ODESSA. On 12 March 1976 the trial of Vyacheslav Igrunov (CCE 38) began. Everyone who wished to was able to be present in the court-room.
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Plyushch at liberty
On 10 January 1976 Leonid Plyushch, his wife Tatyana Zhitnikova and their two children left the USSR.
Plyushch was released from guard only on 10 January at the border station of Chop. They continued to give him triftazin until the very last moment. Only Plyushch’s mother and sister were allowed to travel to Chop – his sister, moreover, only after a categoric demand by Zhitnikova.
Right up to 10 January Zhitnikova did not know where and when her husband would be released from hospital.
In Vienna Plyushch was examined by psychiatrists who had gone there specially and who found that he was in good mental health, but in a state of extreme nervous exhaustion. The Plyushch family has settled in France.
L. Plyushch’s fate has been recounted in CCEs No 23 to 38.
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A Press Conference
On 9 January 1976 A. D. Sakharov, V. F. Turchin and Yu. F. Orlov held a press conference at which they handed correspondents the declaration ‘In Defence of Sergei Kovalyov’ (see ‘Letters and Statements’ in this issue), the declaration of V. Turchin and Yu. Orlov ‘On the Interview of the Deputy-Minister of Justice of the USSR with the Journal New Times’, and A. Amalrik’s article ‘Are there Political Prisoners in the USSR?’ (see ‘Polemics with Sukharev’ in this issue).
Opening the press conference, A. Sakharov said; ‘In reports about the declaration “In Defence of Sergei Kovalyov” we would like due attention to be paid to those who have signed it, to their position, and to the possible consequences for them. The latter point indicates the non-triviality of such documents in our country, and distinguishes them very forcefully from similar statements in other countries.’
Yu. Orlov mentioned the wide geographical range of the places where the people who had signed the declaration lived, and said that they represented ‘all ideological, political and religious viewpoints … There has not been such a number of signatures for a long time’.
V. Turchin: ‘We think that Kovalyov’s case now has … in a certain sense, a key significance, because his trial has touched on and raised those questions which disturb us and which ought to disturb the public’, Turchin mentioned the severity of the sentence — the maximum term under that article — ‘despite the total absence of any kind of evidence of libel’.
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RIGA. In February 1976, after more than one postponement, G, B. Pinson was granted a non-routine meeting with her son Boris Penson (CCE 38), in the premises of a Riga prison.
On 28 February she left the USSR.
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ODESSA. On 10 February 1976 an examination of the appeal in the case of Leonid Tymchuk (CCE 38) took place. The sentence, one year of corrective labour at his place of work, was upheld.
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SVERDLOVSK. In November 1975 Alexander Avakov, a student of the mechanics and mathematical faculty of the University, was arrested. He has been charged under Article 70 of the RSFSR Criminal Code. Interrogations are being conducted in Sverdlovsk and Moscow. In the opinion of his friends, Avakov is a Marxist who considers Soviet reality a manifestation of revisionism.
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LENINGRAD. Yury Vasilyevich Tsaryov (aged 28), a worker at the Gorky factory, has been arrested for preparing leaflets. An investigation is being conducted under Article 190-1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code.
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MOSCOW. Eduard Samoilov, arrested in May 1975 (CCE 37), has been pronounced not responsible in the Serbsky Institute. It is not known whether there has been a trial. The investigators; Repnev, Khvostov, Chapaikin.
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KIEV. At the beginning of February 1976 the writer Mykola Rudenko, a member of the Soviet group of Amnesty International (CCE 36), was told to enter a psychiatric hospital for examination.
Rudenko, who was seriously wounded in the spine in the war, had applied for a military pension and had to go before a medical commission. During this he was sent to a psychiatrist, who stated; ‘The patient is well-orientated, polite and open to normal contact. His judgements are consistent and logical, his reasoning is not impaired, his temperament is equable. There are no disorders of memory. He makes no complaints.’ Nonetheless, the psychiatrist concluded that: ‘the patient needs more thorough psychiatric examination’, because ‘he thinks he is a famous writer’ and ‘he has not experienced a psychiatric trauma as a result of his expulsion from the Writers’ Union’ (1).
