GERMANS. PENTECOSTALISTS. JEWS. OTHERS.
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1. Germans
In 1975 in the Karaganda Region three men were convicted under Article 170-1 (Kazakh SSR Criminal Code = Article 190-1, RSFSR Code). Valentin Vins and Anton Vinshu received three years each; L. Vinshu received one year.
In September 1976 Genrikh Reimer (CCE 41.10, CCE 42.3) and Lilya Furman (CCE 42.3) were convicted under the same Article. Reimer received three years, Furman, 18 months. On 1 June 1976, a month before his arrest, the wife of G. D. Reimer died: he was left with three children, the youngest is seven.
Lilya Furman, who was living in Kirgizia, was arrested on 20 July 1977 in Alma-Ata, where she had been summoned to an interrogation as a witness.
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In August 1976 Victor Klink, who had already served two years (CCE 34.10) and his father Artur Klink (CCE 41.10) were arrested.
On 22 September they were sentenced under Article 172-1 of the Kazakh Criminal Code (“Insulting a police officer or people’s vigilante”) to six and three months, respectively, of imprisonment in a strict-regime camp. Victor Klink is a Group II invalid; his father is 72 years old.
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APPEAL
At the end of 1976 Soviet Germans living in the Kazakh and Kirgiz SSRs wrote an ‘Appeal’.
In it they describe the history of their exile in 1941 [1], their struggle for permission to leave for the Federal Republic of Germany, the unsubstantiated refusals, the persecution, searches, arrests and trials [2]. It carries more than 300 signatures.
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HELSINKI GROUP
The Moscow Helsinki Group has received letters from families:
- in the Kirgiz SSR: the Geidebrekht couple (Frunze 43 [Bishkek], 48 Belgorodskaya Street), the Tserr family (Frunze, Igarskaya 14), the Girsh family (Frunze 49, 7 Komsomolskaya Street); the Izaak family (Sokulusky district, Novo-Pavlovka village) and the Mikhel family (same, 31 Komsomolskaya Street);
- in the Lithuanian SSR: the family of Voldemar Suchkov (Kaunas district, Rinkunai village), and the Gasiunas family (Kaunas, 9 Vyturlu Street, flat 1); and from Erik Martin Putnins (Klaipeda, 34 Vytauto Street, flat 9). The Lithuanian authors of the letters, all Soviet Germans, describe their struggle over many years to leave for West Germany and the unsubstantiated refusals. They ask for help.
For example, Voldemar Suchkov is a citizen of West Germany. Until 1945 he lived in Germany.
In 1959 he married a Lithuanian. Then, in 1959, they began to ask permission to leave for Germany. Now they already have seven refusals. When their daughter Rita Suchkovaite received a passport in 1976, she was, despite her protests, recorded as a citizen of the USSR. Voldemar Suchkov himself is living in the USSR on a ‘foreigner’s residence permit’.
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2. Pentecostalists
On 21 February 1977, Nikolai Goretoi, the Presbyter of the Pentecostal community in the Starotitarovskaya cantonment (Krasnodar Region, Krai), his son Enoch Goretoi, deacon Nikolai Bobarykin, Fyodor Sidenko together with Stanislav Babichenko (a representative of the Pentecostal community in Georgia) transmitted to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet a letter signed by 520 Pentecostalists, asking permission for them to leave the USSR. They are willing to leave for any country which is prepared to receive them and in which there is a community of Pentecostalists.
On 22 February delegates of the Pentecostalists arranged a press conference at which they set out the reasons for their desire to leave (see CCE 44.21). They also stated that they needed temporary material help for their departure.
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Since January 1977 Nikolai Goretoi has been summoned to interrogations.
At the end of 1976 the Moscow Helsinki Group used the Pentecostalists’ materials to compile the collection Leave, O my People, devoted to problems of emigration [3]. It contains their appeals to international organizations and world opinion, statements asking permission to leave, and their life stories.
In December 1976 the Moscow Helsinki Group handed this collection to foreign correspondents. In addition, it was sent to each of the governments of the participant countries of the Helsinki conference (see also CCE 32.7.)
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3. Jews
In December 1976 the Lithuanian Procuracy instituted a criminal case under Article 199-1 (Lithuanian SSR Criminal Code = Article 190-1, RSFSR Code) against Professor Naum Salansky, D.Sc. (Physico-Mathematical Sciences). He is accused of preparing documents which slander the policy of the Soviet government toward Soviet citizens of Jewish nationality.
The case is being conducted by a senior assistant of the Lithuanian Procurator, Bakucionis.
Salansky has already been interrogated nine times. An arrest has been imposed on his correspondence. A written undertaking not to leave town has been taken from him.
Professor Salansky worked in the Krasnoyarsk Institute of Physics in Siberia (USSR Academy of Sciences). The testimonial given him by this institute says that he never engaged in ‘secret’ work. For the last few years Salansky has lived in Vilnius and has not worked in his profession. However, two years ago he was refused permission to leave for Israel for security reasons.
