minister of Culture O. Taktakisbvili” (28 February 1977)
Gamsakhurdia describes further damage to the David-Garedzha monastery caused by artillery-men of the Transcaucasian Military District (CCE 38.16, CCE 42.8), and proposes that at least an attempt should be made to save the frescoes [1].
*
[2]
The Group to Assist the Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements in Georgia
B. Bezhuashvili, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Georgy Goldstein, Isai Goldstein, T. Dzhanelidze
and the Action Group for the Defence of Human Rights in Georgia
Merab Kostava, G. Magularia, N. Samkharadze
“On the persecution of Victor Rtskhiladze” (statement to the press) [2].
This statement, made in connection with the dismissal of Victor Rtskhiladze (CCE 44.10), describes his activities as head of the inspectorate for the Preservation of Cultural Monuments and his struggle for the return of the Meskhetians.
“On 4 January, in a search at the home of Yury Orlov, among other materials were taken materials on the Meskhetians which had been entrusted to him by Rtskhiladze personally. In particular, there was Victor Rtskhiladze’s letter on the Meskhetian question to the Chronicle, [summary in CCE 43.17-2] and also about 8,000 signatures of Meskhetians demanding the restoration of their Georgian nationality and return to their homeland. “These materials were the basis for the well-known document of the Moscow Helsinki group ‘On the Situation of the Meskhetians’ [3].
“At the beginning of January there appeared the Georgian samizdat journal Georgian Herald No. 2, which contained a long article (about 100 pages) by Rtskhiladze, “A Crime against the Georgian People: the tragedy of the Meskhetians”; he has also published in samizdat other articles on various matters.”
It was precisely after the search at Yu. Orlov’s home that the persecution of V. Rtskhiladze, which caused the anxiety of the authors of the statement, began.
*
Protest at the Persecution of Victor Rtskhiladze (12 March 1977)
“We, representatives of the Georgian Muslims (Meskhetians), exiled from Georgia in 1944 [4], learn with indignation of the persecution of Victor Rtskhiladze, who is actively defending our interests and fighting for our rights. Rtskhiladze has already been studying the Meskhetian question for many years and collecting all kind of material about it, writing statements and constantly visiting Soviet departments about our affairs.
“In July 1976 V. Rtskhiladze came to Kabardino-Balkaria, where exiled Meskhetians are living, and studied our situation on the spot. There a meeting was organized where V. Rtskhiladze himself spoke in the name of the Georgian intelligentsia, and Meskhetian delegates also spoke…
“We are delighted with his article ‘The Tragedy of the Meskhetians’, and consider that he is the spokesman of our hopes and a champion of our return. We protest against his persecution and appeal to the world public to defend him and not to allow his arrest.
“On behalf of many thousands of Georgians deported in 1944:
Kh. Umarov-Gozalishvili, Dzh. Ayubov-Abashidze, Saparov-Lazishvili, I. Aslanov-Khozrevanidze, A. Iskanderov-Abastumaneli.
*
[3]
From the Georgian Muslims (Meskhetians)
“To L.I. Brezhnev. Copy to Eduard Shevardnadze” (10 March 1977, 24 signatures) [5].
“…The time has now come to decide our national question justly, there have been more than 160,000 individual and collective statements sent to the Party and government. In the course of 33 years people’s representatives have been sent 38 times to Moscow …
“From 11 to 20 January 1977 our representatives were in Moscow and were received: by Comrade Filatov, head of reception at a department of the CPSU Central Committee; by Comrade Zhulkin, Instructor of the Central Committee; and by Comrade Mogilnichenko, deputy head of a department of the Central Committee. All of them, speaking in the name of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, said that our statement on the Meskhetian question had been sent to the Georgian Council of Ministers, and that we could receive an answer from there.
“After this our representatives (a group of 20) were in Georgia from 22 January until 12 February 1977, where they were received by Comrades Shavkatsishvili, Gurdzhishvili and Berdzenishvili, deputy-chairmen of the Georgian Council of Ministers, and also at the Committee on Labour Resources by Comrade Dzhaparidze K.E. and others. At all these receptions we were told that ‘all restrictions have been removed from you, there is a Decree of 9 January 1974 (No. 55-33-UShch) about you. On the basis of this decree, you have the right to live anywhere on Georgian territory. Come here, set yourselves up, live, if they will accept you in the localities.’ To convince themselves of the truth of these words, our representatives went to the Makharadze, Mayakovsky and other districts of Georgia.
