Chauvinist Activities in Law-Making, 1973 (31.22)

<<No 31 : 17 May 1974 >>

Halt the Anti-Socialist Activities of the Chauvinists

in Soviet Law-Making and in the Theory and Practice of Law!

A document addressed to the CPSU Politburo, the USSR Council of Ministers, the USSR Supreme Soviet, the Commission for Legislative Proposals, the Constitution Commission, the UN Committee for Human Rights, the USSR Ministry of Justice, the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), the USSR KGB, the Institute of State and Law for the USSR and the Socialist Countries, and the organs of the press (1973, 21 pages).

The beginning of the document analyses the legislative acts of 1944 to 1967, which directed “the punitive organs onto the path of anti-socialist tyranny”. Special attention is paid not only to the “deportation” decree of 1944 and the decree of 1946 which prescribed 20 years’ hard labour for violating the regime of the special settlements, but also to the “exculpation” decree of 1967, which was in essence designed to “liquidate” the very concept “Crimean Tatar”.

The document reports that the adoption of the decree was preceded by a special session of the Politburo of the Party Central Committee on 20 June 1967. The following day representatives of the Crimean Tatars were received by the Central Committee where they were given assurances that the suppression of the whole nation would be recognized as criminal (but that the deportation itself “remained in force”), and that they would be given opportunities to hold information meetings. However, a mass meeting in Tashkent was cruelly broken up and 12 people were tried.

The current position of the Crimean Tatars is characterized as “exile status throughout the whole country” and “a status of genocide”. “National equality has been subordinated to the regime of the residence permit and job finding.”

The introduction notes the avalanche of judicial and extra-judicial persecution to which the Crimean Tatars were subjected following the 1967 decree — in Uzbekistan, Ukraine, the Crimea and Moscow. There follows the basic part of this document, devoted to an analysis of the “ways in which socialist legality is being liquidated”: to an analysis, in fact, of the acts of persecution mentioned above in view of their divergence from the criminal code, the criminal procedural code, and other legal prescriptions.

These episodes are described as being the most brazenly illegal: the breaking up of meetings, assemblies and national holidays; the beating up of Crimean Tatar representatives in the Central Committee reception room in 1966; the round-ups, arrests and deportations from Moscow under armed escort of 800 representatives in May 1968; the terror in the Crimea; the battle of Chirchik in April 1968 during the festival of Derviza (CCE 2.4); the battles in Bekabad, Angren and Andizhan in 1966-1968; the murder by the police of Femi Aliyev in Yangi-Yul; and the murder of Fevzi Seidaliyev in Dnepropetrovsk Prison.

In order to pass unjust sentences, arbitrary and illegal amalgamations and separations of cases are practised.

For example, the division into three separate cases of those who participated in the laying of wreaths at the foot of Lenin’s monument in Andizhan on 21 April 1971 enabled the minor Abduveli Ablyazov to be dealt with in secret. The case of Nurfet Murakhas (CCE 14.11, [7], CCE 17.14-3 [38]) was separated and then closed by the Supreme Court of the Uzbek Republic in 1969 “for lack of evidence”.

But the Fergana Region Court convicted him on the same materials in 1970, In January 1968 the Uzbek Procuracy amalgamated the cases of E. M. Memetov of Moscow, Yu. B. Osmanov from Serpukhov, T. Memetov from Margelan, and S.0. Osmanov from Samarkand, none of whom were connected with each other as regards the actions with which they were charged. In violation of the norms about place of trial, the proceedings were held in Tashkent (CCE 2.4).

Significant space is given to an examination of the role of the defence in the trials of Crimean Tatars. Barristers began to feel instinctively for the correct line of defence (pointing to the lawfulness of the national movement’s demands and insisting on the observation of procedural norms), which, although it does not lead to victory, “lays bare the coercion…and the pretence of justice”.

This was followed by administrative pressure: court motions penalizing barristers [¹] and the banning of Moscow barristers from Uzbekistan.

The last three trials — those of Aishe Seitmuratova and Lenur Ibragimov (CCE 23.7); Dzheppar Akimov; and Reshat Dzhemilev (this issue CCE 31.1 and CCE 31.2) demonstrate the “virtual liquidation of the right to a defence.”

In the trial of Yu. B. Osmanov in 1968 his statements to the Procurator General protesting against the violation of legality in his case were used as proof of guilt (CCE 2.4-1). A similar episode occurred in the trial of Omer Bayev (Simferopol, 1968; CCE 7.1).

The summary of the analysis asserts that legislation and the conduct of trials, in their relation to the Crimean Tatars, serve to persecute the whole people.

“Every trial is an act which furthers the systematic destruction of the people and consolidates the seizure of its national territory, an action which encourages in the punitive organs and the people a sense of the hopelessness of the struggle for national equality.”

“The Crimean Tatar people demand in the name of the preservation of the dictatorship of the proletariat that the administrative and punitive organs be restrained and placed once and for all within the framework of their competence, under the strictest control of the people and the Party.”

The statement is rounded off by:

An analysis of memoranda of the NKVD-MOOP of the Uzbek Republic of 8 February 1968 and 15 February 1968 on the death rate of working Crimean Tatars in the special settlements of Uzbekistan. (this issue CCE 31.26).

The data of the first memorandum (death rate of 8.6%) was used at trials to charge the Crimean Tatars with slander. In the second memorandum the official figure of mortality rose to 17.6%. “Even this figure, which makes the ‘harvest’ of fascism on Soviet soil over four years pale in comparison … seemed to the punitive organs to give completely reasonable and convincing grounds for a verdict of guilty.” Subsequent trials made do without statistics.

There follows an analysis which shows how the indices of mortality in the memoranda have been understated:

The number of deportees who arrived in exile between 1 and 8 July 1944 is not mentioned. It is concealed that deportees registered even later, a fact confirmed by the significant increase in the number of families between 1 July 1944 and 1 January 1945.
The replenishment of special settlers in Uzbekistan also continued throughout 1945, on account of transfers from special settlements in the Gorky, Yaroslavl and other Regions. The fact that replenishment did occur is confirmed by the discrepancy between the number of men who died (2,565) mentioned in memorandum number 373 and the drop in the number of men on the register (287). But the scale of replenishment is concealed. Meanwhile, by the end of the war there were 33,618 Crimean Tatars in the army. After demobilization almost all of them came under the surveillance of the special commandants’ offices in Uzbekistan, as did thousands of men from special camps in the north and in Tula (labour-armies). By concealing replenishment, the documents have understated the mortality rate.
Those who died between 18 May 1944 and 1 July 1945 are not included, i.e. those who died en route and during the early, especially hard days of exile.
Some of the mortality has been concealed by not indicating any births in the memorandum.
The authors of the memoranda explain the difference between the number who died and the number who dropped off the register by desertions and imprisonments for crimes, but this difference is one of 1,000 for women and 2,700 for children; meanwhile, according to the memoranda the relative number of women to children was 1:1.4. Thus, either this is direct evidence of one of the means of falsifying the mortality figure, or that the regime of punitive surveillance considered children the major criminals.
The information for 1 July 1944 is not given according to age and sex. Such information would have unmasked yet another crime – the deportation as traitors of exclusively women, old people and children.

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