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LENINGRAD. On 26 December 1975 a search was conducted in the flat of the philologist Ilya Davidovich Levin (aged 27). Before it commenced a statement was made that the search was being conducted with the aim of confiscating arms, drugs, poisons and anti-Soviet literature. The search lasted ten hours. Among the things confiscated was The Master and Margarita (‘Possev’ edition).
On 27 January Levin was refused permission to emigrate to Israel without any reasons being given.
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YAKUTSK. P. E. Bashkirov has received from the Yakutsk procuracy a reply (dated 3 February 1976) to his complaint about an illegal search and interrogations (CCE 38). The procuracy denies everything; ‘… No search was held in your flat, and the book referred to was voluntarily handed to the authorities by your wife A. L, Gabysheva, with whom a conversation, not an interrogation, was held.’
On 24 February Gabysheva herself wrote a complaint to the procuracy.
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TARUSA-SOSNOVKA. N. A. Strokata (CCEs 25, 28), who was released from imprisonment in December 1975 (CCE 38), has been registered in Tarusa, Kaluga Region. In January she was placed under open police supervision. At the beginning of February, she was allowed to go to Mordovia for a meeting with her husband, S. Karavansky (CCE 18), who is in Camp 1 (special regime).
They were granted a twenty-four-hour meeting — their first long meeting for ten years. P. Starchik accompanied Strokata from Moscow to the meeting. In the village of Sosnovka, where Camp 1 is situated, Starchik was told to go away immediately, with threats of a ‘15-day sentence’. On the way to the station the people accompanying him — a major and ‘someone in civilian clothes’ — said: ‘Tell your Bonners that after the congress they’ll be in for it. And tell them not to come here; if they do, the forest is dark and they might not return.’
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MOSCOW. On the evening of 20 February 1976 Andrei Amalrik was detained in Moscow and taken to Kaluga. There he was detained all night by police, and then taken to a district centre in Kaluga Region, the town of Borovsk (the village where Amalrik is registered is in Borovsk district). In Borovsk the procurator demanded that he get himself work. After this they set him free, and he returned to Moscow without hindrance.
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LENINGRAD. On 2 November 1975 two Leningrad citizens setting off for Moscow were detained at the Moscow station in Leningrad. When their luggage was searched, the following things were confiscated: a letter of congratulation to Sakharov signed by about 20 citizens of Leningrad, some samizdat papers, and private letters. After the search the detainees, Alexander Nikolayevich Zemtsov and Alexander Anatolyevich Tron, were set free.
On 14 November they were both given a warning under the Decree of 25 December 1972 (CCEs 30’ 32). Moreover, the warning was explained to Tron in the following way: ‘If you commit one more anti-social act, we’ll put you inside.’ Tron and Zemtsov refused to sign the record of the warning.
Earlier A. Zemtsov was given a one-year suspended sentence under Article 206 (‘hooliganism’) for damaging a portrait of Stalin at a photographic exhibition entitled ‘Twenty-Five years since Victory’ (CCE 14). In 1972 Zemtsov was a witness at the trial of Yu. Melnik (CCE 26).
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MOSCOW. In 1975 a group studying the philosophy of karate (neo-Buddhism, yoga) gathered in one of the sports halls of the ‘Trud’ stadium. The classes attracted up to 25 people: lecturers’ graduate students, theatre people, office workers. After a while the members of the group began to be summoned to the KGB, where they were requested to cease their gatherings. However, they were later permitted to continue their classes, on condition that a representative of the KGB was present at them. The group then broke up.
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On 7 February 1976 A. E. Levitin-Krasnov, who had been involved in a road accident, was taken to a hospital in Lucerne, Switzerland, in serious condition.
The administration of the surgical clinic immediately summoned his wife. L. I. Zdanovskaya, who lives in Moscow. However, OVIR refused to give her a visa, demanding confirmation of what had happened from the Soviet ambassador in Berne, and were not satisfied with the confirmation which they already had from the Swiss ambassador in Moscow.
The priests D. Dudko, S. Zheludkov and G. Yakunin, and also L. Regelson, Vad. Borisov, E. Bonner and V. Lashkova wrote a letter to OVIR on 21 February (with copies to Brezhnev, Podgorny and the Swiss ambassador). They asked that L, 1. Zdanovskaya’s journey to her husband should not be delayed.
