[1]
“Lighted Candles and a Forgotten Debt”
On 15 April 1974 the newspaper Tbilisi published an article by N. Lekishvili, the third secretary of the Tbilisi Komsomol City Committee, and A. Shengelia, a correspondent of the newspaper: ‘Lighted Candles and a Forgotten Debt’.
Although the Soviet Constitution proclaims freedom of conscience, says the article, it is impossible to reconcile oneself to the fact that young people, and Komsomol members in particular, take part in the religious festival of Easter. The article mentions the names of about 30 young people who visited churches in Tbilisi during Easter 1974.
The article does not say, however, that the Easter ceremony was also visited by officials from the staff of the Tbilisi city party committee and from district Komsomol committees. Amongst these officials were N. Lekishvili, secretaries of Komsomol district committees, N. Bichiashvili, Tsiuri Korshiya and B. Kadagidze, and the head of the sports section of the city Komsomol committee, O. Baratashvili. The Komsomol officials themselves lit candles and ‘prayed’. N. Lekishvili, for example, conducted himself in this way. Other Komsomol officials stood in the street, lying in wait for when young people left the church, at which point the latter were asked to go along to a people’s volunteer police office, where a police official would take down their particulars. The following episode is also known:
A young woman came out of the Zion Church with a year-old baby in her arms. Beside the volunteer police office her path was barred by Tsiuri Korshiya [a woman], who asked her to come into the office. The woman refused. Then the child was snatched out of her arms and she was forcibly dragged into the office. She began to shout and one of the passers-by intervened on her behalf. After that the child was brought back and the woman went away.
In a private conversation Komsomol officials admitted that they themselves were unhappy about their actions, but believed that they had no alternative.
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[2]
The Case of Victor Mikhailovich Ilinov
On 21 March 1974 the newspaper Youth of Georgia (the organ of the central committee of the Komsomol of Georgia) printed an article, ‘A Man with a Split Personality’, about Victor Mikhailovich Ilinov, a resident of the town of Ochamchire in Georgia.
Ilinov is a joiner, stove-maker and roofer; he is also the presbyter of a local comgregation of schismatic Baptists [1], and during a search at his flat theological literature was confiscated. The article calls Ilinov an ‘enemy of the people’; he was charged with the fact that services conducted by him were attended by adults and children, who listened to the sermons and sang psalms; also with the fact that he had advised his son and other children not to join the Pioneers. At an interrogation Ilinov’s son answered that he would not serve in the army because he did not want to kill people.
Ilinov was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment.
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[3]
To Start Life Anew
Vladimir Dremlyuga (see CCE 3.3; CCE 4.1 & CCE 17.12 [8]), one of the participants in the demonstration on Red Square on 25 August 1968 against the sending of troops into Czechoslovakia, was sentenced to three years of ordinary-regime camps under Articles 190-1 and 190-3 (RSFSR Criminal Code). He served his sentence in the Soviet Far East, in Yakutia.
In the summer of 1971 Dremlyuga was sentenced to a second term (CCE 20.11 [13] & CCE 21.1); he was given another three years for “deliberately false, slanderous utterances that defame the Soviet political and social system” (Article 190-1) and transferred to a strict-regime camp. About thirty witnesses who were prisoners in the camp with Dremlyuga were interrogated in the case, they testified that Dremlyuga had conducted ‘anti-Soviet conversations’ with them. There are grounds to suppose that Dremlyuga did in fact share his Ideas with one of the witnesses, but he was not even acquainted with many of the other so-called ‘witnesses’. Soon afterwards, many of the witnesses were released before their sentences were up.
In June 1974 Dremlyuga was freed on parole, 1½ months before the end of his sentence.
The newspaper Socialist Yakutia of 9 June 1974 featured an article about V Dremlyuga by I. Voronov, ‘To Start Life Anew’. (This article is reproduced in full below.)
*
To Start Life Anew
His biographical particulars are as follows; Vladimir Aleksandrovich Dremlyuga, born in 1940. Place of birth: Saratov. Family status: married, no children. Serving a sentence on a second conviction. He has been in places of imprisonment since 1968.
We received this information later on, from his case file and other documents, but at first it was not without surprise and, it must be confessed, a certain mistrust that we read a letter from prisoner Vladimir Dremlyuga, permeated with pain about his past, which begins:
“Dear Editor,
‘Whilst in imprisonment I have subjected my past life and activity to an extremely thorough analysis and have tried to gain an understanding and make art objective appraisal of my actions, for which I have twice been tried as a criminal.
“I should like to share my thoughts on the pages of your newspaper.
“I am 34. It is difficult to start life anew at such an age, and even more difficult to change one’s views and habits and to renounce the aberrations which until recently I thought to be my beliefs. Nevertheless, I have found within myself the strength to admit and state openly that I have profoundly realized and fully recognized the mistakenness of the position which I adopted earlier the incorrectness of the actions I performed, their harm to the Soviet people and their incompatibility with its ideas, views and policies. Hard as it may be I want to admit openly the justice of the legal judgments pronounced on me.”
