In the Prisons and Camps, October 1976 (42.4-2)

<<No 42 : 8 October 1976>>

4-1 A Visit to Mustafa Dzhemilev; Vladimir Prison; Mordovian Camps
4-2 Perm Camps; Diary of Camp 35. Camps for Common Criminals
4-3 Political Prisoners Letters & Declarations. In Defence of Political Prisoners
4-4 Releases

4. Perm

4.1: CAMP 35 DIARY (continued)

see CCE 33.5-1, CCE 36.6-1, CCE 38.12-1, CCE 39.2-1 and CCE 41.6-2.

MAY 1976

After being reported by Chaika Izrail Zalmanson was deprived of access to the camp shop and of a parcel. Because of a report by Nikolayev, Savchin and Verkholyak were deprived of parcels and of access to the camp shop. A punishment formerly imposed on Verkholyak was cancelled by camp commandant Pimenov for being ‘too mild’.

In the evening Zograbyan was released from the punishment cells. For the last month he had been receiving only 450 grammes of bread a day, without any hot meals.

In the morning Zograbyan was sent out to work, at his former job of mechanic (CCE 39.2-1 for an account of his fight for a transfer to this job). At 2.30 pm he became ill: physical and nervous exhaustion, gastritis, weak heart-beat. The prisoners asked the officer on duty, Sidaykov, for a doctor, but without success. It was only at 5 pm that Zograbyan was seen by a medical assistant.

By a decision of the district court, the Nazi collaborator Khimushkin was released because of a cancerous illness.

Pronyuk returned to the camp zone from the cooler in Camp 36. In May he was informed by the Main Administration for Corrective Labour Institutions that his declaration to the 25th CPSU Congress (24 February to 5 March 1976) had not been sent to the addressee.

Gimpu was transferred from Camp 37 and put in the cooler for 10 days.

Lieutenant Kuznetsov told the former torturer Vasily Khokhlov that he could not have a car, because of the poor work done by the prisoners.

After being reported by Nikolayev, Shakhverdyan was deprived of a parcel and of access to the camp shop (because of his hernia he had refused to work as a lathe-operator). After Kuznetsov made out a report about Butman’s ‘insolence’, he was also deprived of a parcel and of access to the camp shop. Zakharchenko was punished for ‘refusal to work’.

Igor Kalynets returned to the camp from Lvov. On the way he had been robbed, first by criminal convicts with whom he was being transported, then by convoy guards.

V. Ya. Kuverden, head doctor at the hospital in the town of Skalny, examined Shakhverdyan and Nikolai Marmus. Confirming that Shakhverdyan had a hernia and stating that an operation was necessary, he nevertheless refused to release him from heavy work, saying: ‘ln our country many miners who have hernias still work and are none the worse, they set records.’ Admitting that Marmus had varicose veins in his legs, he also refused to release him from work at a lathe and advised him to ‘work sitting down’.

It became known that the administration of Camp 35 and the KGB in Skalny had asked Kuverden not to release the prisoners from work, as the camp was not fulfilling its work plan. Immediately after this ‘medical examination’ Pimenov put Shakhverdyan in the cooler for 7 days, for ‘refusal to work’. Before he was shut up Shakhverdyan handed in a declaration to the International Red Cross asking for help. This declaration was not sent by the administration.

The prisoners Altman, Asselbaums, Butman, Verkholyak, Gluzman, Grabans, Zalmanson, Zakharchenko, Kalynets, Kivilo, Kiirend, Zograbyan, Marchenko, Mikitko, Motryuk, Prishlyak, Pronyuk, Savchin, Svetlichny, Soroka and Shovkovoi held a one-day hunger-strike.

Each of them sent the following declaration to the Administrative Department of the CPSU Central Committee:

“The deliberate infringement of Soviet laws by the camp administration, which has recently become systematic and is aimed directly at injuring the health of prisoners, as in the cases of the repressive measures taken against B. Shakhverdyan, R. Zograbyan and others, together with the failure of all previous attempts by the prisoners to obtain supervision of the situation by the supervisory authorities and the KGB, which openly ignore or draw back from these problems; the chronic undernourishment caused by the laws on corrective labour; the lack of necessary medicines, all this forces me to appeal to the Soviet authorities to allow a visit to Corrective Labour Institution VS-389/35 by representatives of the International Red Cross, who have been trying in vain for many years to fulfil their duties towards Soviet political prisoners.

