On 31 December 1974, the Vinnitsa Regional Court sentenced Mikhail Shayevich SHTERN to eight years in an intensified regime labour camp and confiscation of his property.
Shtern was charged with receiving bribes and with swindling.
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M. S. Shtern was born in 1918.
He graduated from a medical institute in 1944 and has been working as a doctor for 30 years. In 1943, while he was a medical student, Shtern joined the Party. In 1947 Doctor Shtern founded in Chernovtsy the first dispensary in the Ukraine specializing in thyroid and endocrinological problems and he himself worked there as the Senior Doctor.
In 1952 he moved to the town of Vinnitsa. In 1963 an endocrinological dispensary was founded in Vinnitsa. Since 1963 Shtern has been working as the director of the consultants’ polyclinic section of this dispensary.
M. S. Shtern has two children: Viktor and August.
Viktor Shtern was born in 1941.
In 1968 he graduated from the Physics Faculty at Novosibirsk University. In 1973 Viktor also graduated from the special department (the evening stream for ‘engineers’) in the Faculty of Higher Mathematics and Cybernetics at Moscow University. In September 1973 he went to live with his parents in Vinnitsa. However, in Vinnitsa Viktor could only get work delivering tele- grams.
August Shtern was born in 1945.
In 1968 he graduated from the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Novosibirsk University as a ‘medical-biologist’. In 1972 August received the higher degree of ‘Cand.Sc. (Technological Sciences)’. In 1973 he graduated from the evening course at the Mathematical-Mechanical Faculty of Leningrad University, after which he moved to Chernovtsy.
In November 1973 August Shtern applied to the Chernovtsy Visa & Registration Department (OVIR) for permission to emigrate to Israel. In April 1974 M. S. Shtern was summoned to Vinnitsa 0VIR was asked if he objected to his son’s emigration to Israel. M. S. Shtern replied that his son was now sufficiently adult to decide things for himself, and that if his son wanted to emigrate he would raise no objections.
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On 12 May 1974, when M. S. Shtern was away from home, Viktor Shtern and his mother were summoned on different pretexts by the authorities and delayed for four hours from returning home.
During this time, unknown persons broke into the Shterns’ apartment, for an unknown purpose. Realizing on their return home that this had happened, the Shterns sent a complaint to the Procurator General of the USSR and the chairman of the KGB in Moscow. They have still received no reply to this complaint.
On 28 May August Shtern told his parents that he had been summoned to the 0VIR. M. S. Shtern and his wife left for Chernovtsy. On 29 May M. S. Shtern was arrested in Chernovtsy. On the same day, searches were carried out at the Shterns’ apartment in Vinnitsa and at two apartments in Chernovtsy. Officials of the police and the Vinnitsa City Procurator’s Office entered the Shterns’ apartment without giving any warning or ringing the bell, but simply by opening the front door. Only three of the 10 men who entered showed their identity cards after insistent requests to do so. The search in Vinnitsa lasted for three days. The objects confiscated included microfilms and authors’ copies of scientific articles belonging to Viktor Shtern, a list of scientific works and a notebook. Two invitations to Israel were also confiscated.
Kravchenko, a procurator of the investigation section of the Vinnitsa Regional Procurator’s Office, who was in charge of the search, said in the presence of Viktor Shtern, his wife and the witnesses: “The charges are related to your family’s desire to go to the state of Israel.”
The objects confiscated during the searches at Chernovtsy included August Shtern’s D.Sc. diploma, the manuscript of a scientific monograph and a scientific archive. On 29 May August Shtern was told by Chernovtsy 0VIR that he had been given permission to receive an exit visa to Israel, but that its provision was being delayed at the request of the Vinnitsa Regional Procurator’s Office.
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INVESTIGATION
The investigation of M. S. Shtern’s case was carried out by a team of investigators from the Vinnitsa Procurator’s Office, with Kravchenko at their head.
More than 2,000 people were interrogated, including anyone who had been a patient of Dr Shtern’s. The openly biased nature of the investigation was obvious, for example, from the words used by a deputy procurator of the Ilenetsky district, who, when seeking the necessary evidence from the witnesses M. Soloveichuk and E. Timoshenko, told them: “We must save the lives of children who could be poisoned by the doctor Shtern.” The pre-trial investigation ended on 18 October.
However, as early as 14 November (a month before the trial!) a circular issued by the UkSSR Ministry of Health, signed by Bratus, the Ukrainian Minister of Health, referring to a letter from the UkSSR Ministry of Justice (dated 30 August) and to a report from the UkSSR Procurator’s Office (dated 12 October), stated: In the town of Vinnitsa M. S. Shtern, former head of the polyclinic at the endocrinological health-centre, has been extorting money and asking patients to bribe him to give them consultations in the clinic without a note of recommendation from the regional hospitals. He has received more than 1,000 roubles from 50 patients. In addition, this money-grabber has sold medicines at excessively high prices.
M. S. Shtern is himself very ill (he has partial tuberculosis of the lungs in its progressive form, an ulcer ailment, stenocardia, a deformation of the spinal discs, a slipped disc and gall-stones). Nevertheless, all his wife’s appeals for a change in his conditions of detention were in vain and M. S. Shtern spent half a year in prison until his trial.
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TRIAL
The trial began on 11 December. The presiding judge was Orlovsky.
Krivoruchko conducted the prosecution. The defence was represented by the Moscow lawyer D. M. Akselbant. The charges against the accused related to 19 episodes classified as ‘swindling’ and 21 episodes of ‘receiving bribes’.