“The area authorities said: ‘We need people. Which district does not require extra manpower? We will accept you with pleasure, if the Georgian Council of Ministers permits it’. After this the representatives returned to Tbilisi and were again received by the above-mentioned comrades and asked them to instruct the local authorities that they should as far as possible, accept us in those parts. But they replied: ‘We have already explained it to you, there will be no other reply.’
“After all this we came to the conclusion that all resolutions and edicts regarding us from the highest organ of the USSR are formalities…”
The Meskhetians demand that Brezhnev “defend the right and honour of a whole people (more than 300,000 people)”.
*
[4]
Lev Lukyanenko
“An Open Letter to Professor Vladimir Ruban” (8 April 1977)
The letter is written in connection with the publication in the newspaper Literary Ukraine of 29 March of an article by a professor at Kiev University, V. Ruban, “Truth is Our Weapon”.
Member of the Ukrainian Helsinki group Lev Lukyanenko asks Professor Ruban in what sources he found what he writes about “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists”, and why he publishes his article in a newspaper for whose readers these sources are unavailable.
Lukyanenko proposes to Professor Ruban that he start an honest dialogue.
*
[5]
L. Voloshchuk
“To People of Good Will” (4 April 1977)
“My husband and I are bringing up three sons. The family is close, but tormented to the limit.
“For nine years we have been persecuted because my husband is a believing Baptist. Since 1969 he has been eight times dismissed from work, subjected to fines, and sentenced to 10 and 15 days in jail. And all this for attending prayer meetings.
“I am not a believer, but I will never encroach on my husband’s faith. And for this, my study at a teacher training college has been placed under threat. During year, when I was pregnant with my second child, I was tormented with the demand that I condemn my husband. At work, in the Gorky Club in the city of Gorky, acting director Sukharev stated: ‘If you don’t divorce that Baptist, we’ll sack you.’
“In the newspaper The Gorky Worker in May 1969 there appeared an article ‘Backs Turned on Life’, where my husband and I were accused of terrible sins. It was alleged that our behaviour — belief in God — was incompatible with the name of Soviet Man. Seven months pregnant, I was sacked from my job. And it was only through a court that I was offered work as a cleaner, i.e. effectively deprived of my diploma.
“The children grew up. And how did they get on? Listen! LISTEN!
“Sasha is a pupil at School No. 24 in Gorky, where the director is Serbir and his teacher Redina. In November-December 1976 he was subjected to punishment including physical reprisals. For refusing to put on the badge of a Little Octobrist he was roundly abused and then an attempt was made to put the badge on by force: his arms were twisted, his shirt torn. After such ideological ‘education’ the boy came home completely ill.
“Worn out with persecutions in the city of Gorky, we decided to move nearer to my parents in Khartsyzsk [Donetsk Region, Ukraine].
“We carried out the exchange of our living quarters according to the law, gave up our living-space in Gorky and went on an exchange basis to Khartsyzsk. But there a blow awaited us. Our rooms turned out to be occupied and the authorities did not help us to find somewhere to live. The motto: ‘We’ve got plenty of Baptists without you!’
“So here we were without a roof and without work, the children without a school.
“We went as a whole family to Moscow. We came to the reception room of the USSR Supreme Soviet requesting help: either to provide the conditions for life in the Soviet Union, or to give us permission to emigrate to Canada.
“For seven days we went there for an answer. On the eighth an answer came. In my presence and before the eyes of my children about two dozen tough young men twisted my husband’s arms and dragged him away. We stood frozen on the spot. We were soon brought back to life, however. They took us by force to a police station; moreover my eldest, 11-year-old Igor, had his arms twisted as if he were a grown bandit.
“The following day, with great difficulty, I sought out my husband. He has been imprisoned, it turns out, in Moscow’s Psychiatric Hospital No. 14.
“People! I am terribly afraid! My husband is a completely normal person, and they want to torture him with a psychiatric hospital.
“HELP ME TO FREE MY HUSBAND! For I, a non-believer, can love a man who is a believer. Faith is the personal affair of each person, and no one may encroach upon it.
“DEMAND THE RELEASE OF MY HUSBAND!
“DEMAND FREEDOM OF BELIEF FOR EVERYONE!”
Formally, the flat exchange did not take place due to the withdrawal of the Voloshchuk family’s partners in the exchange.
Alexander Voloshchuk was released at the beginning of May 1977 .