Over and over again we leaf through the official documents of the corrective-labour institutions — the references, reports and petitions — and try to discover the first obstacle against which the author of the letter stumbled.
Perhaps it was in 1964 when, as a student at Leningrad University, he was expelled during his second year for unworthy conduct, or later, in 1968 It was about this time that Vladimir Dremlyuga — stoker, driver and, lastly, mechanic m charge of a gas boiler-room — came to the attention of P. Yakir and V Krasin. It was not difficult for them to mould out of a failed student a figure like themselves, someone who was willing to oblige in executing their will.
Yet, Vladimir Dremlyuga made a good start to his life in Melitopol. The workers’ collective in the Vorovsky factory cordially welcomed yesterday’s schoolboy into its midst, and helped him to master the subtleties of the profession of pattern-cutter. His comrades envied him in a kindly way when the factory apprentice went from his machine to university.
‘. . . In condemning my past, I state with full responsibility that if it were possible to start life anew, then never, under any circumstances, would I again be amongst those who took part in the escapade which happened in 1968. This assertion has been provoked not by a passing pang of regret and not by the fear of any new punishment but because I have fully realized and recognized the harmfulness of such activity to the Soviet people, its incompatibility with the interests and opinions of society . . . Nor would I repeat the second mistake, when, without having comprehended what had happened, without having appraised it dispassionately and objectively, and at the same time believing myself to have been undeservedly wronged by the organs of Soviet authority, I continued to permit myself to express politically unhealthy and harmful opinions in imprisonment, for which I was sentenced a second time under article 190-1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code.
The sincerity of my letter should not be doubted, as the writing of it is a purely voluntary act, I should like to add to this statement that what mainly influenced the change in my views and the formation of new convictions . . . were the materials from the trial of Krasin and Yakir, who adhered in the past to positions similar to mine ..,
Tn conclusion, I wish to assure the Soviet people and its organs of authority that henceforth I shall not devote myself to anti-social activity and shall never find myself on the side of the enemies of the socialist state. By my honest labour and exemplary conduct I shall attempt to prove that I am no longer a man lost to society and that I can be a useful and needed member of it
Vladimir Dremlyuga.’
We have chatted with the administration of the corrective-labour institution and with people who have observed Dremlyuga’s behaviour for a number of years and done everything to return him to honest creative labour. No, it was not fear of the future that brought Vladimir Dremlyuga to the conclusion that he had to admit his guilt and repent of his crimes, but rather his awareness of the harmfulness of the actions he had committed, an awareness that came to him after deep reflection and a reinterpretation of the past. And the petition handed over to the judicial organs by the administration of the corrective-labour institutions, requesting the premature release of Vladimir Dremlyuga, was fully justified.
Voronov, our correspondent.
*
A facsimile of the last paragraph of Dremlyuga’s letter to the editors was printed alongside the article.
The background to Dremlyuga’s release and the article in Socialist Yakutia is as follows.
As early as November last year Dremlyuga discovered that his camp mates were again being summoned to interrogations concerning him. At that time, in November and December, a representative of the Procuracy arrived at the camp and informed Dremlyuga that another criminal case under Article 190-1 for ‘oral agitation in the camp’ had been instituted against him. This man, or another representative of authority, suggested to Dremlyuga that he write a statement of repentance for his actions. Dremlyuga did this. After a time he was told that the text he had composed was unsatisfactory and it was suggested that he sign another text. Dremlyuga did this also.
During the winter and spring of 1974 many visitors came to see Dremlyuga in the camp, from the chairman of the KGB for the Yakut Autonomous Republic down to journalists from Socialist Yakutia. It was at that time that Dremlyuga’s letter to the editors was composed.
After his release Dremlyuga was given a residence permit for Melitopol, where his mother lives. He was advised, on his way there, to call in on a KGB official, whose name is not known to the Chronicle, in Moscow.
Having arrived in Moscow, Dremlyuga did not go anywhere. Then, at the beginning of July, they came to fetch him from the flat of N. P. Lisovskaya, where he was staying, and invited him to go and see the above-mentioned figure. Chatting with Dremlyuga, this KGB official advised him to leave for Melitopol as quickly as possible and even assisted him in buying tickets for the train. During this conversation he advised Dremlyuga not to call in on Academician Sakharov, as the latter was ‘not quite right in the head’. On 11 July Dremlyuga left for Melitopol.
It has become known that Vladimir Dremlyuga intends to leave the USSR (CCE 34.18) [2].
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NOTES
- On these ‘reform Baptists’ (or Initsiativniki) see CCE 16 and (especially regarding Georgy Vins) CCEs 34 and 35.
↩︎ - Dremlyuga left the USSR in December 1974.
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