5 September
Nina Ivanovna Bukovskaya has appealed again to N. V. Podgorny, Chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, asking him to free her son and allow him to go abroad.
To her earlier appeals she had received answers that V. Bukovsky would himself have to write a request for a pardon before the question could be considered ‘But my son was sentenced under a political Article of the RSFSR Criminal Code; he was sentenced for his convictions,’ writes Bukovskaya, ‘An appeal from him for a pardon would mean a renunciation of his personal principles and beliefs . . . My son will never do that. . .’
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13 October
After receiving a standard refusal from the USSR Procurator’s Office, N. I. Bukovskaya decided to make public her letter to Podgorny.
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22 October, date of a letter sent by N. I. Bukovskaya to Giscard d’Estaing, President of France.
On the eve of the President’s visit to the USSR. N. I. Bukovskaya begged him to speak about her son’s fate to the leaders of the Soviet government, and with Brezhnev in person.
Bukovskaya referred to the traditional French respect for mothers and hoped that her voice, the voice of a mother, would be heard.
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26 December
N. I. Bukovskaya wrote an open letter appealing to Georges Marchais, general secretary of the French Communist Party.
The attention paid by the French Communist Party and by G. Marchais personally to the situation of Soviet political prisoners, his declarations that French Communists intended to carry out ‘a policy of true democracy and preservation of human rights’ — all this encouraged Nina Ivanovna to hope that Marchais would not refuse to help her and her son.
“My son has not committed any crimes against the laws of his country. He has merely fought consistently and unselfishly for human rights in the Soviet Union.
“At the end of 1970 he gave Western psychiatrists documents relating to the internment for repressive purposes of certain dissenters, mentally healthy people, in homes for the mentally ill. Soon after this he was arrested and condemned . . .
“I also ask you, from my heart, to speak out in defence of the young Soviet psychiatrist Semyon Gluzman, sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment . . , because he protested against the incarceration in a psychiatric hospital of Pyotr Grigorenko, a man who in Gluzman’s opinion was mentally healthy.”
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A meeting of students and teachers at Norwich University (England) has passed a resolution to regard Vladimir Bukovsky as an honorary student and to demand his release.
In Britain a Committee for the Release of Bukovsky has been formed; its members include David Markham, an actor and farmer, Harold Pinter, a director of the National Theatre, and Peggy Ashcroft, a well-known actress.
In Holland there is also a Committee for the Defence of Bukovsky, headed by the journalist [Henk] Wolstak. The members of the committee have been holding meetings all over the country on behalf of Vladimir Bukovsky.
Bukovsky has now served almost five years of his prison sentence — one year in an investigation prison, one year in Vladimir Prison, one year in a camp, and, since May 1974, he has again been in Vladimir. He has over two years left to serve in prison, then five years in exile. He has a duodenal ulcer and cholelithiasis; he also suffers from rheumatism and has a heart complaint.
A Chronicle of Current Events 