MORDOVIA. PERM. VLADIMIR PRISON
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I. Mordovia
1. KGB
The head of the KGB administration at Dubrovlag (Institution ZhKh 385) is Drotenko. His deputy is Bykov.
Other KGB officials are: Kochetov (ZhKh 385/1, the special-regime camp); Stetsenko (ZhKh 385/19); and Ciriulis (ZhKh 385/3-5). Since the end of 1974 Ciriulis has been replaced by Zuiko.
The names of the KGB officials at other camps are unknown to the Chronicle: 385/17; 385/3-4 (the women’s political ‘zone’); and 85/3-2 (hospital) .
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2. Camp 19.
At the moment there are about four hundred prisoners in this camp.
They are employed making watchcases. After all the deductions, a prisoner’s wages come to:
- 50-70 roubles a month in the cutting and machine workshops (in 1972 monthly wages in the machine workshop even reached 100-120 roubles); and
- 25-40 roubles in the drying, carpentry-assembly and finishing workshops, and in the cleaning shop.
- This is when production norms are fulfilled 100 per cent.
Recently the norms have been steadily increased. There are unhealthy workshops (such as the polishing shop).
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Information has been received that in September 1974 Kuzma Matviyuk (CCE 33.6-3 [38]) suffered a serious arm injury at work. In the machine workshops, where Matviyuk was working, there are almost no safety devices.
In another workshop where the watch cases are painted with spraying equipment there are no respirators.
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On 10 December 1974 some prisoners in Camp 19 made protest declarations. Their contents and addressees are unknown to the Chronicle.
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On 22 February 1974 there was a one-day hunger strike for recognition of political prisoner status. Those who took part: Alexander Bolonkin, serving four years and two years’ exile; Igor Kravtsov; Kuzma Matviyuk, four years; Vasyl Ovsiyenko, four years; and Zoryan Popadyuk, seven years imprisonment and five years’ exile.
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TRANSFERS & RELEASES
In September Kaminsky and Korenblit (CCE 20.1) were transferred from Camp 17 to CAMP 19. Three months after being transferred the latter was given 15 days in a punishment isolation cell [cooler].
In December Povilonis (camp 385/3-5) and Bolonkin (camp 385/3-2, i.e. the hospital) were transferred from Camp 3. At the same time Bogdanov and Vasilev were brought to Camp 19 from Leningrad (on 4 year sentences). It seems it was the latter to whom M. Kheifets referred at his trial as his cellmate in the Leningrad KGB prison: a man sentenced for distributing anti-Soviet pamphlets.
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Fedoseyev has been sent to VLADIMIR PRISON.
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On 15 February E. A. Vagin and B. A. Averochkin, leaders of the All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People (ASCULP), were released. They had both served eight years (CCE 1.6, CCE 19.4, CCE 33.4).
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Information has been received that Lyubomir Staroselsky (CCE 32.12, CCE 33.4) was released more than a year ago. Possibly his term of imprisonment was shortened. It is still unclear how he ever got into an ‘adult’ political camp; the sentence of the Lvov Regional Court assigned him to an educational-labour colony until the end of his term.
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In the letter to the UN from women political prisoners (CCE 35.9 [4]) it was reported that Vyacheslav Merkushev, a prisoner from camp 19, had been declared mentally ill and sent to Barashevo.
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2. Camp 17.
Not long before his sentence was due to expire Boris Azernikov (CCE 23.9 [6], CCE 32.12, CCE 33.1) was taken from the camp to Leningrad, where he was released on 10 February this year.
On 11 February he applied for emigration to Israel. B. Azernikov has now left the USSR.
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3. Camp 3.
This camp consists of five zones or sections: for common criminals, for men in the hospital (345/3-2), for women in the hospital, for female (345/3-4) and for male (345/3-5) political prisoners.
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There are now fifty men in camp zone 385/3-5, Constant conflicts take place with the authorities over books, living conditions and food.
The last such conflict was in the middle of August 1974, when the food got significantly worse. Numerous complaints and petitions were ignored. Then nine people refused to work. A commission arrived from the administrative authorities and investigated general conditions in the camp. After the inspection conditions became somewhat better: new blankets were given out, buildings were repaired, and meat was included in the rations.
Two weeks later the food again got worse, and on 8-9 September the prisoners declared a hunger strike. The same commission came again, after which the food got a little better.
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The following prisoners in camp zone 3-5 are known to the Chronicle:
Israil Zalmanson: sentence, eight years (CCE 17.6-1);
Boris Penson: sentence, 10 years (CCE 17.6-1);
Feliks Nikmanis: a Latvian ‘nationalist’ (sentence, three years);
Viktor Shibalkin: a sailor and‘defector’;
Yury Levshin;
Pozdeyev: student who fled to Turkey in 1970 in a stolen aeroplane. (Extradited by Turkey?) [1]
Oleg Savinkin: the Oryol case, sentence, five years and two years in exile (CCE 29.4);
Vasyl Lisovoi (Ukraine), seven years and three in exile (CCE 30.6); there is a report that he is now in Camp 19 and has been put in a punishment cell (for five months).
The poet Vasyl Stus (Ukraine), sentence five years (CCE 27.1-1), is in the hospital zone. He was transferred from the Perm camp complex.
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Yury Melnik, Boris Penson, Israil Zalmanson, Feliks Nikmanis, Vasyl Stus and Vidmantas Povilonis took part in the 30 October 1974 hunger strike on USSR Political Prisoners’ Day (CCE 33.1) in Camp 3 (zone 5).
That same day Alexander Bolonkin and E. Kuzin (sentence: four years and two years in exile, co-defendant with Savinkin) went on hunger strike in the second (hospital) zone.
