10 ITEMS
[1]
Political Prisoners in a Special-Regime Camp
An Appeal
Five prisoners in the ’special’ camp in Mordovia (PO Box ZhKh 385/1, Sosnovka village) have sent out an appeal to the Committee of Human Rights in the USSR (in the original, ‘The Soviet Committee in Defence of Human Rights’), dated 2 November 1974.
They call for action to be taken to prevent world public opinion being misinformed that “in the USSR there are no political prisoners, only criminal offenders”. The authors mention the fate of Danylo Shumuk, Mikhaylo Osadchy, Valentyn Moroz, Vasyl Stus, Ihor Kalynets, Yu. Shukhevich, Vasyl Romanyuk and Iryna Senik.
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The second part of the appeal speaks of the deal which KGB officials propose to many prisoners, offering to release them in exchange for a “condemnation of their past”. In the opinion of the authors, such proposals have become more frequent recently.
It is reported that Viacheslav Chornovil, Ivan Gel (Ukr. Hel) and Mykhaylo Osadchy “have been transferred from Mordovia and are being kept in local KGB prisons.”
The letter is signed by:
- Danylo Shumuk [1], sentenced to 10 years in ordinary regime camps and five years’ exile,
- Father Vasyl Romanyuk (CCE 28.7 [3]), sentenced to 10 years in camps and five years’ exile,
- Kurchik (CCE 25.6, CCE 33.6-3 [45]) has been in prison since 1946; his second sentence ends in 1979,
- Svyatoslav Karavansky (CCE 13.7, CCE 15.4 [3]) in prison since 1944 with an interval in 1960-1965; his present sentence ends in 1979); and
- Saranchuk.
*
[2]
Vladimir Balakhonov
Two Letters
This former employee at the Secretariat of the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) at the United Nations addressed an Open Letter to the Employees’ Association of the WMO [2] in November 1974 from a political labour camp in Perm (Institution VS-389/35).
[1] Balakhonov informed his former WMO colleagues of his fate after December 1972, when he rejected an offer of political asylum in the West and returned to the USSR. There he was arrested and at the beginning of 1973 sentenced by the Moscow City Court to 12 years in labour camp under Article 64 of the RSFSR Criminal Code (CCE 33.6-2 [19]).
Balakhonov describes the political labour camps in the Urals; he tells how in August 1974 he and three of his friends [Antonyuk, Gluzman and Svetlichny, Chronicle] went on hunger strike “to support their demand for acknowledgement of their status as political prisoners”. When he wrote this letter the hunger strike was in its third month (CCE 33.5-2 [3], CCE 34.8 [5], and this issue //CCE 35).
“I write of all this with only one aim: in my capacity as an eyewitness to inform you and the staff of other United Nations organizations about the fate of political prisoners in the USSR”
he says in the first letter.
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[2] In a statement dated 20 December 1974, addressed to the USSR Procurator-General, Balakhonov raises the question of the way in which Soviet citizens are paid for their work in various international organizations, in particular at the United Nations.
The USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs demands that the salaries received by Soviet employees of these organizations be paid into an account of the Soviet delegation, and in exchange the employees are paid salaries out of the funds of the Ministry. In Balakhonov’s opinion this practice is an infringement of the Declaration of Loyalty to the Heads of the Secretariats of UN Organizations, which is signed by persons taking up employment in them and which forbids material rewards and other incentives from elsewhere than the relevant General Secretary.
Balakhonov asks for a legal case to be initiated concerning the ‘compulsory’ withholding from him by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of part of his salary and other payments. The sum withheld, according to his reckoning, is about 50,000 Swiss francs.
*
[3]
Ukrainian prisoners in the Mordovian camps
International Women’s Year
A statement in which Ukrainian prisoners call on all citizens who value freedom to appeal on their behalf to the International Women’s Congress in Berlin, which is to take place in October 1975, and to demand the release of Stefaniya Shabatura, a talented artist from Lvov; Iryna Stasiv-Kalynets, a poet and philologist from Lvov; Nadiya Svetlichnaya; Nina Strokata, a scientist; the doctor Iryna Senik; and other women, whose detention in strict-regime labour camps is irreconcilable with the usual norms of human morality and constitutes a crime against freedom and democracy.
‘To add more weight to our demands, we, a group of Ukrainian political prisoners in the camps of Mordovia, have declared a one-day hunger strike for 8 March’.
The statement was signed by Zoryan Popadyuk, Kuzma Matviyuk, Vasyl Ovsienko, Vasyl Dolishny, Igor Kravtsov, Roman Semenyuk and others.
