23 ITEMS
[1]
CHUDNOVSKY FAMILY (KIEV)
In January 1977 the Chudnovsky family from Kiev applied for permission to emigrate to join their relatives in Israel. In April this was refused, without any explanations. They received no reply to their many appeals to State and Party authorities.
The head of the family is Professor Volf Grigoryevich CHUDNOVSKY, Doctor of Technology (b. 1908), who has worked at the UkSSR Academy of Sciences, taught at Kiev University and the Kiev Arts Institute and is the author of 32 works on mechanics. In preparation for his emigration to Israel, he left his job in autumn 1976. His wife Malka Veniaminovna CHUDNOVSKAYA (b. 1910) has been an engineer and a lecturer at higher education institutions. She is an invalid and for this reason has not worked since 1952.
Their sons are David (b. 1947) and Grigory (b. 1952), both mathematicians and both graduates of Kiev University. In 1972 David defended a dissertation on general topology and has published over thirty works (some together with Grigory). In 1969-1976 David was working at the Institute of Mechanics (UkSSR Academy of Sciences). He is a member of the US Mathematical Society.
Grigory Chudnovsky began to work at mathematics professionally at the age of 11. His first article was published in 1967. In 1971 he solved the 10th Hilbert problem (at the same time as Yu. V. Matiyasevich, but independently of him) [correction CCE 56.30]. Thirty-five of his works have now been published. Grigory’s works are studied at the Bourbaki seminar in Paris. He is a member of the Moscow and the US Mathematical Societies.
Often invited to various countries for scientific congresses and conferences, the Chudnovsky brothers have never been allowed to go. Their lectures were read by others. In the near future there will be a number of international conferences to which the Chudnovsky brothers have been invited as lecturers. The Chudnovsky brothers have also been invited to work at the Institute of Higher Scientific Research of Paris University, and in addition Grigory has been invited to the Mathematical Centre of Amsterdam University. Grigory has been an invalid from the age of 11; he suffers from myasthenia and spends most of his time in bed. The Chudnovsky family links emigration with hope for a possible cure for Grigory.
At the moment all members of the family have been unemployed for about a year.
Their only means of existence are their pensions and invalid allowances. They cannot engage in normal scientific research either, as in the USSR no scientist who is unemployed can publish his articles (he cannot get ‘expert approval’).
In July Malka V. Chudnovskaya appealed to PCF leader Georges Marchais for help in obtaining permission to emigrate.
In July the Chudnovskys received many telephone calls threatening them with violence. On the evening of 22 July, the parents were severely beaten up on the street outside their house. M. V. Chudnovskaya had concussion and the muscular ligaments of her arm were tom. The police arrived only three hours later. The police would not give the Chudnovskys an order for a forensic-medical diagnosis, which they requested.
On 23 July A. D. Sakharov issued an appeal in support of the Chudnovsky family.
On 29 July David Chudnovsky, speaking on the telephone to an inspector of the Kiev Visa & Registration Department (OVIR), said that his parents and brother were now in a very serious condition. An unknown voice interrupted: “If only they would all croak sooner!”
On 1 August members of the Moscow Helsinki Group — Petro Grigorenko, Vladimir Slepak, Naum Meiman and Yelena Bonner — appealed to the Preliminary Conference in Belgrade to save the Chudnovsky family. Their statement was supported by Andrei Sakharov, Tatyana Khodorovich, Valentin Turchin and Yury Shikhanovich.
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[2]
On 14 March 1977, the former political prisoner Viktor Nekipelov (CCE 32.4; see also CCE 46.6) applied to emigrate from the USSR. Having received no reply, on 3 August he sent a ‘Statement about a Refusal’ to the Chairman of the Praesidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet:
“My emigration is not an escape, or a retreat into a deceptive vision of a better life. It is just impossible to act otherwise, impossible to live another day, another hour, in this country, without going into spiritual convulsions …
“My emigration settles my account with a system of soulless values and eulogies that go round in circles, with a world of reversed mirrors.
