TWENTY-EIGHT ITEMS
[1]
CASE 62
Reports of the arrest of Vladimir Vylegzhanin, Alexander Zaritsky and Yury Lifshits in Kiev in November 1973 (CCE 30.7 [3]) have been confirmed. They have been charged under Article 62 (UkSSR Criminal Code = Article 70, RSFSR Code) [1].
Evidently Case 62 was initiated specifically in connection with their arrest.
*
A number of searches have been carried out in connection with Case 62.
At 8 am on 17 January 1974 a search linked to Case 62 began in the flat of Leonid Plyushch’s wife Tatyana Zhitnikova, “with the aim of confiscating anti-Soviet, libellous literature”. The search warrant was issued on the instructions of Major-General Troyak, deputy chairman of the Ukrainian KGB. The search was conducted by Investigator Berestovsky, who earlier interrogated Zhitnikova about the case of Pyotr Yakir.
The following items were confiscated:
- 1) a film of letters sent from a Special Psychiatric Hospital by Zhitnikova’s husband;
- 2) Plyushch’s article “The Ethical Approach”;
- 3) Andrei Tverdokhlebov’s statement about Plyushch;
- 4) Victor Nekrasov’s book Pages of a Life (published in the USSR); and
- 5) a tape of songs by Yuly Kim [2].
Zhitnikova signed the search record, but protested against the confiscation of Nekrasov’s book and the film of Plyushch’s letters: they were documents, she said, with no relation to any ‘case’.
The search lasted until 2 pm that day.
*
The same day a search in the same case started in Kiev at the home of the writer Victor Nekrasov.
The search began at 8 am and ended at two o’clock in the morning on 19 January, i.e. it lasted 42 hours.
The whole of Nekrasov’s archive was confiscated, including all the writer’s manuscripts of uncompleted (or completed, but unpublished) works. The search record is 60 pages long.
Friends of Nekrasov who came to see him during the search — Zhitnikova and Raigorodsky, for example — were subjected to body searches. Nothing was found on Zhitnikova, but a book was confiscated from Raigorodetsky [correction CCE 34.23]; in both cases a search record was drawn up. (Subsequently a search was carried out at Raigorodetsky’s flat.)
Two other friends of Nekrasov who called on him during the search were invited to get into a car and go for a ‘chat’. During one of these ‘chats’ it was stated that Nekrasov’s fate lay entirely in his hands: let him choose for himself “on which side of the barricades he is to be found”.
After the search Nekrasov was repeatedly summoned to interrogations.
*
Yury Lekhtgolts has been subjected to a search under Case 62.
*
Searches linked to Case 62 have been carried out in Moscow, in particular at the home of Nikolai Bokov on 25 January. The first volume of the American edition of Mandelstam’s poems was confiscated. “I’d gladly flog people for reading Mandelstam,” declared Major Korkach, who was leading the search.
After the search N. K. Bokov was interrogated several times in connection with Case 62 [3].
*
On 22 March the writer Victor Nekrasov, who was visiting Moscow, was forced to leave for Kiev under police compulsion.
*
On 10 July 1974 Mark Isaakovich RAIGORODETSKY, a teacher of Russian language and literature, who had been arrested on 28 May, was sentenced in Kiev to two years in the camps under Article 187-1 (UkSSR Criminal Code = Article 190-1, RSFSR Code).
Details of the trial are not known.
*
OTHER NEWS (2-28)
[2]
Vladimir Kislyak, Cand.Sc. (Chemistry), has been dismissed from his job after applying for an exit visa.
He is presently working as a watchman at a boat station in Kiev. His wife and child have received permission to emigrate and have left; Kislyak has been refused permission “for policy reasons”.
In June Kislyak was in Moscow for several days on business; he returned to Kiev on 17 June.
At two o’clock on the night of 18 to 19 June he was beaten up by four strangers armed with truncheons. As they beat him, they said “Don’t go to Moscow, you bastard, don’t dare go to Moscow.”
*
[3]
Tatyana Chernysheva, fiancée of Alexander Feldman (CCE 30.5, CCE 32.12), was summoned to a police-station on 21 June 1974 and asked :
Did she really want to register her marriage with Feldman? What nationality was Feldman? What nationality was she herself? Was she intending to leave the USSR together with Feldman?