*
[6]
Vyacheslav Petrov
“To the Chairman of the All-Union Central Trade Union Council” (9 March 1977)
A worker with the Vasyugan oil-prospecting expedition in central Siberia, political exile Vyacheslav Petrov (CCE 44.19), complains that he has not been given living accommodation in a place where he could live with his old mother, although he is prepared to be content “with an extremely uncomfortable little room of 9 square metres”. The expedition meanwhile not only has free living-space, “which has been offered before my eyes to anyone at all the moment”.
Petrov says he intends to live there with his family, but “a whole series of departmental two-roomed flats are occupied by single people or people who have nothing to do with the oil-prospecting expedition.”
The reason, Petrov states, is his political convictions.
*
[7]
In Support of “Charter-77″ (12 February 1977) [6]
63 people state their solidarity with “Charter-77”.
*
[8]
GRIGORENKO & “IZVESTIYA”
At the end of January 1977 Pyotr Grigorenko received an answer to his letter to the editors of Izvestiya of 21 December 1976 (CCE 43.17). Having printed extracts from Grigorenko’s letter, the Chronicle feels obliged to publish the answer as well:
“In reply to your letter, which has reached the USSR Ministry of Communications from the editorial office of the newspaper Izvestiya, I should inform you that in accordance with the ‘Telegraph Regulations’, telegrams may be written in the language of the union or autonomous republic or national region within whose boundaries they are sent, or to within whose boundaries they are addressed.
“Such a system for the reception of telegrams is due to the circumstance that unfamiliarity of employees of communications services with one or another language may lead to inquiries or to the addressee being sent a distorted telegram.
“Accordingly, a telegram sent from in Moscow and addressed to the Mordovian ASSR cannot be accepted in Ukrainian.
“As for international telegrams, such telegrams are accepted only in those languages which are permitted by the receiving country.
“Deputy head of the Main Telegraph Administration A.I. Tulupov”
*
[9]
Ernst Orlovsky
“To the Editors of The Times and Unita” (July 1976 and January 1977)
“… On two occasions (in 1957 and 1972) the KGB have searched my flat and removed, among other documents:
- extracts and cuttings from Yugoslavian, Polish and West European Communist newspapers;
- a book by Kautsky in a Soviet edition with a laudatory preface by V.I. Lenin;
- a synopsis of N.S. Khrushchev’s address [‘Secret Speech’] to a closed session of the 20th CPSU congress about the Stalin Personality Cult; and
- … some writings by Alexander Tvardovsky …”
After each of these searches the bulk of the confiscated material was returned to Orlovsky. What is more, in 1958 the RSFSR Procurator’s Office informed him that everything confiscated from him in the first search had been taken without sufficient reason.
Orlovsky then goes on to describe the coming and going that accompanied his demotion in February 1974 (CCE 34.15 [1]).
“After all this I thought that I was ready for anything. But I was still astonished by what happened to me at Leningrad’s Pulkovo airport on the night of 24/25 May 1976 [CCE 41.5 [9], Chronicle] …
“The most absurd thing, I think, was that even my handwritten draft synopsis of the [1966] International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights was regarded as ‘anti-Soviet literature’ … Many of the confiscated documents were soon returned to me by the State Security organization … but not this synopsis …
“I must admit that I had previously been rather sceptical of stories about the police and other Soviet agencies taking the law into their own hands …
“But the KGB, by all appearances, were anxious to re-educate me, and disabuse me of my naive faith in Soviet legality. If this flagrant disregard for the law is also encouraged by the procurator’s office, then the entire legal system of the USSR is merely an insubstantial facade, and in reality, every citizen is entirely dependent on the whim of those who control this machinery of arbitrary rule …”
In July 1976 Orlovsky sent this letter to the editors of Pravda, The Times (London), and the Italian Communist newspaper Unita. The editors of Pravda received it but made no reply.
Orlovsky does not know whether the letter reached the other recipients. In January 1977 he sent a second copy of the letter to the editors of The Times and Unita.
*
[10]
Alexander Feldman
To the editors of the Morning Star (26 April 1977)
Alexander Feldman (see “Prisons and Camps” CCE 45.11-3, and “The Jewish Movement” CCE 45.16) was able to read several issues of the British Communist newspaper The Morning Star in the camps.
“On 6 March 1977 a member of the Ukrainian KGB from Kherson (not far from the camp) and a representative of the camp administration confiscated from me some handwritten Russian translations of certain news articles in The Morning Star.