“… at the present time I have come to feel a complete revulsion for communist ideology and all Soviet doctrines, that is, I have adopted an anti-Soviet way of thinking … Yes, I am by conviction anti-Soviet and anti-socialist. For such a person, life inside the USSR is naturally impossible.
“… I ask you to consider this statement as a declaration renouncing Soviet citizenship.”
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[3]
Zoya Krasnovskaya from Leningrad is asking for help in emigrating.
At the end of May 1976 Tatyana Schaufuss, twin sister of Alexei Krasnovsky, Zoya’s husband, sent the Krasnovsky family an invitation to reside permanently in the USA.
In August 1976 the Krasnovskys handed in applications for emigration. In November 1976 V. P. Bokov, head of the Leningrad OVIR, told them to write declarations renouncing Soviet citizenship: “This declaration is a formality,” he said. “If you write it, I give you a 100 per cent guarantee that your family will emigrate to the USA,” (in fact, emigration to the USA does not require renunciation of citizenship, Chronicle).
The two adult members of the Krasnovsky family had each to pay 1,000 roubles in tax to renounce their citizenship. In addition, Zoya’s mother — with whom Zoya has not lived since she was 13 years old — demanded alimony from her daughter through the courts. Zoya’s mother was sacked from her job the day before the court hearing. Up to the start of the hearing, Zoya had already been living on her husband’s income for two years, had a small daughter and was pregnant. The court decreed that Zoya should pay alimony for the next ten years, at the rate of 5 roubles a month — a total, that is, of 1,600 roubles. The Krasnovskys sold everything they had in the house.
In January 1977 the Krasnovskys handed in to OVIR a statement renouncing their citizenship and a receipt for the payment of 1,600 roubles. In April OVIR inspector N. A. Khramchenkova demanded that Alexei Krasnovsky should give additional details of his relationship to T. Schaufuss: “Write that down and you can go.” The Krasnovskys handed this in to OVIR as well. They demand that emigration visas should be issued to them — that the promises made should be fulfilled.
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[4]
Vasily Yakunin’s father was killed at the front in July 1944.
The family found itself in occupied territory and was transported to Germany. There Vasily lost track of his mother. In 1949 he was repatriated to the Soviet Union.
In March 1974 Yakunin appealed to the Soviet Red Cross for help in finding his mother. In September 1976 he received a reply: his mother had been found and was living in West Germany. In January 1977, after receiving an invitation from his mother, Yakunin, a Muscovite, appealed to OVIR, asking that he and his family be allowed to visit his mother. On 26 April, he received a refusal. The OVIR officials demanded that Yakunin prove in court that the woman who sent him the invitation was his mother. On 28 April Yakunin appealed for help to Brezhnev: “In the light of the above, I earnestly beg you to help me to meet my mother, on the basis of the humanist principles you affirmed in the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe”.
When he received no reply, Yakunin appealed on 9 July to the heads of governments that signed the ‘Final Act’ and to their representatives at Belgrade. On 10 July he also appealed for help to the Moscow Helsinki Group.
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[5]
The Muscovites A. V. Tsyrlin, the married couple B. V. Genkin and A. E. Genkina and also M. E. Kotlyarsky from Kiev have appealed for help to the heads of the governments who signed the Helsinki Agreement: the OVIR offices will not accept their applications to emigrate, demanding ‘testimonials’ from their parents, while the notary office refuses to assist them, insisting that the document demanded by OVIR is contrary to the existing laws of the country.
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[6]
The priest Masilionis (Pasvalys district, Lithuania) has been trying for seven years to obtain permission to visit the USA, to see his brothers and sisters.