In conclusion they got her to sign a statement that she would not leave Kiev before the end of June.
*
[4]
In Riga the investigation continues into the case of L. A. Ladyzhensky, charged under Article 65 (Latvian SSR Criminal Code = Article 70, RSFSR Code; see CCE 30.7 [4]).
L. A. Ladyzhensky is a mathematician who before his arrest was in charge of an ASU [4] laboratory of the Baltic Scientific Research Institute for the Fishing Industry; earlier he taught at Riga University. He has published many works on mathematics.
On 6 December 1973 a search which lasted all night was carried out at his home (Ladyzhensky has a large library with a unique collection of material on Pasternak). About fifty titles were confiscated during the search, including the Chronicle of Current Events. On the same day about ten other searches were carried out in Riga with the aim of confiscating literature. On 7 December Ladyzhensky was arrested.
F.Ya. Korovin, summoned to an interrogation as a witness in Ladyzhensky’s case, was arrested a few days later.
Ladyzhensky was called as a witness at the trial of Gabriel Superfin (CCE 32.3). He testified that he had translated a work by Kolakowski (Kolakowski is an independent-minded Polish Marxist). It may be supposed that in addition to this translation Ladyzhensky is charged with circulating samizdat, in particular the Chronicle of Current Events. The Moscow mathematicians V. A. Borovikov, F. A. Kabakov and Margulis were interrogated in the case of Ladyzhensky.
At several interrogations witnesses were shown a statement by Ladyzhensky which said that he wanted them to confirm his evidence and that disavowal by witnesses would not mitigate his lot; he also spoke about this at a confrontation with one of the witnesses.
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[5]
On 16 May a search was carried out at the home of Leonid Tymchuk in Odessa.
The formal grounds were that Tymchuk was suspected of harbouring a television set that had been stolen in Zaporozhe. They looked for the television amongst his books and papers. The “Moscow Appeal” (CCE 32.1 [12]) was confiscated.
After the search Tymchuk was summoned to an interrogation; he was read out a “Caution” in accordance with the December 1972 Decree.
A sailor, Tymchuk supported the 1968 appeal “To World Public Opinion” by Bogoraz and Litvinov (CCE 1.2). At present he is the legally authorized representative of Nina Antonovna STROKATA, a political prisoner [5].
Leonid Tymchuk has informed the authors of the “Moscow Appeal” that, when the police found a copy of the text at his home, he put his signature on it.
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[6]
On 3 May 1974, Alexander Solzhenitsyn told a correspondent of Time magazine that there was information that the KGB had carried out a search at the home of his friend Natalya Radugina in Ryazan shortly after his deportation. The purpose of the search, in Solzhenitsyn’s opinion, was the confiscation of samizdat copies of his works.
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[7]
The priest of the Church of St Nicholas in Moscow, Father Dmitry Dudko, has been dismissed [6].
This was preceded by a directive from Patriarch Pimen that Father Dmitry be transferred to a church well removed from the capital and under the authority of Metropolitan Serafim of Krutitsy and Kolomenskoye (Serafim was the only hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church to approve publicly the expulsion of Solzhenitsyn, Chronicle).
In a sharply-worded letter to Patriarch Pimen. Father Dmitry refused to comply with the proposed transfer. Subsequently Father Dmitry expressed his apologies in writing for what, according to Church rules, was his inadmissible tone in addressing the Patriarch. However, in the middle of May an order for his dismissal followed.
Some people believe that the real reason for Father Dudko’s removal was the dialogues he had been holding with his parishioners on Saturdays since the autumn of 1973, something in the nature of ‘Question & Answer evenings’. Many young people, including students, had been coming to these dialogues, and this had provoked the displeasure of the Soviet authorities.
Father Dudko was a prisoner in the Stalinist camps.
*
[8]
On 28 June, during the visit to Moscow of President Nixon, the Moscow litterateur Pyotr Oreshkin was arrested on the street and forcibly interned in a psychiatric hospital.