“At the time the KGB agent, whose name is Vitaly Maximovich (surname unknown), described the articles as ‘tendentious’. Later, in a conversation on 18 March with the same camp representative — deputy head of the camp Captain Nidzelsky — he said that the articles were ‘anti-Soviet’.”
(Feldman gives the titles of ten articles.)
“As in the USSR this description connotes ‘criminal activity’ and entails the application of the relevant law (Article 70 of RSFSR Criminal Code) I think that the editors and readers of The Morning Star should be made aware of the official attitude to the information published in their paper.”
*
SAKHAROV AND ROY MEDVEDEV
[11]
Naum Meiman
“Concerning an Interview of Dr Roy Medvedev” (16 April 1977) [7]
Professor Meiman, a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, writes:
“On 12 April an interview with Dr Roy Medvedev was broadcast on Western radio, in the course of which President Carter’s position on the Human Rights question was criticized. Dr Medvedev also asserted that Academician Sakharov had forfeited his authority on account of his associates, described by Medvedev as ‘extremists, unrepresentative of anybody’s interests’.
“I do not have the honour of being one of Academician Sakharov’s close associates, nor have I read the text of the interview, but as Dr Medvedev has not repudiated it, I feel obliged to make the following comments. My regret in doing so is all the greater as I have the highest regard for Dr Medvedev’s well-known book on Stalinism [8].
“1. Experience has shown that on a number of important and critically significant matters Dr Medvedev’s position has frequently coincided with that of the Soviet government, although for different reasons. Senator Jackson’s celebrated amendment is one example, and another is the current attitude to the most important event of recent times — President Carter’s decision to make human rights a top priority in his foreign policy.
“This decision of President Carter has not only had a salutary effect on the political climate in the USA and throughout the world, it is also the only practical policy to which there can be no acceptable alternative. This is evidenced in particular by the not over-successful policies of his predecessors.
“2. In the present-day political vocabulary the word ‘extremist’ is inextricably associated with the use of force as a means of achieving one’s goals. Whereas all the dissidents (defenders of rights) who are in any way associated with Academician Sakharov or the Helsinki Group, and indeed all the dissidents I have ever come across, categorically reject the use of force. All of them have at all times confined their activities to the bounds of legality.
“Dr Medvedev’s expression ‘unrepresentative of anybody’s interests’ also makes a strange impression.
“Academician Sakharov’s friends represent their own interests, and that makes them quite sufficiently representative. As Dr Medvedev, judging by what he has said, does not agree with this, it would be pertinent to ask exactly whose interests he represents.
“3. Dr Medvedev does not give the source of his information on Academician Sakharov’s loss of authority.
“I, for example, am convinced that Sakharov’s authority is increasing steadily throughout the world, for the simple reason that the unusual combination of scholarly ability, fortitude, moral and intellectual integrity, and far-sighted vision commands general admiration. Sakharov’s authority has a different significance for different countries, generations, and social groups. Speaking for myself, and for a large part of the Soviet intelligentsia who survived the horrors of the Stalinist reign of terror, I can say that Sakharov has helped us to recover our faith in human dignity and courage. This view is shared by many scientists who could in no way be described as dissidents.”
*
[12]
The Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes
“To the Chairman of the World Psychiatric Association” (21 March 1977)
“We would ask you to do everything in your power to enable Marina Voikhanskaya, a foreign member of our Commission, to be granted the opportunity to give a short account of certain aspects of psychiatric practices in the Soviet Union at the forthcoming congress of psychiatrists in Honolulu …”
Sixteen others supported the request of the Working Commission. The request was granted: Marina Voikhanskaya, formerly a practising Soviet psychiatrist, has been invited to Honolulu to make her report.
***
HELSINKI GROUPS (13-15)
The Lithuanian Helsinki group
[13]
“The Condition of the Roman Catholic Church and other Religious Believers in Lithuania” (10 April 1977)[9]
The members of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group (Father Karolis Garuckas, Eitan Finkelstein, Ona Lukauskaite-Poskiene and Viktoras Petkus) conclude their report as follows:
“We request the aid of the Belgrade Commission in ensuring that international obligations do not remain on paper but are translated into action, specifically:
“1. that the expression ‘freedom of conscience’ should have the same meaning in our country as it does in all civilized countries;
“2. that people should be free to conduct not only anti-religious, but also religious propaganda;
“3. that religious believers should be granted genuine freedom of expression, both oral and in print, and freedom of assembly and association;
“4. that those Articles of the law which directly or indirectly encroach on freedom of conscience and expression should be revoked;
“5. that all those now confined in prisons or camps for propagating or defending basic human liberties (among them Nijole Sadunaite, Petras Plumpa, Paulis Petronis, Sarunas Žukauskas and Juozas Grazys) should be released.”