He is 75 years old. His brothers are 83 and 73, his sisters are 66 and 58. OVIR has given him no reasons for its refusal. He has appealed five times already to the Lithuanian SSR Minister of Internal Affairs, but has not received a reply. In his last letter to the Minister he writes, in part:
“An ordinary elderly citizen, I am not allowed to go, but young people are allowed to leave … such as Solzhenitsyn, together with his whole family and The Gulag Archipelago; Bukovsky, who spent over ten years in psychiatric hospitals and camps; Plyushch, released directly from a psychiatric hospital after some years of torment; Simas Kudirka, after suffering in the courts and prisons; Tomas Venclova, and others.
“They leave, full of experiences, memories, emotions and thoughts. They go with the freedom to speak and act.
“What could I reveal to the West that the West doesn’t already know?”
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[7]
After D. L. Sinilnikov (from Sevastopol) handed in an application to emigrate, his parents L. P. Sinilnikov and E. Ya. Bruk were sacked from their jobs. In addition, in January 1977 he received a refusal.
In a letter dated 25 March to the heads of the governments which signed the Helsinki Agreement, he expresses the hope that these violations of the Helsinki Agreement will be put right before the beginning of the Belgrade meeting.
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[8]
Because of his desire to emigrate from the USSR, V. M. Kushnarev, head of the laboratory of electronic and light microscopy (Mechnikov Research Institute for Serum Vaccine, Moscow) and D.Sc. (Medical Science), was forced to resign from his job in exchange for a reference from his place of work for OVIR.
At the end of May the academic council of the institute sent a request to the Higher Degrees Commission (VAK), asking that Kushnarev be deprived of his academic qualifications and the title of senior researcher.
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[9]
Trying to obtain permission to emigrate from the USSR, Valentin Ivanov went out and demonstrated again on 14 June 1977 (CCE 43.13 [2]).
He stood by the pillars of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, with a banner saying:
“Since 1949 I have been persecuted by the KGB, since 1964 I have been demanding to emigrate; I am beginning a hunger-strike in protest.”
After a few minutes two policemen came up to him and took him to Police Station 17. That evening Ivanov was transferred to Psychiatric Hospital No. 7.
The head doctor, Mikhail Solomonivich Rubashov, explained to him the reasons for his hospitalization: “You assess your surroundings incorrectly. Our task is to make you see them correctly, so we’re not going to let you go, we’re keeping you here.”
Before this, Ivanov had been subjected more than once to forcible psychiatric examinations (in 1959, 1966, 1972 and 1976) and had been found sane every time [1].
This time no examination took place. On 20 June Ivanov was discharged from the hospital. At the entrance he was met by KGB Major Sychev and First Lieutenant Yeremin of the police from Borovsk (Kaluga Region), who took him home.
On 23 June in Borovsk Major Sychev gave Ivanov a warning according to the decree of 25 December 1972 and suggested he should go to Kaluga to hand in his application to emigrate: “The question has been decided at the highest level!”
On 27 June the Kaluga OVIR accepted Ivanov’s application for emigration to Israel — without an invitation!
On 1 August Ivanov was informed that he would be allowed to emigrate.
On 8 August Ivanov handed in a statement to the Kaluga OVIR. asking for his departure to be postponed, as he did not have the 800 roubles needed to buy an emigration visa; he wrote that he would try to earn this money and would also ask for help from the German and Austrian electricians trade unions.
On 10 August Ivanov was summoned to the Kaluga KGB headquarters for interrogation in the Yury Orlov case. When asked by the investigator, Captain Bykov,
“What do you know about the so-called Helsinki Monitoring Group?”
Ivanov replied: “I consider the Group’s activity to be beneficial. I don’t want to take part in any persecution of the Group — so I refuse to give evidence.”
After the interrogation Ivanov was told to call at OVIR. There he was asked to write a statement for the Regional finance department, asking to be excused from paying the tax. Ivanov wrote it at once.
On 13 August Ivanov was told that his request had been granted (soon after this he emigrated).
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Pentecostals and Baptists
[10]
In the Far Eastern Primorsky Region (Krai) a “Committee for the Defence of Believers’ Rights”, organised by the authorities, has begun to function.
