On 1 April 1974 a number of searches were carried out in Leningrad in connection with “Case 15″. The case was initiated by the Leningrad KGB “due to the circulation of anti-Soviet literature” in the city.
As examples of such literature the investigators have named Marchenko’s My Testimony, Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, a book by Kolakowski, and the Chronicle of Current Events. Searches have been carried out, in particular, at the homes of the writers Mikhail Heifetz [Kheifets] and Vladimir Maramzin, and of medical doctor, Vladimir Zagreba. They belong to the circle of acquaintances of Joseph Brodsky, who left the USSR two years ago.
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In the search at Mikhail Heifetz’s apartment three copies of his introductory article to a samizdat collection of Brodsky’s verse were confiscated.
Also confiscated was Heifetz’s letter to the historian Yakovlev, author of an article “The Prostitute and the Simpleton” (about Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov), published in one of the Soviet publications circulated in foreign countries [1]. The part of this article concerning Solzhenitsyn was re-printed under the title “The Prostitute” in Literaturnaya Gazeta, (20 February 1974).
On 22 April Heifetz was arrested and charged under Article 70 (RSFSR Criminal Code). The investigation is being conducted by two KGB officers, First Lieutenant V. P. Yegerev and Major V. N. Ryabchuk.
Maramzin, Zagreba and Heifetz’s wife, Raisa Glagoleva, have been summoned to interrogations. The literary critic Yefim Etkind (this issue, CCE 32.17-3) has also been interrogated. The investigation has taken greatest interest in Heifetz’s above-mentioned article about Brodsky. In addition, the KGB has shown an interest in a folder, supposedly in Heifetz’s flat before the search, which contained an article by Andrei Amalrik. Heifetz’s wife confirmed the existence of a folder, but did not known what it contained and where it had gone. Zagreba, in particular, was shown a photograph of Amalrik’s article lying on his writing desk.
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in May a search was conducted under Case 15 at the home of Yakov Vinkovetsky, a Master of Geological Science.
Igor Burakhin, a graduate student of Etkind, has also been interrogated under Case 15. A Chronicle of Human Rights in the USSR (1974, No. 8) also reports searches at the flats of Burakhin (CHR calls him ‘Brukhin’) and of his wife, Yelena Vargaftik.
Valery Voskoboinikov testified at an interrogation that he had read both Heifetz’s introductory article to the Brodsky collection and Amalrik’s work at Heifetz’s flat. Subsequently Voskoboinikov confessed to Heifetz’s wife that he had not in fact read Amalrik at Heifetz’s flat. Also interrogated were Karl Levitin from Moscow and the writers Maiya Danini and Boris Strugatsky (at an interrogation investigator Ryabchuk asked Strugatsky for his autograph on a book he had ready in advance). Levitin and Strugatsky denied they had read Heifetz’s article on Brodsky. Confrontations were organized for them with Heifetz, at which the latter testified the reverse; however, Levitin and Strugatsky denied as before that they had read the article.
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Two statements by Vladimir Maramzin in connection with Case 15 have been made public [2].
In the first, dated 3 April 1974, Maramzin reports on the search that was carried out at his home. During the search more than 10,000 sheets of his manuscripts and all Brodsky’s verse were confiscated; a typewriter was also taken away. At an interrogation Ryabchuk warned Maramzin that he might be “turned [from a witness] into an accused”.
In the second statement, dated 30 May, Maramzin writes that Kheifets was not involved in assembling Brodsky’s verse and that for a period of three years he, Maramzin, had been collecting Brodsky’s poetry. He states:
“It was I, too, who undertook another step to preserve the texts which had been collected together with such difficulty: I sent them abroad, where their author now lives … I was moved only by a concern for Russian culture.”
Maramzin also reports that after the search on 1 April he again collected remaining copies of his own confiscated manuscripts and sent them abroad as well. His statement says
“If any publishing-houses or journals are interested in my stories or tales, let them know this: my agreement to their publication is now completely decided.”
Maramzin calls for help to be given to Kheifets’s family: a biographical note on Kheifets and the address of his family follow.
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Mikhail Ruvimovich HEIFETZ (Kheifets) was born in 1934.
In 1955 he graduated from the Herzen Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad with special training in ‘Russian language and literature’. He worked as a school-teacher. In 1965 he received official thanks for his achievements in the teaching and educational field and for his participation in the social life of the school.
Kheifets is the author of several film scenarios. In 1973 he received the Komsomol prize for his film on the ‘People’s Will’ (late 19th-century revolutionaries). Besides this, Kheifets is the winner of a competition for educational films. In 1967 Kheifets’s book The Secretary of the Secret Police was published by the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing-house. Subsequently this book was translated into German and Czech. Kheifets was an active contributor to the Leningrad journals Avrora and Zvezda and to Znanie-Sila.
Now Kheifets’s family — his wife, Raisa Vladimirovna Glagoleva, and two daughters: Olya, who is five, and Natasha, who is seven — have been left without means of subsistence. Their address is: Leningrad, 22 Novorossiiskaya Street, korpus 1, flat 45.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 