[1]
KIEV. Yury Timofeyevich LITVIN, arrested at the end of 1974 or the beginning of 1975, has been sentenced by the Kiev Regional Court to four years’ imprisonment, apparently under the Article (62) relating to ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda’. He was formerly imprisoned from the middle 1950s until 1965, under Articles 58-10 and 58-11. (The Article and patronymic are given wrongly here, cf. CCE 39.2-2: Article 187-1, Timonovich.)
Litvin has a son aged nine and a 14-year-old daughter. His family’s address is: Vasilkov, Kiev Region, 1 Liebknecht St., flat 15. His wife’s name is Vera Litvin.
Yury Litvin, 1934-1984
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[2]
MOSCOW. On 8 May 1975 Eduard Valentinovich SAMOILOV, a fourth-year student at the Moscow University Faculty of Journalism, was arrested. (He is from Kazakhstan and lived in a student hostel.)
He was charged under Article 70 of the RSFSR Criminal Code. During a search an academic work of his was confiscated, a historical study of the USSR and the CPSU. One of the theses put forward in this study is that the Cult of Personality was a natural phenomenon in the development of our society. A microfilm copy of his work was also confiscated during the search.
A student who had lent Samoilov a camera was threatened with expulsion. Arkady Suslov, a fellow-student of Samoilov’s, was also threatened with expulsion, because of his friendship with Samoilov.
When Samoilov’s mother arrived from Kazakhstan, she was interrogated by investigator Repnev.
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[3]
TALLINN. Sergei Rutkovsky (36, a graduate of a motorway construction technical college), who was arrested in November or December 1974 and charged under one of the two ‘political’ Articles of the Criminal Code, is apparently now in a Tallinn prison.
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[4]
Georgy P. Vins (CCE 35.3) has been sent to serve his term of imprisonment in the Yakut ASSR, in the Soviet Far East. V. Yeremin, the deputy head of his Kiev prison, told Vins’s relatives that his health was satisfactory.
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[5]
Nashpits and Tsitlyonok (CCE 36.4) have arrived at their places of exile: Nashpits in Chita Region, where he is working in his profession as a doctor; Tsitlyonok in the town of Yeniseisk, Krasnoyarsk Region (Krai), where he is an auxiliary worker in a factory.
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[6]
MOSCOW. Alexander Slepak, son of Vladimir Slepak (CCE 36.10), was stopped on the street by police, charged with ‘resisting the authorities’, and imprisoned for 15 days.
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[7]
TBILISI. On 24 July 1975 N. Koberidze was interrogated at the Georgian KGB headquarters by Colonel Zardalishvili. He advised Koberidze to end her friendship with Zviad Gamsakhurdia, ‘whose days are numbered’[1].
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[8]
ALEXANDROV (Vladimir Region). On 17 August 1975, the day before he intended to go to Vladimir to consult a lawyer about Osipov’s case, Nikolai Ivanov, a former member of the All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People (CCE 1.6) [2] was beaten up by three unknown men.
Hhe was released from the Mordovian camps two years ago, after six years’ imprisonment. N. Ivanov had to receive medical treatment in the hospital for three weeks for concussion of the brain and injuries to his face.
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[9]
M. I. Raigorodetsky (CCE 32.20 & CCE 34.22) was released before the end of his sentence, in July 1975, by the Zaporozhe Regional Court.
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[10]
Lev Ubozhko (CCE 36.10) has escaped from the psychiatric hospital in Chelyabinsk Region where he was undergoing compulsory treatment.
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[11]
After his release, Valery Ronkin (CCE 36.10) has settled in the town of Luga (Leningrad Region). Neither Ronkin himself, nor his wife, has been able to obtain any work in the town.
The Ronkins have two children, one 12 and the other two years old.
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[12]
Andrei Amalrik (CCE 36.10) has been refused a residence permit in Moscow, where he lived before his arrest. The police have twice recorded that he has ‘violated the residence regulations’. Amalrik has been forced to leave Moscow.