It includes the commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs, some teachers and some people who refuse to give their names. The members of this committee go round the homes of Pentecostals, trying to persuade them not to emigrate. To some they promise help, housing, education and good jobs; others are threatened. Members of the committee read to believers letters from Pentecostals who have emigrated (E. Konchak from West Germany, N. Plotnikov from the USA), which describe horrors and persecutions.
*
In May 40 families in Nakhodka (Primorsky Region) received invitations from the USA.
Captain Drozdova and Lieutenant Smolentsev, OVIR officials, tell them:
“These invitations are sent by the CIA. Why do you refer to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? It is illegally brought into the USSR to subvert the internal foundations of the Soviet State. It gives no right to emigrate.”
*
The threat of criminal prosecution hangs over Boris Perchatkin, a Pentecostal activist in the fight for emigration (from Nakhodka).
Recently KGB officials have more than once forced fellow workers to give written evidence that he is carrying on anti-Soviet agitation. Many times, ‘unknown persons’ have pushed into his flat, threatening violence to him, his wife and his children. The police spies are deliberately brazen with him: they threaten him in deserted places and try to break into his flat at night.
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[11]
The Pentecostal believers in the Starotitarovskaya cantonment (Krasnodar Region [Krai], South Russia) announced in advance that on 19 June, the day of elections to the local soviets, they would not go to vote, as they intended to emigrate from the USSR. Not one of them went to the polling station.
Members of the electoral committee drove round the houses of the Pentecostals with the ballot-box, trying to persuade them to vote — by flattery, begging, threatening, by insults and even by means of bad language — but in vain.
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[12]
On 15 May the Pentecostal Kiriyak (Cherkassy Region, UkSSR) applied to emigrate; he has a family of 13. After this, 18-year-old Zagary Kiriyak was called up into the army. He refused to obey, explaining that he was preparing to emigrate.
On 23 June the people’s court of Gluboksky district sentenced him to years in camps according to Article 72 (UkSSR Criminal Code: “Avoiding regular call up …”). Judge Ignatenko defined his refusal as “refusal because of religious beliefs”.
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[13]
The family of the Baptist K. Vladeanu (Beltsy, Moldavian SSR), who works in Beltsy city as a fireman, has been trying to emigrate from the USSR since 1975.
In an ‘Open Statement’ dated 8 October 1976 Konstantin Vladeanu writes:
“We have renounced our citizenship …
“We are now applying for the 20th time to the authorities and various official institutions for permission to emigrate from the USSR to Canada … our uncle has sent us an invitation twice, but we did not receive it. This is already the second year that State officials have intercepted our correspondence with Canada.
“… We were not allowed to invite our uncle from Canada to our father’s funeral, because all capitalists are dangerous.
“For our faith in God we have for many years been subjected to interrogations and refused work in our special fields … we were also taken off the housing list for flats …
“On 11 March 1976 comrade Babin, the police chief, threatened to send me to a psychiatric hospital. Many government officials have threatened that my children will be orphaned.
“On 4 May 1976 comrade Shupnikov, the political officer, threatened that the Soviet secret service would kill me and our uncle in Canada, in the same way as they had killed Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter, in a motor accident.
“Similar things were said by Captain Skortsa (from Kishinev): ‘… Alliluyeva also wanted to spit against the wind and ended up in an automobile accident; we have many such accidents to our credit’ …
“… Comrade Dragan, who was in charge of the third shift, said: ‘We have orders to expel all believers from the unit … first we’ll take away Vladeanu’s work permit.”
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On 28 March 1977, Vladeanu appealed to Brezhnev, Rudenko, K. Waldheim, the Committee in Defence of Human Rights in the USSR and to all Christians of the world:
“Statement 31
“On 26 January 1977 I was sacked from my job in my absence … On 21 March 1977 I was summoned to OVIR. Comrade Rotaru told me, ‘I must give you an answer to your letter-statement 27, The answer remains the same: you cannot go abroad without an invitation. I don’t know anything about your allegation that the invitations have been withheld’.”
