Pavel Yevgenyevich BASHKIROV was arrested on 23 June (CCE 41.5 gave 22 June) on his arrival in Nyurbachan (Yakut ASSR) to visit Andrei Tverdokhlebov.
Prior to this, he had been searched at Nyurba airport on the pretext that his rucksack was ‘similar to a stolen one’. The rucksack contained: a tape-recorder, tapes (including a recording of the voices of Tverdokhlebov’s relatives on the telephone), a radio, a camera and samizdat (including two Chronicles). All this was confiscated.
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Bashkirov was charged under Article 190-1 (RSFSR Criminal Code) and, a few days later, he was sent to the special investigation prison in Yakutsk. On 24 June KGB officials carried out a search at Bashkirov’s flat, which is attached to the museum where he had recently been working. The following were confiscated: 17 tape-recordings, photographs of Solzhenitsyn and Grigorenko, samizdat (material on the Sinyavsky-Daniel case, poems by Mandelstam and so on), and Bashkirov’s own notes. Searches also took place at Bashkirov’s old flat and at his mother’s flat and her place of work.
Among the witnesses interrogated during the investigation, Bashkirov’s former colleague Shavlov stood out particularly. He wrote six pages of testimony, in which he not only confirmed all that he was asked to say about ‘dissemination’ but also showed personal initiative by adding a few people to the list of ‘readers’ known to the investigators.
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On 1 July Bashkirov handed in a complaint addressed to the Procurator of the Yakut ASSR, concerning the circumstances of his arrest.
Although he was behaving peacefully, on arrival at the Yakutsk investigation prison his hands were clamped into handcuffs behind his back, so tightly that the skin broke, he was locked up in the tiniest cell (stakanchik), and threats were made to put him in a strait-jacket.
At the end of July Bashkirov handed in a complaint to the prison administration. Its contents were as follows: writing implements and paper had been confiscated from him on a number of occasions; personal letters, notes and documents to do with his case had been taken away from him; his requests for legal consultation on procedure and the rules on detention had been ignored; the disorder in the cell; and the fact that he had not been allowed to shave or have a bath for 20 days.
At the beginning of August, in a declaration addressed to the head of the special investigation prison, Bashkirov again demanded the return of his letters, notes and documents. He also stated:
“Adding my voice to the protests against violence in the world and persecution of people for their convictions, and for political reasons, I shall express this in the only way open to me, by going on a complete hunger-strike from 7 to 11 August.”
On 24 August the investigation came to an end.
Finding a lawyer involved the usual difficulties. After unsuccessful attempts to get permission to engage a lawyer from Moscow, Bashkirov’s relatives came to an agreement with the Yakutsk lawyer Medvedev. He went through the case with Bashkirov and was due to appear at his trial (correction CCE 43.4).
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On 25 September 17 Muscovites made a statement, “In defence of Pavel Bashkirov”:
“…The approaching trial is ‘legal’ in form but is the outcome of wholly unlawful persecution: the shadowing, trickery and secret searches which P. E. Bashkirov was subjected to over some years. He had aroused the suspicions and anger of the Yakutsk KGB by his friendship with those whom the authorities call ‘anti-Soviet’ and ‘renegades’, and by reading what the State considers unfit for the eyes of Soviet citizens …
“Pavel Bashkirov is not known to society at large, but his trial should, in our opinion, attract no less attention than the trials of well-known activists defending human rights in the USSR. This trial is a reprisal for an inconvenient kind of thinking, for a natural inability to accept tyranny, it is a reprisal against a good and courageous man.“
On 27 September the Supreme Court of the Yakutsk ASSR began to hear the case, starting with an incident unprecedented even in ‘political’ trials.
On 23 September Bashkirov’s wife, Asya Gabysheva, was told at the law office that Medvedev had gone away on an assignment: he would not be able to appear at the trial, and she was offered a new lawyer. However, it turned out that Medvedev had not gone anywhere, he came to the hearing (correction “The Trial of Bashkirov” CCE 43.6). In spite of this, the court did not allow him to take charge of the defence, as a new lawyer had been appointed. Bashkirov categorically refused the services of the defence lawyer forced on him and declared that he insisted on a Moscow lawyer being summoned, chosen by his relatives. The court hearing was suspended until 7 October.
Acting on the instructions of Bashkirov’s relatives, Yu. B. Zaks came to an agreement with the Moscow lawyer Yu. B. Pozdeyev. On 29 September Apraksin, the chairman of the Moscow City Bar, gave him permission to make the trip, but revoked this permission the next day.
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T. Velikanova and T. Khodorovich (members of the Action Group), and L. Alexeyeva, A. Ginzburg, M. Landa, Yu, Orlov, V. Slepak and A. Shcharansky (members of the Helsinki Group), have appealed to the RSFSR Ministry of Justice. In their letter, they say:
“On 30 September K. N. Apraksin stated, in a personal telephone conversation with persons representing Bashkirov’s mother, that he would not “allow” any Moscow lawyers to go to Yakutsk to defend Bashkirov.
“Apraksin at first based this on the fact that “all the lawyers are busy”, then on the alleged fact that there had been “a decision” to allow members of the Moscow Bar to conduct the defence in trials in other towns only if the accused was charged with theft, murder and other such crimes and there was a danger of local feeling influencing the local lawyers. Who made this decision, when and in what way it was taken, K. Apraksin did not inform them.
“We do not know if there was such a “decision”, but if so, it is clearly unlawful and gravely infringes the right of accused persons freely to choose their lawyers. Neither the Fundamental Principles of Criminal Procedure in the USSR and the Union Republics, nor the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, nor the Statutes on the Bar confirmed by the RSFSR Council of Ministers, lay down any territorial restrictions in the choice of a lawyer.
“It is typical that only in political cases are obstacles put in the way of choosing a lawyer (the Palatnik and Igrunov cases in Odessa, the Kovalyov case in Lithuania, and others).“
The complaints and arguments of Yu. B. Zaks at the Bar department of the Ministry of Justice led at least to the restoration of the Yakutsk lawyer Medvedev as the defence counsel in the case.
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The trial was resumed on 7 October, The Chronicle knows only a little about the course of the hearing.
The trial was in open court. Ten witnesses were questioned, three of them Bashkirov’s cell-mates from the special investigation prison, who gave evidence about his ‘dissemination’ by word of mouth. Two or three non-prisoner witnesses said that Bashkirov had given them reading matter. The court brought up Bashkirov’s visit to Tverdokhlebov (CCE 41.5).
The prosecutor said that Bashkirov had carried on anti-Soviet conversations on the telephone. It is possible that this referred to the occasion when Bashkirov was describing his being ‘taken’ to the procurator’s office for a ‘Warning’ (CCE 41.5). The prosecutor asked for the maximum penalty under Article 190-1, three years in camps.
In his speech for the defence, Bashkirov’s lawyer admitted that he was guilty, but asked the court for mercy, on the basis of his good references from work and Bashkirov’s family situation.
Bashkirov made his final statement on the second day of the trial. Before this, his lawyer tried to persuade Bashkirov, in the courtroom itself, to soften his stand Tn your speech you defended the prosecutor, not me,’ replied Bashkirov. In his final statement he denied that his actions were anti-Soviet or libellous and defended his beliefs.
The sentence: 18 months in ordinary-regime camps.
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