During Amalrik’s ‘absence’ (in a labour camp and in exile), his dacha in the Ryazan Region was destroyed by unknown ‘bandits’.
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[13]
MOSCOW. On the evening of 5 September 1975 the Jewish New Year began.
The police closed the road turning into Nogin Square from Solyanka Street, and the traffic was forced into Arkhipov Street, the narrow alley where the synagogue is situated. When the service ended people poured out of the synagogue and the whole road overflowed. Young people started to sit and lie down in the road in front of the cars. Police attempts to disperse them were unsuccessful. An attempt by the police to make cars drive into the crowd resulted in the windows of some cars being broken. The police then closed Arkhipov Street to traffic. The festival ended normally.
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[14]
MOSCOW. On 21 September a large group of Soviet Jews celebrated the Jewish festival of Succoth (the feast of ‘booths’) in the suburbs, together with Israeli sportsmen who were then in the USSR as participants in the World Heavy Athletics and Wrestling Championships, which had just taken place in Moscow and Minsk (members of the Israeli wrestling team were recent emigrants from the USSR).
The police demanded that a small Israeli sports flag, which had been hung on a tree, should be handed over to them. Those taking part in the festival refused to give up the flag. The police tried to seize the flag by force, but were forced to retreat.
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[16]
KIEV. A group of French lawyers has visited the Ukrainian SSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and asked to see one of the officials in charge to talk about Georgy P. Vins (CCE 35.3).
They were told that the official in charge had gone to see the Minister and would not be returning until the end of the day, although, shortly before this, one of the people from Kiev accompanying the group had been told by the official’s secretary that he was in.
The lawyers also visited the Medical Department of the Ukrainian SSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and spoke to two lieutenant-colonels there about Plyushch. The lieutenant-colonels refused to give their names. They also refused to name the ‘doctor in charge’ of Plyushch’s treatment. The lawyers were not allowed to visit Plyushch as they asked to do.
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[17]
MOSCOW. On 14 September 1975 unofficial artists prepared to commemorate the anniversary of their exhibition being broken up on 15 September 1974 (CCE 34.16), by exhibiting their pictures on the same piece of waste land.
The authorities tried to dissuade them and promised to arrange an exhibition for them on 20 September at the Exhibition of Economic Achievements. On 13 September the Vladimir artist Eduard Zelenin, one of the organizers of the intended ‘anniversary’, was suddenly summoned by the police to Vladimir. He was then imprisoned there for 15 days. The majority of the unofficial artists gave in to the demands of the authorities. Nevertheless, three artists did exhibit their pictures on 14 September on the waste land.
On 20 September the unofficial artists’ exhibition was to have opened in the House of Culture at the Exhibition of Economic Achievements (VDNKh). On the night before the opening, the responsible ‘authorities’ removed 40 of the pictures already on display. Then, as a protest, the artists began to take down their own pictures. The opening of the exhibition on 20 September was cancelled. Between 20 and 21 September a compromise was reached (CCE 32.13 item 17): the authorities agreed to reduce the number of ‘forbidden’ works to 10, while the artists agreed to put their pictures up again; however, they also demanded that Zelenin should be released. On 21 September Zelenin was released. On the same day the exhibition opened, and lasted until 30 September.
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[18]
In the middle of July, the Moscow OVIR again refused Yelena Bonner permission to travel to Italy for medical treatment (CCE 36.10). A few days later an OVIR official told her personally that she would be allowed to go abroad for three months. Ye. Bonner had not had time to tell anyone about this, when an unknown citizen rang a foreign journalist and told him about the permit given to her, as if at her request.
On 16 August Bonner left the country. On 4 September in the town of Sienna (Italy), she had an emergency operation. On the same day somebody rang Sakharov, claiming to be speaking at the request of Vladimir Maximov, and told him that the operation had been unsuccessful and that his wife was feeling very unwell. A telephone conversation with friends on the same day revealed that the mysterious phone call had been a deliberate lie.
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[19]
In July 1975 Andrei Grigorenko, son of P. G. Grigorenko, left the USSR with his wife.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 