In September Alexander Argentov (CCE 41.2-3) was released from a psychiatric hospital. As far as is known, this was done on the orders of Moscow’s head psychiatrist, V. P. Kotov [1]. It is possible that Argentov’s swift release was largely due to the many expressions of support for him, here and in the West.
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Bulletin No. 35 of The Council of Evangelical Christian-Baptist [CECB] Prisoners’ Relatives in the USSR reports new convictions for religious activities, arrests, searches, dispersals of prayer meetings, fines and deprivation of parental rights.
Material taken from this issue is set out below.
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Ivanovka village, AZERBAIJAN
On 11 July in Ivanovka village, Ismailinsky district (Azerbaijan SSR), Pyotr Alexandrovich SEREBRENNIKOV (76), presbyter of the village’s ECB congregation, was arrested. On 21 July he was sentenced under an Article (= Article 227, RSFSR Criminal Code: “Encroachment on the personalities and rights of citizens under the guise of performing religious rites”) to five years’ strict-regime, together with confiscation of property.
This was Serebrennikov’s fourth term ‘inside’. He left at home a severely ill wife, who cannot rise from her bed. The believers of the Ivanovka congregation sent a complaint to Brezhnev, Podgorny, Rudenko and the CECB Prisoners’ Relatives.
On 20-21 July in the same village the following were arrested: Ivan Alexandrovich SEREBRENNIKOV (b. 1906), Maria Stepanovna LEONTIEVA (b. 1912) and Anastasia Pavlovna YERMOLOVA (b. 1924), the mother of seven children (some of them still minors). Criminal cases have been initiated against them.
Members of the local congregation are persecuted in other ways as well: their light and water supplies are cut off; they are fined and sacked from their jobs. A complaint to Brezhnev, Podgorny and USSR Procurator-General Rudenko, dated 7 July and signed by ten believers, states that the persecution is directed by N. V. Nikitin, chairman of the collective farm, who is a deputy to the Azerbaijan SSR Supreme Soviet.
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On 3 August in the Ukrainian town of Zdolbunovo (Rovno Region), Yekaterina Nikolayevna BARINA was sentenced to 2 ½ years’ imprisonment. She was charged with organizing a Sunday school to teach children religion.
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In 1974 the authorities in the Kazakh town of Issyk [Esik] (Alma-Ata Region) suggested to the presbyter of the local ECB congregation, Ivan Petrovich SHTEFFEN, that a special house for prayer meetings should be built. The members of the congregation did this with pleasure. In 1976 the authorities unexpectedly began to demand that the believers demolish the prayer-house. They refused.
On 29 June 1976 the fire-brigade sealed up the house. On 13 June Shteffen (CCE 44.26-1, CCE 46.8, CCE 47.6) was summoned to the town soviet executive committee and sentenced to 15 days in jail. The parishioners were told that Shteffen had behaved rudely to representatives of authority. However, after he had served the 15 days, Shteffen was not released. A criminal case was initiated against him. He is charged with breaking the law on religious cults [2]. The town authorities are demanding that the members of the local congregation should register it.
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On 29 May the police carried out a search at the home of Pyotr Pavlovich ILIYEV and Maria Nikolayevna DIMOVA in the Ukrainian village of Vinogradovka (Bolgrad district, Odessa Region). The following were confiscated: Bibles, tape-recordings, photographs of ECB prisoners, the Bulletin of the CECB Prisoners’ Relatives, and notes on religious themes. Dimova sent a complaint to USSR Procurator-General Rudenko, the ECB Council of Churches and the Council of ECB Prisoners’ Relatives.
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On 22 April in Pavlograd, when Vladimir Ivanovich SHULTS was preparing to board a plane to Alma-Ata, the policeman Fedorchenko confiscated a handwritten collection of religious songs from Shults’s case during a search of his things.