At the police station where he was at first taken, the district psychiatrist (evidently specially summoned to the police-station for this purpose) asked Oreshkin some questions: Was he interested in politics? Was he dissatisfied with any Soviet policies? Did he not expect that there would be some changes as a result of Nixon’s visit? Did he read the journal Abroad and how did he interpret the material printed in this journal? After this, Oreshkin was sent to Psychiatric Hospital No. 15 in Moscow.
Oreshkin graduated from the Moscow Literary Institute in 1962; he then worked on the staff of the journal Technology for the Young and as an assistant director of the Mosfilm studios.
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[9]
YAVAS (Mordovia). The administrative director of the Dubrovlag complex (institution ZhKh 385), Colonel Osipov, has been promoted to deputy minister in the Mordovian Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The name of the new director of the camp complex is not yet known to the Chronicle.
*
[10]
BARASHEVO (Mordovia). According to unverified information, Mikhail Vasilyevich YERSHOV has died here, in penal institution ZhKh 385/3 (evidently in the medical zone).
Yershov belonged to the “True Orthodox Church” [7].
It is reported that served about 40 (forty) years and was convicted four times. Prosecuted for the last time under Articles 58-8 and 58-11, he was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment. Yershov was held in Dubrovlag Camps 1, 10 and 3. He died on 4 June 1974, age unknown.
Yershov refused to repent and to recognize the official church.
*
[11]
In March 1974 the Orientalist Vyacheslav Platonov (ASCULP; Articles 70 & 72, RSFSR Criminal Code; sentenced to seven years, CCE 1.6) was released from the Perm camps upon completion of his sentence.
Platonov has settled in Tartu, Estonia’s second largest city.
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[12]
In April 1974 the Leningrad mathematician Revolt Pimenov completed his term of exile. He was arrested and convicted under Article 190-1 in 1970 together with Boris Vail [8].
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[13]
In May 1974 Baptist Ivan Filaretovich DANILYUK was arrested in Ryazan.
Danilyuk was charged under Article 190-1 (RSFSR Criminal Code). His address is: Ryazan, 3 Gogol Street, flat 34.
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GEORGIA (14-17)
[14]
Three pupils from the ninth year in Tbilisi secondary school No. 24 — Ustiashvili, Vashakidze and Ugrekhelidze — were arrested in early March 1974.
They were suspected of having pasted ‘anti-Soviet’ posters on a building of the district Party committee. (According to certain information, the posters said something about Solzhenitsyn.) In addition, they were charged with writing a letter to the editorial board of the newspaper Kommunist demanding to know why there was no freedom of thought and expression in our country.
The three boys were released during the second half of March; they are continuing to study at school.
There is information that the director of school No. 12, and also one of the parents of the schoolboys named, have been removed from their jobs.
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[15]
Literary critic Leri Alimonaki, who works in the Bureau of Translators at the Georgian Union of Writers, was summoned to the KGB in Tbilisi in early April 1974.
He was interrogated by investigator Giorgobiani. The investigator said that he had information against Alimonaki from his former place of work (the Film Hire Agency, director Ch. Amiredzhibi), according to which Alimonaki often sought in conversations to justify Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn, was indignant about the Russification of Georgia, etc.
The investigator threatened Alimonaki with arrest and a charge under Article 206-1 (Georgian SSR Criminal Code = Article 190-1, RSFSR Code) if such incidents recurred.
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[16]
On the night of 4 to 5 July the Moscow mathematician and logician Yury A. Gastev was subjected to a search in his room in the Tbilisi hotel ‘Sakartvelo’.
Gastev had arrived in Tbilisi the day before to take part in a symposium on cybernetics. The search was conducted by a senior investigator for especially important cases, Major I. V. Tsintsadze, and other officials of the Georgian KGB (five men in all) in connection with ‘the investigation of case No. 18, initiated by the KGB administration for Vladimir Region’. They were looking for ‘anti-Soviet literature’. Samizdat (in part tamizdat) and personal papers were confiscated. While they were searching, they tried to engage Gastev in ‘conversation’ (‘Where did you put the rest? We know this isn’t everything!’; ‘Where were you last night?’; ‘Whom do you know in Tbilisi?’; ‘Why aren’t you a sincere man? It makes no difference, you’ll tell us everything tomorrow, like they all do!’, and so on). The deputy chief of the operations squad of the Tbilisi KGB, L. V. Shanidze (not mentioned in the search record), was particularly energetic.