*
[14]
The Lithuanian Helsinki group
“Report” (21 May 1977)
The group has authorized its member Tomas Venclova, who emigrated in January 1977 (CCE 44.22), to represent the group at the Belgrade Conference and to make contact with Lithuanian emigre organizations.
*
[15]
Memoranda 2-10 (January-March 1977)
of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group [10]
Memorandum 1 was reported in CCE 43.6. As the factual information contained in these memoranda has already to a large extent been reflected in the Chronicle, the resume of their contents given here is brief.
Memorandum 2 (January 1977) puts forward a demand that the Ukraine should have independent participation in the Belgrade conference, on the analogy of its UN membership.
Memorandum 3 describes the fate of Josyp Terelya (CCE 43.8, CCE 46.13).
Memoranda 4 (9 February) & 7 (10 March) describe police searches of members flats and their relatives flats, and notes that books, notebooks, and all kinds of handwritten and typewritten material — regardless of their subject or whose property they are — have been confiscated.
Memoranda 2 & 8 (11 March) describe the harassment of former political prisoners and of the families of present political prisoners.
In Memorandum 5 (15 February) the group solemnly proclaims its conviction that “the era of fratricide, disunity and hostility will come to an end”, calls upon the leaders of the USSR and other countries to begin constructive dialogues, and suggests the following points for discussion at the Belgrade conference:
- the release of political prisoners and the repeal of those Articles in Criminal Codes that allow the persecution of dissenters;
- unrestricted right of exit and entry for all citizens;
- free exchange of information;
- abolition of censorship;
- total condemnation of the idea of murder, including abolition of the death penalty.
In Memoranda 6 (21 February) & 7 the Group gives warning to the governments of States which participated in the European conference that their silent consent may lead to the collapse of the movement for the rule of law.
Memorandum 10 (March 1977) is concerned with families attempting for various reasons to emigrate from the USSR, who have turned to the group for help (CCE 45.15).
============================================
NOTES
English translations the different Helsinki Group statements may be found in
[1-3] Reports of Helsinki Accord Monitors: Vol 1 (Feb 1977), Vol 2 (June 1977), Vol 3 (Nov 1978)
and [4] The Right to Know, the Right to Act, Washington, 1978
*
- In August 1977 the Soviet journal Science and Religion (Nauka i religiya, 1977, No. 8; p. 9.) reported that active restoration work was in progress on Georgia’s David-Garedsha monastery.
↩︎ - The full text of the joint declaration about Victor Rtskhiladze was published in The Right to Know, Note 2 (p. 104).
↩︎ - Text in Reports of Helsinki Accord Monitors, Note 2, Vol. 2 (pp. 34-6), and The Right to Know (pp. 85-86).
↩︎ - In November 1944 the Meskhetians were expelled from Georgia’s border districts, along with the Kurds and Khemshins (CCE 52.15-2 [1]) and, unlike the Chechens and Ingush deported earlier that year, were not allowed to return after the death of Stalin (see “Wartime deportation, 1941-1944“, Map of Memory).
↩︎ - Eduard A. Shevardnadze, later USSR Foreign Minister under Gorbachov (1985-1990), was then 1st Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party (1972-1985); before 1972 he was the republic’s Minister of Internal Affairs (CCE 36.6-3).
↩︎ - Text of declaration in support of Charter-77 was published in Reports of Helsinki Accord Monitors, Vol. 2 (p. 75).
↩︎ - Lev Kopelev, Valentin Turchin, Petro Grigorenko, and Tatyana Khodorovich later added their names to Meiman’s statement: see Kontinent, No. 13 (p. 214).
↩︎ - The foreign publication of Roy Medvedev’s Let History Judge (1972) was an abridged version of his original 1967 three-volume work. (See 14 November 1967 [R] for Medvedev’s application to gain Central Committee approval.)
↩︎ - The full text of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group statement was published in Reports of Helsinki Accord Monitors, Note 2, Vol. 3, (7 November 1978, pp. 170-176).
↩︎ - “Memorandum 2” appeared in Reports of Helsinki Accord Monitors, Vol. 3 (pp. 130-133).
↩︎
==============================
A Chronicle of Current Events 