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On 8 April 1977, K. Vladeanu appealed to Brezhnev, Kosygin, Podgorny, to the heads of governments who signed the Helsinki Agreement, and to all Christians of the world:
“Statement 33
“Because faith cannot exist side by side with atheism in this country, because we cannot spread our faith freely here … we want to leave Russia and find a peaceful life in any country where people are not only not tried or persecuted for their religion, but where we are not forbidden to spread it, as God has called us to do.”
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[14]
On 3 August the Pentecostal Smushko’s family (from Vilnius) sent a statement appealing to Brezhnev and Kosygin:
“Respecting your unalterable desire to build a non-religious society according to the clearly-proclaimed formula ‘Religion and Communism are incompatible’ … we have realized that we have no other choice than to ask to emigrate on the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights …. the Covenant on rights … and also the Helsinki Agreement …”
Vladimir Smushko has already served a term of 5 years under a ‘religious Article’ (= Article 227 of the RSFSR Criminal Code).
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[15]
On 26 June Pentecostals and Baptists sent Brezhnev a ‘Fifth Statement’.
They asked that the procedure for filling out emigration applications should be made simpler; that members of congregations should be allowed to emigrate in groups, not in the usual family or individual way, regardless of whether this or that particular family had an invitation; that people preparing to emigrate should not be called up for military service or should be prematurely demobilized; that poor families should have the emigration tax lowered, or lent to them from State funds by agreement, or that they should be allowed to accept financial help from believers abroad.
A month ago, in the ‘Fourth Statement’, 1,700 people wanting to emigrate were mentioned (//CCE 45). The ‘Fifth Statement’ now names 3,500 people.
“If the spirit of Helsinki is not a deception or just a miserable piece of paper, then let your high decree go out to all executive organs and institutions, ordering them not to torment us but to let us go in peace, to remove all barriers and obstacles to our leaving the country.”
The authors ask that the reply to their statement be sent to N. P. Goretoi in the village of Starotitarovka.
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Germans
[16]
After their involuntary return from Moscow (CCE 45.15) those who participated in the trip were summoned more than once for ‘chats’.
The authorities, threatening to start a criminal case against them under Article 180 (Kazakh SSR Criminal Code: “violation of the residence regulations”), are demanding that the Germans who handed in their passports (CCE 41.10 & //CCE 42) should take them back again.
The following have been sentenced under Article 180: Yakov Peters (CCE 45.15) and Ivan Teirer, to one year in the camps; Albert Gerleman to six months in the camps (CCE 45.15 was mistaken on this point); and Kornei Shults, the father of nine children (CCE 45.15), and Vitmaier (CCE 42.3) to one year of corrective labour.
On 10 June 1977, Nelly Teirer (CCE 45.15), wife of Ivan Teirer and mother of three children, was given a suspended sentence of one year in the camps under the same Article (180). Nelly Teirer was taken to court by force. The court asked her to take back her passport, but she refused.
The brothers Gennady and Yakov Shults, and Genrikh Redikop and his son Ivan, were arrested in June in Issyk (Yesik), a town in Kazakhstan’s Alma-Ata Region.
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[17]
In 1966 Teodor Dymko (from Rostov Region) applied for permission to visit his father in West Germany.
In 1968 he received a refusal, without any explanation, Dymko and his family renounced Soviet citizenship and applied for permission to live permanently in West Germany. They received another refusal. Now they have appealed for help to the delegates of the 35 countries at the Belgrade Conference.
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[18]
The father of Agnessa Federau, Jogann Vins, was arrested in 1937, a few months before she was born.
Her mother was arrested in 1941 and shot in 1942. Agnessa first saw her father in 1948. Later both her mother and her father were exculpated.
Jogann Vins emigrated to West Germany in 1974. Since June 1975 Agnessa has been applying to the Chelyabinsk OVIR for emigration to West Germany, to be with her father. She has already been refused three times.
