In the Camps and Prisons, Sept 1975 (37.5)

<<No 37 : 30 September 1975>>

Mordovia

On 16 July 1975 Vasyl Stus (Camp 3) was beaten up and injured by the common criminal Sidelnikov because he had said aloud that Fridrikh and Malyshevsky (war criminals and friends of Sidelnikov’s), who worked in the dining hall and the clinic, were stealing food and medicaments.

He wanted to bring charges against Sidelnikov but received no answer to his application.

Sidelnikov was punished by being put in the cooler for 15 days. When he appeared in the camp zone after his stay in the cooler, Vasily Lisovoi (CCEs 30 and 33) refused to attend roll-call as a sign of protest. For this he was sent to the punishment barracks (less severe than the cooler) for half a year.

Vasily Stus’s state of health has grown much worse: he suffers from an ulcer disease. Stus has begun to suffer from fainting fits, vomiting blood and a high temperature. Internal bleeding has started to occur (CCEs 24 and 27).

At the end of July he was placed in the camp hospital.

On I March 1975 Vyacheslav Chornovil (Camp 19) announced his renunciation of Soviet citizenship and requested the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet to let him leave the USSR (CCEs 7, 24, 29, 33).

On 11 August 1975 political prisoners in the Mordovian camps began a hunger strike in protest against their inhuman detention conditions.

On the same day Yury Orlov, Grigory Podyapolsky and Malva Landa sent this appeal to the Congressmen of the USA:

“Ever closer contacts are being formed between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. At this time a delegation of Congressmen is visiting our country to get to know it better. We call on the American Congressmen to pay close attention to the situation of Soviet political prisoners. We appeal to you not to remain indifferent to the inhuman conditions in which they are being held, and to the gross infringement of generally accepted human and civil rights and liberties in our country.

“On 11 August the Congressmen’s delegation is to meet members of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet.

“On 11 August the political prisoners in the Mordovian camps are to begin a hunger strike, protesting against their inhuman conditions of detention.

“At the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Soviet government took upon itself certain moral obligations regarding the observance of its citizens’ human rights, particularly the right to freedom of conscience.

“Satisfaction of the demands made by the political prisoners and supported by us . . . would not only improve their situation, but would also serve as an indication of the Soviet government’s readiness to fulfil the pledges it has made.”

The details of the hunger strike of 11 August are, as yet, unknown to the CCE.

Because he adopted the status of political prisoner, Yury Grodetsky was put in the cooler and kept there for 70 days. In the spring of 1975 he was transferred to Vladimir Prison.

The following have been released from the Mordovian camps at the end of their sentences:

Alexander Petrov-Agatov (CCE 33; a month before his release, he was transferred to the KGB’s Lefortovo Investigation Prison in Moscow, from which he was freed on 26 July 1975),
Alexander Romanov (30 August), see CCEs 12 and 17 , and
Lassal Kaminsky, one of the ’hijack case fringe people’ (June; [note 1]). Kaminsky has already left the USSR.

Ilya Glezer (CCEs 24, 27) ended his ‘camp’ term on 7 February and has been sent to eastern Siberia for three years in exile.

Povilas Petronis (CCE 34) and Nijole Sadunaite (this issue, CCE 37.7) have arrived at Camp 3.

Perm

Camp 37 has been built in Chusovoi district.

The ‘hijacker’ Izrail Zalmanson (CCE 18) has already been sent there from Camp 3 in the Mordovian camp complex.

On 10 December 1974, 20 prisoners in Camp 35 (Altman, Antonyuk, Balakhonov, Butman, Gluzman, Gorbal, Davidenko, Zakharchenko, Kalynets, Kandyba, Marchenko, Meshener, Navasardyan, Ogurtsov, Prishlyak, Pronyuk, Superfin, Khnokh, Chekalin, and Shakhverdyan; on these prisoners, see CCE 33.6-2) sent a declaration to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, demanding recognition of their status as political prisoners. They backed their demand with a two-day hunger-strike.

The Presidium replied thus: they had been justly sentenced, they were being held in accordance with the Corrective Labour Code, and the Presidium could see no illegalities.

Because he formally declared himself to be a political prisoner, Yakov Suslensky (see (CCE 16.10 item 9) was put in the cooler. In April he was transferred to Vladimir Prison and put on strict regime for 6 months.

On 2 March 1975, after spending half a year in the punishment barracks, Alexander Chekalin (CCE 33.10). was released into the camp zone (Camp 35).

On 26 March at the morning roll-call Chekalin declared to the officer in charge that he was adopting the status of a political prisoner and tore off the sewn-on flaps showing his surname and brigade number. He was immediately put in the cooler.

On 14 April he was sent by court order to Vladimir Prison to complete his sentence. He arrived at the prison at the beginning of June.