After the search Gastev was not allowed out of the hotel until two o’clock in the afternoon. AH who came to see him were detained: two were questioned on the spot and two were driven to the KGB for interrogation.
The same night another search was carried out in Tbilisi, without result. In the morning the owner of the searched flat was taken to the KGB B for interrogation; Shanidze conducted the interrogation.
On 5 July at three o’clock in the afternoon a search got under way at Gastev’s Moscow flat; it was conducted by ‘officials of a department of the KGB attached to the USSR Council of Ministers’ B. B. Karatayev, V. I. Ryazanov and A. M. Smirnov, in the presence of two witnesses who lived at the other end of Moscow. The search warrant had been issued by the Vladimir KGB: the head of the investigations group is Lieutenant-Colonel P, F. Evseyev. Personal papers, letters and samizdat were confiscated. The search lasted until 12 o’clock at night.
On 8 July Gastev was interrogated in the Vladimir KGB offices by senior investigator Major P, I. Pleshkov, who is in charge of ‘investigation case No. 38 on the publication and circulation of the illegal journal Veche and other anti- Soviet literature’ (according to Pleshkov, the case — formerly case No. 18 — ‘is being conducted under article 70*). The investigator was interested in whether Gastev was familiar and ‘maintained a link’ with V. N. Osipov, G. N, Bochevarov, P. M. Goryachev and V. E. Konkin (see this issue), and also in the source of the papers confiscated from him (described by Pleshkov as ‘anti-Soviet’ and ‘ideologically harmful’). Gastev declared that he had nothing to do with either the publication or the circulation of Veche, and that he regarded neither Veche nor the confiscated papers as criminal; he refused to answer questions about where he had obtained them [see also CCEs 34, 35]
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[17]
On 5 July 1974 the musicologist Merab Ivanovich KOSTAVA, a member of the Tbilisi Action Group for Human Rights, was detained in the hotel ‘Sakartvelo’ in Tbilisi and taken to the KGB (the Chronicle had no previous knowledge of an Action Group in Tbilisi).
Kostava was interrogated by the head of the operations department, Major Otar Tskaroveli, and the deputy chairman of the Georgian KGB, Colonel Zardalishvili. They were interested in whether Kostava was acquainted with Yury Gastev, Valentina Pailodze (this issue CCE 32.11) and Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Kostava confirmed his acquaintance with the last two.
He refused to answer several other questions. During the conversation the KGB officials conducted themselves politely and correctly.
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[18]
On 18 March 1974, Pavel Litvinov and his wife M. Rusakovskaya left the USSR.
On 25 August 1968 P. Litvinov, together with L. Bogoraz, N. Gorbanevskaya, V. Fainberg, K. Babitsky, V. Dremlyuga and V. Delone, took part in a demonstration on Red Square against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops.
P. Litvinov had signed numerous letters of protest against the violation of human rights in the USSR.
He is one of the authors of the ‘Moscow Appeal’ (this issue CCE 32.1 [12]).
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[19]
On 28 March B. Shragin and his wife N. Sadomskaya left the USSR. B. Shragin is the author of many petitions in defence of human rights in the USSR and also one of the authors of the ‘Moscow Appeal’.
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[20]
On 11 April Galina Gabai, the widow of I. Gabai, left the USSR.
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[21]
On 25 June 1974 the well-known dramatist and bard (singer-songwriter) Alexander Galich left the USSR.
His songs were the reason why he was expelled from the USSR Writers’ Union in 1971 (CCE 23.7 [16], CCE 24.10 [1],). In addition to this, Galich is known as the author of a letter in defence of V. Bukovsky and other letters of protest [9].
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[22]
On 15 March 1974 the writer Vladimir Maximov left the USSR for a protracted period. CCE 29.11 [18] wrote about his expulsion from the Union of Writers.
Several collections of Maximov’s tales and stories have appeared in the USSR. His novels The Seven Days of Creation and Quarantine are well known in samizdat [10].
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[23]
At the end of May the famous cellist, professor of the Moscow Conservatoire, Lenin-prize winner and USSR People’s Artist, Mstislav Rostropovich, left the Soviet Union for extended tours abroad. Later his wife, the singer and USSR People’s Artist, Galina Vishnevskaya, also left.