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On 17 January Yury Melnik was released at the end of his term. Melnik (Leningrad, sentence three years) had been transferred to camp 3 from camp 19 in the spring of 1974.
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In the women’s political zone (Institution ZhKh 385/3-4), Raisa Ivanova (CCE 33.4) was declared mentally ill in October 1974. She was sent to the hospital zone in Dubrovlag (to the psychiatric block).
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II. Perm
2.1 Camp 35.
[1]
TRIALS
On 16 January an assize session of the Chusovoi district court heard two cases behind closed doors.
Josif Meshener [2] was transferred to VLADIMIR PRISON “for systematic infringement of the regulations and his bad influence on the other prisoners”.
After the trial he was placed handcuffed in a punishment cell for the forthcoming transfer, Meshener had been brought to the court from a medical isolation ward, where he had been confined on the day of the trial because he was in a serious condition with a high temperature. The next day Lev Yagman asked Doctor Yarunin who had sanctioned the trial of a seriously ill man and his transfer to a punishment isolation cell. Yarunin excused himself, saying he had no information on this.
Meshener stated in writing on the day of the trial that he was adopting the status of a political prisoner.
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The second case concerned the release of Mikhail Dyak because of illness: Hodgkin’s disease in its terminal stages.”//
The court refused the application for release on the grounds that Dyak “had not taken the path of correction, is friendly with the wrong kind of prisoners and writes appeals”. The report to this effect on which the court relied was signed by Kuznetsov, the detachment leader. After the court hearing Dyak was taken back to hospital. He handed in an appeal against the court’s decision,
Dyak was sentenced in 1967 to 12 years’ imprisonment (until March 1979) and five years’ exile, in the Ukraine National Front case (CCE 11.3, CCE 17.7).
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TRANSFERS & RELEASES (3-5)
[3]
The following have been sent to VLADIMIR PRISON: Georgy V. Gladko until the end of his sentence, that is six months; and on 16 January Vladimir Balakhonov (CCE 35.9) who took up political prisoner status on 10 January.
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[4]
Erik Danne (see CCE 11.15 [16], CCE 33.6-2) has been released at the end of a seven-year sentence.
One of the charges against him under Article 64 was association with the NTS and dissemination of NTS literature. In Latvia, to which Danne returned, he has been put under surveillance.
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[5]
The Ukrainian poet Taras Melnychuk (sentence three years, CCE 33.6-2 [33]) has been released at the end of his term of imprisonment.
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2.2 Camp 36.
[1]
In November 1974 Vladimir Raketsky, Ukrainian, 30, Article 62 (UkSSR Criminal Code; five year sentence) was transferred here from the Mordovian camp complex (CCE 28.7).
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[2]
Anatoly Zdorovy (Ukraine, seven-year sentence) has declared his rights as a political prisoner.
He was subjected to acts of repression in the camps (punishment cell and cell-type premises) and in February or March he was sent to VLADIMIR PRISON for the remainder of his seven-year sentence. As a result of hunger-strikes he is suffering from jaundice.
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[3]
On 10 February a work strike was declared in Camp 36, apparently to demand recognition of political prisoner status. Kalinichenko and Suslensky, who took part in the strike, were sent for 15 days to punishment cells. Bondar got 10 days.
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[4]
Yevhen A. Sverstyuk served 10 days in a punishment cell this winter.
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[5]
Nikolai Kurchik (CCE 25.6, CCE 33.6-3 [45]) was transferred without a court hearing to a special regime camp (i.e. to CAMP 1 in Dubrovlag).
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[6]
Ya. M. Suslensky has been returned from Vladimir Prison. (On his transfer to Vladimir, see CCE 32.12.)
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[7]
In November V. Vylegzhanin (CCE 34.18 [2]) was taken to Kiev ‘for re-education’. Now he is back in CAMP 36.
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[8]
Yury Grodetsky (CCE 34.8 [18]) is serving a four-year sentence under Article 64 for an attempt not to return from abroad.
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2.3 RELEASES
On 6 (or 9) February the ‘terrorist’ V. S. Kharlanov (five-year sentence) was released (CCE 33.6-3).
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In October Ivan Nikolaevich Pokrovsky (OUN, sentence 25 years) was released at the end of his term. Pokrovsky is 54 years old, he is now in hospital with the open form of tuberculosis. In the camp he had been declared healthy.
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The following have also been released: Belomesov, Prikhodko, Chamovskikh (into exile), Tolstousov, Pilitsyak, V. Melikyan, Saarts and V. Potashov.
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III. Vladimir Prison
[1]
Six weeks after ending his 145-day hunger-strike Valentyn Moroz was put into a solitary confinement cell for 15 days (4-19 January).
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[2]
On 12 January Yury I. Fyodorov (six-year sentence, CCE 12.5) was released from Vladimir Prison.
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[3]
From 27 January to 7 February Kronid Lyubarsky was on hunger strike in protest against the unwarranted confiscation of his letters and arbitrary restrictions on the use of his own books.
In January one long letter from K. Lyubarsky to his wife was confiscated on suspicion of containing ‘pre-arranged phrases’, while another was returned because of its ‘bad handwriting’. In a short letter in February Lyubarsky stated that if these aggravations did not stop, he would have to renounce further correspondence.
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NOTES
- Vitaly M. Pozdeyev was sentenced to 13 years for hijacking a plane to Turkey in 1970. See details on him and his accomplice N. Gilev, CCE 26.4 [3].
↩︎ - On Meshener, see CCE 16.10 [9], CCE 33.6-2, CCE 34.8 [6] and Name Index.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 