Before his arrest, Chekalin worked as a high-level construction engineer and suffered from occupational ear-ache. In the camp the ear-ache got worse and frequent haemorrhaging from the ears began. In addition, Chekalin suffers from chronic hyper-acidic gastritis.

Soon after coming out of the punishment barracks Gabriel Superfin (Camp 35) was sent to Vladimir Prison until the end of his sentence by a court order dated 5 August. On 1 September he was transferred from the camp.

At the end of the summer the ‘hijacker’ Arie (Leib) Khnokh (Camp 35) was transferred to Vladimir Prison until the end of his sentence.

In May Yevgeny Pashnin was sent to Vladimir Prison. His sentence is 8 years in the camps and 2 years’ exile. If this is the same E. Pashnin who is referred to in CCE 27, then he was sentenced in 1968.

Ashot Navasardyan (CCE 34) has been in Camp 35 since November 1974.

In March 1975, when Navasardyan was lying in the camp hospital and Bagrat Shakhverdyan (CCE 33.6-2) had come out of the punishment barracks after a 3-month term, officials of the Armenian KGB came to visit them and tried to negotiate with them. Soon after this Navasardyan was taken away somewhere.

In April 1975 Razmik Zograbyan (CCEs 34, 36) arrived in the Perm camps from Mordovia. It turns out that among the items in his ‘indictment’ is the fact that he set fire to a portrait of Lenin in Erevan. He is repaying the cost of the portrait, which has been valued at 2,500 roubles.

At the beginning of May Norik Martirosyan (CCE 34) was brought to the Perm camps; a week later he was taken away somewhere, possibly to an ordinary-regime camp.

According to fresh evidence, the brothers Norik and Samvel Martirosyan were tried under the Article ‘Infringement of national and racial equality’ for scattering leaflets, Norik being sentenced to 3 years and Samvel to 2.5 years in ordinary-regime camps. Their sentences began on 21 November 1973.

Those who participated in the hunger strike which lasted many days in Camp 35 in the summer and autumn of 1974 (CCEs 33, 34, 36), are now working in these capacities: Antonyuk as a technical supervisor, Gluzman in the sewing workshop, and Svetlichny as a librarian. They have been allowed to receive the medicines they need.

In January 1975 Vladimir Balakhonov was sent to the psychiatric ward of the hospital in Camp 3 of the Mordovian camp complex (the report in CCE 35 about his transfer to Vladimir was an error). In the spring he was taken back to the Perm camp, this time to Camp 36.

Juozas Grazys (CCE 36) has arrived at Camp 36,

In March on completion of their sentences Bogdan Chernomaz and Grigory Babishchevich (or apparently correctly, Vabishchevich) were released from the Perm camps (on both see CCE 33); in April Semyon Korolchuk (CCE 33) was released, and in June a ‘hijack case fringe man’ Lev Yagman (CCE 20.1) was released. Yagman has now left for Israel.

In the middle of May a special medical commission recommended the release of Mikhail Dyak on medical grounds (CCE 35). He has been released.

Vladimir Prison

Josif Meshener (CCE 35), on arriving in Vladimir, repeated his refusal to work. He justified this decision by the fact that in camp he had come to the conclusion that his true motherland was Israel; by working he was supporting the economy of the USSR, a country hostile to Israel.

As already reported (CCE 33), in the opinion of his fellow-prisoners, Mikhail Yatsishin has a serious mental illness. Yatsishin was sentenced in 1972 to 6 years in the camps for ‘Ukrainian nationalism’. During the investigation he underwent diagnosis in the Serbsky Institute.

In the camp his behaviour was described by the administration as ‘wilful violation of regulations’, for which he was transferred to Vladimir Prison in May 1974. After the transfer his illness worsened and in June it reached a crisis-point; hallucinations of persecution, self-accusations, attempts at suicide. Yatsishin’s cellmates, Bukovsky and Chernoglaz, kept watch on him all night. It was only in the morning that he was taken to the prison hospital. Yatsishin was there for more than half a year.

It is believed that in the spring of 1975 Yatsishin was, finally, sent to a psychiatric hospital.

Mikhail Makarenko (CCE 33) was kept in the same cell as tubercular patients for 18 months. He now has a severe form of tuberculosis himself.

The following is a summary of a news release issued by the Action Group (for the Defence of Human Rights in the USSR) on 17 July.

On 17 July political prisoners in Vladimir Prison held a one-day hunger-strike in protest against prisoners being beaten up, and also against threats of beatings on the part of administration officials.

In particular the following facts are known; in May a warder beat the political prisoner Vitold Abankin with his keys, while the latter was in the cooler.

In May or April the warder Arkady Fedotov beat up Anatoly Efremov (Efremov is a political prisoner who was formerly a common criminal).