On 10 July 1977 A. N. Makarov, deputy head of the Chelyabinsk UVD, told her that her case did not ‘come within’ the Final Act of the Helsinki Conference. Agnessa Federau has already appealed to the CPSU Central Committee and to the Visa & Registration Department (OVIR) of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.
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[19]
Edgar Zommerfeld, a resident of Chernyakhovsk (Kaliningrad Region), is trying to obtain permission to emigrate from the USSR to his relatives in West Germany.
On 10 May he was refused for the fifth time. On 17 May 1977, the head of the Kaliningrad UVD told him: “Since we are defending the interests of the Station, we do not consider it necessary to let you out. So go away and get back to work.”
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Those Who Have Left
[20]
Moscow. On 27 May the linguist Igor Melchuk (CCE 40.13, CCE 43.14) left the USSR.
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[21]
On 14 June Yury Mnyukh, a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group (CCE 44.6, CCE 45.18 [19]), left the USSR.
On the eve of his departure he received a summons from Moscow KGB headquarters to come and see investigator V. V. Katalikov, but he could not go, as he had spent the day at the customs. When he left, he was not allowed to take out photographs of Solzhenitsyn, Turchin, Amalrik, T. Semyonova (daughter of Ye. Bonner), her husband Efrem Yankelevich and her children, or a group photograph of Sakharov, Bonner and Yury Mnyukh.
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[22]
In June Vladimir Solovyov and his wife Yelena Klepikova left (see CCE 45.17, CCE 46.19, //CCE 39).
In July-August 1977, the Jewish ‘refuseniks’ M. Azbel (CCE 45.5), V. Fain (//CCE 43, //CCE44, CCE 45.5) and Arkady Polishchuk (see CCE 53.19-1) emigrated.
July saw the emigration of the lawyer L. A. Yudovich, who defended Kronid Lyubarsky, Gabriel Superfin, Sergei Grigoryants (//CCE 38) and Andrei Tverdokhlebov.
Leningrad. In May and June 1977 the following people emigrated: A. Abramov (//CCE 35, CCE 42), L. Rudkevich (CCE 42, CCE 45.18 [17]), I. Levin [2] and E. Ilina (//CCE 43).
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[23]
In June the following former political prisoners emigrated from the USSR: Alexander Feldman (CCE 30.5, CCE 45.11-3), Oleg Vorobyov (CCE 42.4-4) and Yakov Suslensky (//CCE 27, CCE 44.17-3; see also CCE 46.21).
Suslensky was one of the initiators of the movement to adopt the status of political prisoner.
On 28 March Suslensky, who had already been given his emigration documents, was summoned to the KGB office in the town of Bendery (Moldavian SSR). There he had to sign a promise that until his emigration from the USSR he would not engage in anti-Soviet activities. Suslensky was given a warning according to the 25 December 1972 Decree of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet.
The warning contained references to his attempt to smuggle seven sentences of his friends, and copies of his own statements, out of Vladimir Prison, as well as his active correspondence with former camp inmates and their families. Suslensky’s daughter Raisa got a reference from her place of study, Odessa Polytechnic Institute, only after her father had threatened to set himself on fire.
During a customs inspection of his belongings at Ungeny station, which was carried out twice, letters from his friends, personal papers, and books of the Stalin period were confiscated. Suslensky was threatened with criminal prosecution and photographed with the confiscated books and papers.
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(See also ‘Releases’ “In the Prisons and Camps” CCE 46.10-2).
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NOTES
- According to documents on Ivanov’s cases, the first of his two imprisonments was in fact on a trumped-up charge of ‘hooliganism’.
See document 13 of the Moscow Helsinki Group: full Russian text in Sbornik dokumentov … (see note 1), Vol. 2: partial English translation in Documents of the Public Groups … (see note 1, pp.74-78).
↩︎ - On Ilya Levin, see CCE 39.13 [10], CCE 42.3 [3], CCE 44.15 [3] and CCE 45.18 [4]
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A Chronicle of Current Events 