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In Vilnius Salansky has directed an unofficial seminar on Jewish culture (CCE 43.12). He was also a member of the organizing committee of the international symposium on Jewish culture in the USSR (CCE 43.12).
Evidently these two facts are the real reason for instituting a criminal case against him.
27 Jewish activists have appealed in a letter to the Jewish communities of the world about Salansky. They write that Salansky’s childhood was spent in the ghetto of Kaunas and he miraculously survived after a German officer disfigured him with a bayonet. The authors of the letter report that Salansky’s mother is in Israel and is ill with cancer:
“All the norms of morality and humanity demand that Salansky immediately be given the opportunity to emigrate to Israel.”
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On 16 February Yakov Rakhlenko was invited to see Kovalenko, a senior OVIR inspector at the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). Their conversation was about a letter by 170 ‘refuseniks’ demanding written and legally based answers to their statements about leaving.
During the conversation a colonel who did not give his name was present, but said nothing. Here are some points from the conversation:
K: “The reason for refusals is State Security, a point mentioned in the [1966] Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”
R: “All my family except myself and my mother are in Israel.”
K: “Your sister is not family; read the [USSR] Code of Laws on Marriage and the Family. In the Helsinki Agreement it talks only about the reunification of families.
“You write that thousands of families cannot leave. That is slander. We have only 1,840 ‘refuseniks’. This is 1.6 per cent of the total. But ‘thousands’ means two thousand or more. Zionist propaganda is deceiving you. You are poisoned by national chauvinism.
“You were born here and should live here. You have nothing to do in Israel. The majority of those who have signed the letter do not have the right to leave, as in their cases there is no question of family reunification. Today one will want to leave, then another, then a third … What kind of a State will that be!?”
R: “Do you think that everyone will want to run away from here?”
K: “No, but you want to run away.”
Kovalenko finished the conversation thus,
“I don’t give a damn about your statements. Nothing you write will help you in the slightest I advise you to give up going to official bodies, and writing, and complaining. However long it is decided to keep you, we will keep you. Your scribblings will not help you.”
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4. Others
In November 1975 an inhabitant of Riga, Alexandra Alexeyevna DMITROCHENKOVA, submitted an application to leave.
In January 1976 she received a refusal. Dmitrochenkova was told that she would never be given permission to emigrate, as she was Russian.
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MARIA JURGUTIENE
Maria Jurgutiene (CCE 36.9 [3]), who lives in Vilnius, has been endeavouring since December 1974 to get permission to leave with her 13-year-old daughter for the USA. Her husband Aloizas Jurgutis lives there: in May 1974 he did not return from a tourist trip to Yugoslavia.
To her requests she has received such answers as:
- her husband had betrayed his country (March 1975);
- there was no possibility of satisfying her request (April 1976);
- simply a refusal (24 December 1976).
Jurgutiene reports these circumstances in a statement addressed to world opinion and to US President Carter. The statement also says:
“I am constantly receiving written and verbal threats; they will send me to prison, they will take away my flat, they will expel my daughter from school because a Soviet school is no place for her to study.
“On 30 May 1974 a search took place in our flat. On 22 September 1974 I was deprived of my job. I had worked in the ’Knowledge’ society as a librarian specializing in organization and methods. From 30 May 1974 to 1 February 1975, I was summoned incessantly to interrogations at the KGB. In June 1974 my 11-year-old daughter Laina was also at an interrogation at the KGB. An arrest has been imposed on correspondence with my husband, which has stopped. On 30 March 1975 my telephone was cut off without warning. I was summoned to the police station several times for explanations as to why I was not working.
“On 29 July 1976 a search took place in the flat. Constant surveillance of me has operated continuously up to the present.
“What can be more natural than the reunification of a family? This is a vitally important question for our family. I want to live together with the man I love and with whom I joined my fate. I ask only for what is considered the inalienable right of every person.
“As the above-mentioned facts are a crude violation of the Covenant on Civil Rights and the Final Act of the Helsinki conference, I consider it my right to report what has been set out above and, having exhausted all possibilities in my own country, to turn to you and ask for help in defending my rights.”
M. Jurgutiene, Vilnius, 10 March 1977″
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NOTES
- After the German invasion of 22 June 1941 Soviet Germans were deported eastwards and to the North from the Volga German Republic (abolished and never restored) and from south Russia and Ukraine, see “Wartime deportation, 1941-1944“, Map of Memory.
↩︎ - On the recent mistreatment of Soviet Germans, see CCE 32.8, CCE 34.10, CCE 41.10 and CCE 42.3.
↩︎ - The copy of the Pentecostalist collection Leave, O my People, received by Keston College (UK) names Alexander Ginzburg as the compiler. This was later confirmed (CCE //).
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