Because of this, 196 believers from the Slavgorod and Khabary districts of the Altai Region (south Siberia) sent a complaint to the United Nations and the President of France. They wrote:
‘While formerly a check was carried out before flights by aeroplanes in order to confiscate explosives, firearms and poisonous substances, it now occurs to us that the check may be carried out more in order to confiscate religious literature than explosives.’
When Shults asked Fedorchenko on what grounds he had confiscated the volume, the latter replied: “No grounds. Complain to whoever you like. Go to the procurator, he’ll explain it to you.”
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On 16 July in Kostyukovka village (Teplik district, Vinnitsa Region, Ukraine), Timofei Iosifovich RUBLENKO was fined 25 roubles for reading the Bible to eight old ladies.
Rublenko is an invalid of the Second World War; he gets a pension of 30 roubles, 60 kopecks a month.
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On 11 June an administrative commission of the village soviet in Russko-Ivanovka (Belgorod-Dnestrovsky district, Odessa Region), fined 12 people 50 roubles each for holding a prayer-meeting. Among those fined were people who receive a monthly pension of 20 roubles and some people who have no pension.
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In 1975 the unofficial Moscow ECB congregation was fined 4,000 roubles. In January-May 1976 it was fined 1,800 roubles.
Among those fined [3] in 1976 were:
- F. V. Nikitin, a war invalid: pension, 65 roubles; fine, 125 roubles.
- G. Z. Rudnichenko, severely ill: pension, 60 roubles; fine, 150 roubles.
- G. P. Stolbov: pension, 100 roubles; fine, 250 roubles.
- N. P. Pozdnyakov, has seven children to maintain: wages, 180 roubles, fined 250 roubles.
- N. I. Polyakov, has 5 dependents: wages, 180 roubles, fined 350 roubles.
In an Open Letter to Brezhnev and the Council of ECB Prisoners’ Relatives dated 2 July 1976, members of the Moscow ECB congregation write:
“When we ask ‘Why did this happen?’ the authorities can only find one reply: ‘Your congregation is not registered.’ This is said after we have gone to the authorities more than once, applying for registration.
“In 1975 we sent an application by post to the Moscow Soviet. A commission on this matter was set up by the soviet executive committee for the Lyublino district of Moscow: its activities were limited to somewhat vague statements on the difficulties connected with this question.
“KGB officials who summoned some believers for a talk were more honest: ‘You are not going to be registered unless you resign from the CCECB’, they declared.”
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UKRAINE
A people’s court in Znamenka (Kirovograd Region), has decreed that 12-year-old Oleg Korovin should be taken away from his aunt, Natalya Petrovna KOROVINA, and handed over to the welfare authorities.
Oleg’s parents are dead. Natalya P. Korovina looked after Oleg’s sick mother for 12 years and brought him up. The Baptists of Voroshilovgrad have sent a letter to Brezhnev, and telegrams to the Kirovograd Region Department of Public Education and to the Procurator’s Office of Kirovograd Region, asking that Oleg’s wishes be respected, and protesting against the decision of the people’s court.
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A general meeting at the Zdolbunovo hospital and polyclinic of stomatology (Rovno Region) has decided to ask a court to deprive Alexander and Nina Nazaruk, parents of 11 children, of their parental rights, because they are bringing their children up in a religious way.
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In the town of Shepetovka (Khmelnitsky Region), the teacher Yekaterina Stepanovna ZHIVOTYAGINA was forced to flee from her home with her children. The local authorities, having learned that she had become a believer, were trying to send her to a psychiatric hospital for forcible treatment and to take her children away from her.
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NOTES
- See an article by Kotov on problems of the forensic psychiatric diagnosis of psychoses in elderly people, Zhurnal nevropatologii i psikhiatrii, 1973.
↩︎ - CCE 44.26-1 [10] reported that Shteffen received five years of strict-regime camps under two Articles of the Kazakh SSR Criminal Code: 200-1 (“Infringement of the personality and rights of citizens under the guise of performing religious rites”) and 170-1 (= 190-1, RSFSR Code).
↩︎ - The monthly (not weekly) pensions and wages of those Moscow ECB parishioners facing fines are indicated.
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