SEVEN ITEMS
[1]
The Georgian SSR Procurator’s Office has started proceedings against Yu. Dzhangiani and L. A. Frolov. Former officials at Remand Prison No 1 in Tbilisi, they were in charge of torturing detainees (CCE 36.6-3). The number of the case is 10669; it is being conducted by Special Investigator Khabuliani.
*
[2]
SAMIZDAT
TBILISI. At the end of August 1975 KGB Colonel Zardalishvili interrogated T. Gvazava, who works as a binder at the printing works attached to the Institute of Economics. Zardalishvili reprimanded Gvazava for having bound forbidden books at the request of Zviad Gamsakhurdia and categorically forbade him to meet Gamsakhurdia again.
At the beginning of September an employee at the printing works, V. Mikhailov, who was in charge of an Era copying machine, testified during a KGB interrogation that he had made copies of samizdat and that he had been given this samizdat by N. Kavtaradze, an employee of the same printing works. On being interrogated, Kavtaradze testified that Gamsakhurdia had given him the samizdat to copy.
At the end of November Mikhailov was reprimanded by the Party and dismissed from his job.
The interrogations at the printing works may, perhaps, be linked to the case of The Golden Fleece journal (“Samizdat Update”, CCE 38.20 [5]). Searches linked to this case have been carried out at the homes of L. Kokaya, a student at the Tbilisi State University’s philological faculty (one copy of the journal was confiscated), and of R. Siradze, a student at the Academy of Arts: both students were interrogated. B. Nebierdize and U. Gabitashvili were also interrogated and made to sign certain promises.
The interrogation of N. Koberidze, reported in CCE 37.13 (7), was also connected with this case: her poems were published in The Golden Fleece. An unofficial search was carried out at her home and a film-script was confiscated.
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[3]
On 17 September 1975 Zh. Zvezdina, who worked at the Conservatory, was interrogated by the KGB.
She was told that the KGB had information that she was reading a copy of the Gulag Archipelago which Zviad Gamsakhurdia had given her. She was then asked: “Isn’t it true that Gamsakhurdia made you read this book?” Zvezdina replied, “No, I myself asked Gamsakhurdia for the book over the telephone, and you were listening into our conversation.”
The interrogators advised Zvezdina to break off her relationship with Gamsakhurdia and to report any chance meeting with him to the KGB.
*
[4]
On 3 November the police stopped D. Chikmizov, a representative of religious believers in the Tsalka district, from visiting Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Chikmizov was detained near the house and forbidden to enter it on pain of arrest.
Liya Bedoshvili, a 4th-year student at Tbilisi University’s philological faculty, made a statement to the district police superintendent on 16 November: for three weeks, she declared, she had been continuously followed by unknown persons, who stopped her on the street and threatened her. She was asked to come to the police station, but was interviewed there by KGB official M. Gagiia. He was interested in hearing why she maintained a friendly relationship with Z. Gamsakhurdia.
In a declaration addressed to A. Inauri, head of the KGB attached to the Georgian SSR Council of Ministers, and dated 20 December, Gamsakhurdia describes the secret search, preceded by a break-in, which was carried out at his house on 17 December. On that day, when he drove back home in the evening, he could not at first drive up to his house — the narrow road was blocked by a dump truck. When the dump truck let his car get past, he discovered the outer door open and signs of a search on his writing table.
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[5]
DZHVARSHEISHVILI
Teimuraz Dzhvarsheishvili, a Tbilisi historian known for his active part in revealing the corruption and embezzlement which had been going on in the Georgian Patriarchate with the collusion of certain highly-placed KGB officials (CCE 34.13), is now in an intensified-regime corrective labour colony in the town of Rustavi.
On 21 August he was sentenced in Sukhumi to four years for ‘rape’.
*
Dzhvarsheishvili was arrested on 29 July at Sukhumi rail station, when, seeing off his ‘victim’, Gerda Sabonite, to Vilnius, he went with her — at her request — to the police station, where some things had supposedly been left for her.
In a letter written on 18 November from the camp [1], Dzhvarsheishvili reports that immediately after his arrest investigator Pachulia was given the following instructions in his presence:
“… We can’t let this man go. See that this case is carried through to the end. It’s necessary to do so.”
At one interrogation a man sat beside Pachulia, giving him some kind of instructions in Abkhazian. Some strange behaviour by Gerda during the three days of their ‘romance’ and during the investigation have led Dzhvarsheishvili to conclude that their relationship was used to fabricate the charges against him. Moreover, he is sure that Sabonite was planted on him.
An appeal by the lawyer Grinfeld to the Supreme Court of the Abkhazian SSR points out that a number of incidents which came to light in court concerning Sabonite’s behaviour do not bear out the ‘rape’ story. The lawyer asks for the sentence to be annulled and the proceedings against his client to be quashed.
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[6]
SAMKHARADZE
In June 1974 payment of Beglar Samkharadze‘s pension was halted. (He is a Group I invalid.)
In his absence, the Zeravshan district court decided that Samkharadze was not a war-veteran but a traitor to the Motherland and had obtained a military pension by deception. He would now have to repay 19,000 roubles.
The court based its decision on the 25-year sentence passed on Samkharadze in 1950 for “treason to the Motherland” (he was freed in 1955).
*
Beglar Samkharadze was a Prisoner of War.
Finding himself in France, he escaped to join the partisans, fought with them and was seriously wounded. Official documents sent from France testify to his heroic participation in the Resistance.
At one time Literary Georgia wrote about this. The declarations which Samkharadze and his brother (and guardian) Nikolai Samkharadze have sent to various authorities [2] point out that the persecution of Beglar Samkharadze began after the brothers demanded in 1973 that those who had obtained his 1950 ‘confession’ through torture (which drove him to mental collapse), should be punished.
The present leaders of the Georgian KGB and procuracy, they state in their declarations, are rehabilitating the Beria-Rukhadze clique by revalidating the unlawful sentences of that time.
*
[7]
DAVID-GAREDZHA CAVE
“Frescoes Destroyed by Artillery” is an article by Zviad Gamsakhurdia (samizdat, 5 December 1975).
He describes the danger threatening the unique David-Garedzha cave monastery, which contains frescoes of the 8-14th centuries (Large Soviet Encyclopaedia, vol. 7, 1972). Since 1952 the Karakas artillery range has been based in its grounds. There have been some direct hits on the caves containing the frescoes. The Bertani Monastery has been almost completely destroyed.
The article quotes from the correspondence begun on 13 September 1975 by Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a part-time employee of the Georgian Ministry of Culture’s Monument-Preservation Department, after a fire broke out in the grounds of the monastery as a result of a bombardment. He appealed to Colonel-General Melnikov, in command of the Caucasus Military District, suggesting that he should
“move the artillery range a few kilometres away from the historical monument; the waste ground round there is extensive”.
P. V. Melnikov’s reply, sent to the Georgian SSR Ministry of Culture on 26 November 1975, reads as follows:
“Unfortunately, the ruins of the monastery are in the middle of our firing range and we do not intend to move this firing range. Tourists are not to be allowed there without passes from us.”
*
The author of the article appeals to public opinion in the Soviet Union and throughout the world to
“raise its voice against the vandalism being perpetrated by the artillerymen of the Caucasus Military District, who scorn cultural treasures belonging to the whole nation”.
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NOTES
- The full text of Dzhvarsheishvili’s letter (item 5) was in the possession of the Khronika Press (New York).
↩︎ - By this time the texts of declarations made to the authorities by the Samkharadze brothers (item 6) were also in the possession of the Khronika Press.
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