On 23 February Zdanovskaya was informed that her case would be examined without waiting for confirmation from the Soviet ambassador.
On 29 February Zdanovskaya left to see her husband.
At the present time A. E. Levitin-Krasnov is recovering.
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MOSCOW. On 11 February 1976 a session of the secretariat of the Moscow writers’ organisation was held. At the session, which took place under the chairmanship of A. Rekemchuk, Anatoly Tikhonovich Gladilin was expelled from the Writers’ Union ‘for an act incompatible with the title of Soviet writer’.
Gladilin’s ‘act’ consisted of asking for a character reference for emigration to Israel. Added to the charges against him were the letters he had signed in defence of Daniel and Sinyavsky and Solzhenitsyn, and the publication in the West in 1972 of his book Prognosis for Tomorrow. It was also recalled that Gladilin had ‘participated’ in a demonstration in Red Square on 5 March 1966 which did not in fact take place. [note]
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MOSCOW. The exhibition ‘150th Anniversary of the Decembrist Uprising’ being held in the Historical Museum in Moscow has aroused the dissatisfaction of one visitor, a certain assistant professor at the University of the Friendship of the Peoples and an Orientalist.
He demanded that the exhibition committee remove Pavel Pestel’s Masonic items from the exhibits, because ‘Freemasonry is a branch of Judaism’. He was refused, with the reminder that Pravda had spoken approvingly of the exhibition (see ‘And the Lofty Striving of Thoughts’ by Shatunovsky and Kapustin, 6 December 1975). ‘We’ll see about that,’ said the assistant professor, and went away. A day later there was a phone-call from the Central Committee, and the exhibits referred to were removed.
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MOSCOW. Officials of the KGB had a talk with I. A. Shostakovich (the widow of the composer) about the memoirs of D. D. Shostakovich, which he had dictated to the musicologist S. Volkov during the last four years of his life (when he was seriously ill).
They told her that information about the memoirs had appeared in the West and showed her the newspaper Unita where the relevant reports were printed together with photographs of Shostakovich, Volkov and the composer Tishchenko (the composer of a cantata to A, Akhmatova’s poem ’Requiem’). On the advice of the KGB’ I, A. Shostakovich asked Volkov to give her the memoirs to read before publication. Volkov replied that he did not have a single copy left’ but that he would willingly fulfil her request abroad. A week later (at the beginning of March), Volkov received permission to emigrate, for which he had already waited a year.
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In 1975 the Military Publishing house issued the book Orders of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief during the Great Patriotic War, from 25 January 1943 to 3 September 1945, prepared by the Institute of Military History of the Ministry of Defence and the Military-Scientific Directorate of the General Staff. The book contains only publicly announced orders on the occasion of the taking of towns or territory. It opens with ‘a canonical portrait of Stalin in full dress uniform’.
The imprint data indicate that the book is ‘for interdepartmental sale’. On the cover, in place of a price, is printed ‘gratis’.
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An Argument with Time, a book by A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s former wife Natalya Reshetovskaya, was published in 1975 by the Novosti Press Agency’s publishing house. Apparently, this is the book about whose English translation Chronicle has written (issue 37). The book has no imprint data (print run, number of Glavlit permit’ name of editor, etc.). The book has not been put on general sale.
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LONDON. On 4 February 1976 Literaturnaya Gazeta published the article ‘Meanness’, subtitled ‘An almost juridical essay about those who speculate in human tragedy’. The next day the article was summarized in the British communist newspaper The Morning Star.
On 23 February the following note was printed in The Morning Star: ‘Viktor Fainberg — An Apology’. In an article under the heading ‘Soviet Paper accuses West on Gambling on Human Tragedies’ appearing on page 5 of our issue for the 5th day of February 1976 a number of statements about Mr Viktor Fainberg were made.
“In that article it was alleged that Mr Viktor Fainberg had been certified as being sick by doctors in the West and that British psychiatrists had found him mentally ill. We are now satisfied that the above statements are wholly unfounded. We unreservedly withdraw the statements in question and desire to express our regret to Mr Viktor Fainberg. We apologise to him and his family for any distress and inconvenience which may have been caused to him.”
A Chronicle of Current Events 