His friendship with Alexander Solzhenitsyn and interventions in his defence were at one time the cause of serious unpleasantness for Rostropovich (see CCE 49.19-2 [42]).
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[24]
Alexander Uchitel (Ryazan), who served a four-year term of imprisonment (Saratov-Ryazan case, 1970, CCE 12.4), has handed in documents for an exit visa to Israel and received a refusal. The reasons for the refusal are that he has a conviction, that his period of police surveillance has not yet expired, and also that he is registered in his passport as a Russian.
Uchitel reports that he declared a hunger strike on 4 May 1974, demanding permission to leave.
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[25]
The fifth and sixth issues of the unofficially published almanac Jews in the USSR have appeared in Moscow [11].
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[26]
The Khronika Press publishing-house has issued the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth numbers of the A Chronicle of Human Rights in the USSR (CHR).
Pavel Litvinov is named amongst the editors of the eighth number.
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[27]
On 17 May 1974, after examining the appropriate documents, the Consular Section of the US Embassy in Moscow recognized that Marija Jono Sulskiene, the mother of Simas Kudirka (CCE 20.6), was a US citizen from birth, and presented her with an American passport.
It is reported that competent authorities in Washington are examining the possibility of recognizing Simas Kudirka as an American citizen.
*
[28]
On 6 April 1974 an officer of the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Institute of the Biology of Development, D.Sc. (Biology) I. M. Shapiro, who was in Italy as a member of a group for academic tourists, asked for political asylum.
In connection with this, the ‘situation’ in the Institute was repeatedly discussed by Party and academic-administrative bodies during April and May this year. A decision was taken to review the membership of the Academic Council. Besides Shapiro it was decided to exclude four more people — all of whom were Jews. The group directed by Shapiro was liquidated. The well-known embryologist A. A. Neifakh was removed from the directorship of a laboratory. Academician N. P. Dubinin played a very active role in the organization of this administrative persecution.
On 21 June the director of the Institute of the Biology of Development, Academician B. L. Astaurov (CCE 14.3) passed away.
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NOTES
- Vylegzhanin was later sentenced to four years (CCE 34.18 [2]) but the other two may have been freed: he alone is mentioned in subsequent reports (CCE 35.7).
↩︎ - The first two of these items feature in a book edited by Tatyana Khodorovich. It had then appeared in Russian and was due to appear in early 1976 in English as (provisional title) The Da Vinci Syndrome: the Case of Leonid Plyushch (Hurst: London).
The third item is one of the two Tverdokhlebov documents summarized in CCE 30.15 (English edition), the second of which was published in The New Scientist, London, 11 October 1973.
↩︎ - On Bokov, a young philosopher, see CCE 34.18 [2]. Bokov emigrated from the USSR in 1975..
↩︎ - Academy of Soviet Union?
↩︎ - On Nina Antonovna Strokata, a political prisoner, see CCE 25.1 [1], CCE 28.7, CCE 30.8, CCE 32.12 and Name Index.
↩︎ - For documents on the case of Dmitry Dudko see CHR 1974 (9 and 10), and recent issues of Religion in Communist Lands, Keston, Kent.
↩︎ - On the “True Orthodox Church” see W. C. Fletcher, The Russian Orthodox Church Underground: 1917-1970, London, 1971.
↩︎ - On Revolt Pimenov, Article 190-1 in 1970 together with B. Vail, see CCE 16.2, CCE 17.5, CCE 22.8 [23], CCE 25.10 [21], CCE 30.16 and Name Index.
↩︎ - See documents concerning Galich’s struggle to emigrate in CHR 1974 (No. 7).
↩︎ - See also Maximov’s samizdat open letters to H. Boll, to the Soviet Writers’ Union in CHR 1973 (No. 3), and to Prof. Muzafarov, a Crimean Tatar, and the Medvedev twins in CHR 1973 (Nos 5-6).
↩︎ - See CCE 30.12 (English edition). B’nai B’rith in New York has published the first two issues of Jews in the USSR in English; the Department of Russian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem published the almanach regularly in Russian in its Jewish Samizdat (Yevreiskii Samizdat) series.
↩︎
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A Chronicle of Current Events 