*
[4]
Women prisoners in political labour camp ZhKh 385/3-4 (Mordovia)
An appeal on 15 February 1975 to the UN Human Rights Commission.
‘We are quite ready to go through all kinds of sufferings … if only we can maintain within ourselves the feeling of inner freedom.’ The authors ask representatives of the Commission to come to Mordovia, to meet them in person.
The letter was signed by Darya Gusyak, Nadiya Svetlichnaya, Irina Stasiv (Kalynets), Nina Strokata and Stefaniya Shabatura.
*
[5]
Tatyana S. Khodorovich
to Dr Clare, 11 December 1974
Having learned that two English psychiatrists, Dr Clare and Dr Merskey, have expressed concern over the fate of the political prisoner Semyon Gluzman, formerly a Kiev psychiatrist, Tatyana Sergeyevna KHODOROVICH decided to send Dr Clare some camp documents connected with S. Gluzman’s name.
Among these documents are A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissenters by Gluzman and Bukovsky (CCE 35.12 [1]), ‘An Interview with Political Prisoners in Perm Camp VS 389/35’ (//CCE 33) [3], a number of statements by Gluzman addressed to Soviet institutions (ibid) and fragments of Gluzman’s correspondence with his parents. In an accompanying letter T. S. Khodorovich writes:
“I share the opinion of Dr Merskey that wide publicity for the appeals, letters and documents, and specific protests, together with official statements issued both by groups of specialists and by private individuals, are very important and can help people in trouble.”
Khodorovich gave a copy of this letter to foreign correspondents in Moscow for publication.
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[6]
A. D. Sakharov
to L. I. Brezhnev and Harold Wilson
On 4 February 1975, in connection with the meeting in Moscow between the leaders of Great Britain and the USSR, Sakharov again called for the release of political prisoners in the USSR, as he had done during the 1974 visits of Nixon and Ford to the USSR.
The appeal reports a collective hunger strike by political prisoners in Vladimir prison at the beginning of February 1975.
*
[7]
Heinrich Böll and Andrei Sakharov
to L. Brezhnev and A. Kosygin, 18 February 1975
“We appeal to you to arrange for the release of Vladimir Bukovsky and Semyon Gluzman. These men have not committed any crimes.
“For many people in the USSR, West Germany and other countries, their names have become a symbol of courage, honesty and uprightness”
The authors of the letter also mention others “who are innocently suffering in prisons, labour camps and special psychiatric hospitals”. “We hope especially”, the letter states, “that you will find it possible immediately to release all women prisoners in the political labour camp in Mordovia.”
The appeal was written in Russian and German at the time of Heinrich Boll’s visit to Moscow.
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[8]
Vladimir Osipov
A Letter to Senator Jackson (12 November 1974)
Not long before his arrest (CCE 34.7 [11]), Vladimir Osipov appealed to the author of the emigration amendment to the Law on Trade Between the USSR and the USA, asking for help in resisting pressure put on him by the authorities.
Osipov and his family have been subjected to ‘extremely unbearable’ conditions. In Osipov’s opinion this has been done with the aim of forcing him to emigrate.
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[9]
Andrei Sakharov
Appeal to the US Congress (18 January 1974)
Sakharov expresses his regret at the annulment by the Soviet government of the 1972 Trade Agreement. He welcomes “the principled and deeply humanitarian” position adopted by Congress on the question of the Soviet Union’s emigration policy.
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[10]
A. N. Tverdokhlebov
- Statement to the Procurator-General of the USSR (26 December 1974)
- Statement to the Section Head of the USSR Procuracy for Supervision of the KGB (21 January 1975)
The author is disturbed at the attempts made by KGB officials to establish, in cases under Articles 70 and 190 (RSFSR Criminal Code), the practice
“according to which on the basis of a refusal by a witness to answer procedurally incorrect questions, which refusal is artificially provoked by the investigators, the procurator’s office allows the KGB to arraign the witness as a defendant in the same criminal case or a similar one”.
*
In the second statement, Tverdokhlebov suggests that the criminal prosecution of citizens for exchanging information should be reduced in 1975 and ended completely “in the next five-year plan”.
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NOTES
- On Shumuk, see CCE 27.1-1, CCE 28.7, CCE 36.11 [1] and Name Index.
↩︎ - Some of Balakhonov’s ex-colleagues responded to his letter by setting up a Committee for the Defence of Vladimir Balakhonov (Case Postale 130, CH-1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland). The Committee, among other things, collected hundreds of signatures from UN employees on a petition.
↩︎ - The “Interview with Political Prisoners” in Perm Camp 35 was published in English in Survey, London, 1975, No.97 (pp. 195-216).
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