Captain Dmitriev, a senior Instructor in political-education work and secretary of the Vladimir Prison Party organization, threatened the political prisoner Yakov Suslensky with a beating while the latter was in the cooler (May 1975).

In January, on the orders of Captain Dmitriev and in his presence, and also in the presence of the major on duty in charge of the prison, the political prisoner David Chernoglaz [note] was beaten up in the prison administration building by three warders specially summoned for the purpose. The reason for the beating was that Chernoglaz had refused to take off a Star of David pendant that he was wearing under his clothing. Chernoglaz was beaten in especially painful ways, even though he offered no resistance.

The majority of beatings or threatened beatings take place while prisoners are in the cooler.

The names of a few of the political prisoners who took part in the protest hunger-strike against beatings and threatened beatings are known; Yury Vudka, Vladimir Bukovsky, Vladlen Pavlenkov, Kronid Lyubarsky, Yury Grodetsky, Vitold Abankin, Yakov Suslensky, Aleksei Safronov, Iosif Meshener, Gunar Rode, Gilel Butman, Georgy Davydov and Mikhail Makarenko.

Evidently those named are far from being all the participants in the hunger-strike.

In Vladimir Prison there are about 50 cooler cells; as a rule, they are not left empty.

The following cases of detention in coolers in 1975 are known.

In January Valentin Moroz was in the cooler for 15 days; he was exhausted after a five-month hunger-strike (CCEs 32-33), which he had ended six weeks previously.

At the end of February David Chernoglaz was put in the cooler for 10 days for using some expressions in letters of complaint to official bodies which the prison administration alleged were libellous. Sometime later, after Chernoglaz had served his punishment, a reply came from the procurator’s office saying that the punishment had been unjustified.

In May the following prisoners were put in the cooler:

• Yury Vudka (CCEs 12 and 14) — from 13 to 28 May — for non-fulfilment of his work norm.

• Vitold Abankin (CCE 33) and Alexei Safronov (CCEs 32 and 33) — from 15 May for 8 days — after they had protested against the incarceration in the cooler of Vudka (with whom they had lived and worked in the same cell), had declared a lengthy hunger- strike, and had refused to work; after their stay in the cooler, Abankin and Safronov, still on hunger-strike, were transferred to the hospital.

• Yakov Suslensky — from 13 to 28 May — for ‘using impermissible expressions in his complaints’ (in one complaint Suslensky compared the conditions in which he and his comrades were imprisoned with those enjoyed by V. I. Lenin in exile; he also remarked on the disproportion between the prisoners ‘crimes’ and punishments — this complaint was addressed to Andropov).

In protest against his unlawful punishment, Suslensky declared a hunger- strike; on the fifth or sixth day of his strike he had a serious heart attack, and for about five hours he lay unconscious on the wet cement floor; twice he was given injections, after which he regained consciousness — and was left lying on the floor. ‘If you die — we’ll just write a report,’ the prison doctor Subocheva told him. Suslensky abandoned his hunger-strike. He was left in the cooler, but for the next few days his bunk was not taken out of the cell during the daytime.

Bobur Shakirov (CCE 33) was put in the cooler for 15 days from 31 March. The order to punish Shakirov for ‘using impermissible expressions in his complaints’ came from the Chief Administration for Corrective Labour Institutions.

At Shakirov’s request, Captain Dmitriev showed him the ‘impermissible expressions’ in his complaints: these turned out to be words like ‘political prisoner’ and ‘political prisoners’. In one of his complaints Shakirov writes that Suslensky, who was his cell-mate (they were held together on strict regime) had been punished groundlessly, that Suslensky was seriously ill, and that such a man should not be punished by being placed in the cooler.

The following have been put on strict regime for refusing to work;

Alexander Sergiyenko (CCEs 25, 27, 30, 32);

Bobur Shakirov — for four months, in March;

Yury Vudka — at the beginning of June, on coming out of the cooler, for four months;

Georgy Davydov (CCE 33) — in the first days of June (Davydov was also deprived of visits to which he was entitled in September; in answer to inquiries by Davydov’s wife. Colonel Zavyalkin, the head of Vladimir Prison, officially informed her of Davydov’s punishments and the reason for them — ‘refusal to work’);

Vladimir Bukovsky — for half a year from 29 June.

RELEASES

A ‘hijack case fringe man’, David Chernoglaz (CCE 20.1 and 33), and Georgy Gladko were released from Vladimir Prison in June at the end of their sentences.

David Chernoglaz soon left for Israel.

Georgy Gladko (CCEs 9, 11, 33, 35) journeyed to Rostov-on-Don, where his mother lives, but could not obtain a residence permit there because he was not working anywhere, nor could he obtain any work there, because he had no residence permit. In August the authorities banished him from the city.

In May Sergei Malchevsky (CCE 36) was sent from Vladimir Prison into exile (to the town of Troitse-Pechersk, Komi ASSR).

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