The ‘swindling’, according to the indictment, consisted in M. S. Shtern’s having sold medicines for a higher price than they cost him. The indictment stated, for example: “He apparently procured some of the “foreign” medicines in a dispensary, and then deceitfully sold them to patients and their relatives as “foreign” medicines.”
Referring to one of these ‘swindling’ episodes, the indictment stated: “On 10 December 1971, after examining the youth I. M. Sushko, who was suffering from moderate retardation of sexual development, and having made out a prescription for him, Shtern offered two bottles of pereodine (worth 15 kopecks) to the youth’s father, M. A. Sushko, and when Sushko asked him the price of this medicine, he replied 10 roubles, thus making a profit of 9 roubles 70 kopecks.”
At the trial, this indictment began to look quite different:
M. A. Sushko (b. 1928, a collective farmer): Shtern never asked me for money. I gave him 10 roubles. The medicine really helped my son. I went to him later for a check-up, but I gave him no money. My son is now well and serving in the army.
Procurator : You asked him for this medicine (these two bottles)?
Sushko: Shtern gave them to me himself. And the price was on the bottles.
Procurator : What price?
Sushko: 30 kopecks each.
Procurator : So why did you pay him 10 roubles, and not five roubles, not 30 kopecks?
Sushko: He didn’t extort anything from me, I gave him the 10 roubles voluntarily.
Procurator: But at the pre-trial investigation you stated that Shtern had said the medicine cost 10 roubles.
Sushko : Oh, no, I gave him the 10 roubles voluntarily. He didn’t extort anything from me.
Procurator: But did you ask Shtern how much the two bottles cost?
Sushko: Yes, and he told me, 30 kopecks each.
Judge: Can you guess why the Procurator keeps tormenting you? No? Re- member what you said at the pre-trial investigation. These are your words: ‘I asked Shtern how much the Choriogonin cost, he told me 10 roubles, and I gave him 10 roubles.’
Sushko: But I was right there in the consulting room …
Judge: Wait, answer the question. Did Shtern say how much the medicines cost?
Sushko: No, he didn’t.
Judge: Then which is the truth — what you’re saying now, in court, or what you said before?
Sushko: If you’ve got it written down there, that must be the truth.
Procurator : What did you write about this case in your statement?
Sushko: That I don’t have anything against the doctor.
Procurator : Who wrote this? (Brings him a sheet of paper.) Read it aloud.
Sushko: (reading word by word) ‘He said that the medicine cost 10 roubles’.
Judge: So did you write this, with your own hand? Tell us, did he name the price, or did he not? Remember Shtern’s words, when he gave you the medicine.
Sushko: Two roubles, and something.
Judge: But you keep giving contradictory evidence; don’t you see, you must tell us what really happened.
Sushko: Well, he said it cost 30 kopecks a bottle.
Procurator : Who’s been talking to you about this matter?
Judge: You are not allowed to ask questions in that manner.
Procurator: I apologise. Did someone come to see you before the trial and try to tell you what to say here?
Sushko: The procurator … or someone … (Laughter in the courtroom.)
Judge: Are there any more questions?
Defence Lawyer: You have filed a statement that you have no complaint to make against Shtern?
Sushko: Yes, that’s what I wrote.
Defence Lawyer: And you really don’t have any complaint to make against him?
Sushko: No, I’ve nothing against him.
Defence Lawyer: Why did you give Shtern the 10 roubles? Was it because of his good manner of consultation, or what?
Sushko: Yes, it was because he gave me a good consultation, he explained to me everything about what was to be taken Defence Lawyer : When you came to Shtern’s consulting room, did they receive you at once, and did Shtern examine your son?
Sushko: Yes.
Defence Lawyer: Before he gave you the medicine, did Shtern ask you for any money or did you hear people talking about the subject, in the corridor, perhaps?
Sushko : No, nobody said anything of the sort.
M. Shtern: Thank you for your evidence.
Procurator : I protest, Comrade Judge; witnesses are not thanked for giving evidence.
M. Shtern: Did you know that your son often came to me on his own for injections?
Sushko: Yes, he used to go.
M. Shtern . Did you give him any money for those drugs?
Sushko: No, I never gave him any money for that.
In spite of all this, the Sushko episode went from the indictment into the verdict without alteration.
According to the indictment, Shtern received ‘bribes’ for using his professional position as director of the consultants’ polyclinic section to examine patients without referral, to refer patients to the Medical Board on Labour Fitness, to assign them to a hospital, or to receive them at his home …
Ninety-four witnesses were invited to testify for the prosecution at the trial.
The defence attorney applied to the court for permission to call another 47 witnesses. Without giving any reason, the court allowed him to call only three of these.
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CLOSING SPEECHES
In his speech for the prosecution, the procurator paid no attention to the fact that many of the charges in the indictment had not been confirmed in the court hearing, and merely repeated the indictment and demanded a punishment of nine years in a labour camp.
The defence lawyer, in his speech, drew the court’s attention to the fact that his client had not been employed as a government official in the sense defined by the Criminal Code, and that consequently his actions (referring patients to the Labour Fitness Commission, assigning people to hospitals, or examining them medically) had no legal consequences, and that therefore no money received by him could be classified as a bribe. The defence lawyer asked for his client to be acquitted.
In his closing speech, Shtern [1] fully denied all the charges made against him.
He stated his conviction that the whole ‘case’ against him had been fabricated in connection with his family’s wish to emigrate to Israel.
On 31 December 1974, after repeated and mysterious delays, the verdict was pronounced.
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NOTES
- On Shtern, see CCE 35.10 [1], CCE 40.9-2 and CCE 44.17-3.
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