6 ITEMS
[1]
In 1972 new “Directives on the Awarding of Degrees and Titles to Academics” were issued, which gave the Higher Degrees Commission (VAK) the right to deprive academics of degrees and titles ‘for anti-Soviet activities’.
In 1973, on the basis of these Directives, VAK deprived the political prisoners Alexander Bolonkin (CCE 30.4) and Vasily Lisovoi (CCE 30.6) of their academic degrees.
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Now the same is about to happen to Kronid Lyubarsky (CCE 28.4).
Before his arrest, Lyubarsky worked in one of the laboratories of a research institute attached to the USSR Pedagogical Academy. He dealt with syllabi and teaching methods.
In spring 1975 there was a telephone call from VAK to Kashin, the head of this institute. He was told that Lyubarsky was to be deprived of his D.Sc. (Physico-Mathematical Sciences) because of his ‘anti-patriotic activities’. This would require, however, ‘a campaign from below’.
Kashin summoned Oleg Fyodorovich Kabardin, head of the laboratory in which Lyubarsky had worked, and suggested that he should write a ‘call to deprive Lyubarsky of his degree’ on behalf of the whole laboratory. Kabardin at first tried to refuse, pointing to Lyubarsky’s scientific achievements, but Kashin said that it was not Lyubarsky’s practical abilities which were now important, but his social allegiance (in the summer of 1972 Kabardin had written a character reference for the court which tried Lyubarsky in which he had spoken favourably of his practical abilities).
Kashin went on to say roughly this:
“By now you know his social allegiance — you were, after all, at the trial.
“Lyubarsky did not admit his activities were criminal, he did not repent, even though many of those who repent are released. Besides, stubbornness on the part of a laboratory head looks strange, and inevitably gives rise to the thought that perhaps he shares Lyubarsky’s views.”
Evidently this last argument had the necessary effect. Kabardin wrote the required document ‘on behalf of the laboratory’. The Institute’s Academic Council then unanimously decided to forward the petition to VAK.
*
[2]
In summer 1975, Lev Vyacheslavovich KARPINSKY, head of the scientific-communism department at the Progress publishing house, was expelled from the Party.
L. V. Karpinsky is the son of Vyacheslav A. Karpinsky (1880-1965), a well-known revolutionary, who worked with Lenin and later served as a member of the All-Union Central Soviet Executive Committee.
At the beginning of the 1960s L. V. Karpinsky was secretary for ideology of the Central Committee of the Komsomol [Communist Youth League], and later served on the editorial board of Pravda, as his father had done in his time. After the publication in Komsomolskaya Pravda of his article ‘On the Way to the Premiere’ (written with F. Burlatsky), on the subject of censorship in the theatre, he was removed from the Pravda editorial board and worked in the secretariat of Izvestiya, then in the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Sociology, and, finally, in the Progress publishing house.
Karpinsky was expelled from the Party after a pile of typed scientific articles, notes, and essays on sociology, political economy and economics was discovered in his desk. This material included 11 copies of a letter sent from Prague and addressed to Karpinsky. The author of the letter was Otto Lacis, who was working on the journal Problems of Peace and Socialism, Lacis had expressed his views on some acute problems in the social sciences. Both the letter and the other material discovered were written from a Marxist point of view and were loyal in tone. One of the main accusations levelled at Karpinsky concerned the number of copies he had of the letter.
Lacis has been expelled from the Party and dismissed from his job. Karpinsky was also dismissed from his job after being expelled from the CPSU.
*
Not long before the events described here, A. L. Yanov, a historian and philosopher who emigrated in 1974 (CCE 34.20-1 [16]) and is now a contributor to the journal Twentieth Century (this issue CCE 37.17 [6]), gave an interview to English radio correspondents. He stated, in particular, that among the employees of Moscow Party and Komsomol publishing houses there was a group of people united by the desire to analyse contemporary economic and sociological problems from a Marxist standpoint.
*
[3]
In July 1975 Zviad Gamsakhurdia was forced to ‘resign at his own request’ from Tbilisi University.
He had been employed as a senior lecturer in the Department of English Philology and had taught American literature and English language, on the grounds that the course in American literature had been abolished. I. Bachiashvili, Dean of the Faculty of West European Languages and Literature, told him that his English language lessons were also under threat of suspension.
*
[4]
On 19 May 1975 the degrees commission of the Research Institute of Maths & Mechanics at Leningrad University, investigating the case of S. I. Levin, a senior technical officer in the Polymer Stability Research Laboratory, came to this conclusion:
“S. L Levin has sufficient qualifications for the post of senior technical officer, but by his attitude to the social activities carried on at the Faculty he has a disturbing effect on the laboratory personnel and this in turn undoubtedly has an effect on the work of the laboratory as a whole.
“He creates an abnormal political climate.
“In connection with the above-mentioned facts the commission concludes that S. I. Levin is not suited for the post that he occupies.”
*
[5]
In March 1975 Vladimir Eller (22, a German from Kemerovo Region), a fourth-year student at the Translation Faculty of the Moscow Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages, was expelled from the Institute and the Komsomol for “lack of principles and behaviour incompatible with the norms for a Komsomol member”.
He was accused of having had a two-year friendship with Magda, a member of the West German embassy staff, whom he had introduced to friends at the Institute as a student from East Germany. On his return from a student exchange trip to East Germany in March 1975, Eller was, according to other students, summoned by the KGB.
He was informed that Magda had been followed for a long time and he was asked to hand over the literature he had obtained from her. Eller brought in The Gulag Archipelago and Cancer Ward, Eller was expelled from the Komsomol by its institute committee, without a general meeting being held.
At the end of May a meeting of students of Eller’s year was asked to discuss the ‘personal cases’ of V. Zhiltsov and S. Parkhomov. They had shared a room with Eller, but had informed neither the Komsomol committee nor the Dean that Magda was from West Germany. S. Kamensky, secretary of the bureau for students of this year, said that as they had not been able to resist his ‘ideological diversion’, they could not be entrusted with the job of being translators. At his suggestion the meeting passed a motion strongly condemning them ‘for lack of principles’ and calling for their expulsion from the institute. Six people out of 80 abstained, and their names were noted down by the leader of the year.
The Translation Faculty accepts only students recommended by district Komsomol committees.
*
[6]
All-Union Institute of Scientific & Technical Information
Order 1/DSP, 4 August 1975
For internal use
While working at the International Centre for Scientific & Technical Information, as one of an international group of experts, Yu. A. Polyusuk, head of the Institute’s Department of Mathematical Information Systems (OMOIS), had two non-business meetings, on 14 and 18 July, with a foreign specialist working as part of the group.
The meeting on 14 July, which was organized outside the city, was attended by N. A. Fenina, head of the Scientific Methods Department, and Yu. I. Fenin, senior research associate at OMOIS.
I order:
1. For infringing the existing regulations on unofficial meetings with foreign specialists, Yu. A. Polyusuk, head of OMOIS, N. A. Fenina, head of SMD, and Yu. I. Fenin, senior research associate at OMOIS, are to be severely reprimanded.
2. The section heads of the institute are to be told that non-business meetings with foreign specialists must be arranged in accordance with the Department of International Relations and Information.
3. Comrade A. G. Chakhmakhchev, head of the Department of International Relations & Information, is to strengthen controls to ensure that the regulations on work and meetings with foreign specialists are observed.
4. This order is to be brought to the attention of the Institute’s heads of department.
Professor A. I. Mikhailov
Director
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NOTES
A Chronicle of Current Events 