“In support of this demand I declare myself on hunger-strike for today, 31 May 1976.“

A declaration containing similar demands was sent by these prisoners who did not take part in the hunger-strike for health reasons: Basarab, Mamchur, Cherkavsky (CCE 39.2-1) and Pidgorodetsky.

In his declaration Basarab said:

“I, a prisoner of war, an ordinary soldier of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, have spent 23 years in prison camps, losing my health and being reduced to a state of complete collapse (he has already suffered two heart attacks), add my voice to these demands … The excesses committed by the local administration have reached the limit: merely for writing a declaration which was not even sent to its addressee, I was given 10 days in the cooler …“

Pidgorodetsky said in his declaration:

“Having signed the Helsinki Agreement and proclaimed the ideas of peace, peaceful coexistence and humanism to the whole world, the Soviet Union must back this up by its actions. First of all, a commission from the International Red Cross must be allowed to come here …

“In the 24 years I have spent in Soviet camps and prisons, I have never seen a representative of this organization, while in other countries, even in Chile, they have free access …“

*

June

Captain Polyakov began to act as commandant at Camp 35 in place of Major Pimenov.

Food standards went down sharply. In addition to the usual soup made from frozen cabbage and fish, the green colour and peculiar smell of which do not fade even after prolonged boiling, the quality of the bread got worse: it acquired the colour and consistency of clay.

Ivan Svetlichny is ill; he has cerebral hypertension (stages 1A and 1B) together with angina. He suffers from constant severe headaches. There is reason to suppose that he has internal pressure on the brain. The doctor has prescribed magnesium injections for him, but the nurse said there had not been any magnesium available for a long time. Instead of magnesium, they gave Svetlichny injections of platyphyllin, but there was only enough of that for three injections. His memory fails him badly. Often, he cannot concentrate. Svetlichny asks for a qualified medical opinion, which would take into account the conditions in which he finds himself.

Pronyuk’s condition has worsened significantly. During an X-ray examination he was found to be bringing up blood from the left lung. In spite of this the camp administration is still demanding that he fulfil the norm, as before.

Gimpu came out of the cooler.

Shakhverdyan was visited in the cooler by members of a district supervising committee. They told him that because of his non-fulfilment of the work norm and his infringement of regime regulations, the commission would recommend that he be transferred to prison. Shakhverdyan expressed his gratitude to the commission for their humanitarian attitude to him, as a longer stay in Camp 35 would mean new repressive measures against him and could end in his becoming an invalid. The visitors called Shakhverdyan ‘Butman’ a number of times and ascribed some episodes from the latter’s life to him,

Polyakov deprived Zakharchenko of a visit for the third time in a row “for breach of discipline at work”.

Butman’s mother arrived for her prescribed long visit. The visit took place in the visitors’ room at Camp 37, seven kilometres from Camp 35. The official explanation was that the visitors’ room at Camp 35 was full up and there were no more places. It is obvious that in reality the reason was a breakdown of the listening devices. The visit was allowed to last only 24 hours.

For refusing to work at a lathe, Marmus was reported three times and deprived simultaneously of a visit, a parcel and access to the camp shop.

After being reported by Shilin (for ‘stopping work early’) Kalynets was deprived of a parcel and of access to the camp shop, Zakharchenko was punished for reading in working hours. Captain Syagy of the medical corps, from the Medical Section of the Perm UVD, spoke to the prisoners who went on hunger-strike on 31 May. He agreed that their claims about the living conditions and medical services had some basis and admitted that the punishment of Marmus and Shakhverdyan was illegal.

Marmus and Shakhverdyan were transferred to work in the sewing workshop, but the punishments handed out to them earlier were not cancelled.

The censor Kolesnichenko informed Valery Marchenko that his declaration to the Institute of Nephrology had been confiscated because it was libellous. (From his youth Marchenko has suffered from chronic nephritis. Before his arrest he had spent a number of periods in hospital because of it. Since his arrest in June 1973, and especially in the last two years, his health has significantly worsened.)

Shulyak and Savchin were transferred to Camp 37.

A visit to GIuzman from his relatives was transferred to Camp 37. The official explanation was that the drains were in a bad state of repair.

15 June: A visit to Zalmanson was transferred to Camp 37.

16 June: After being reported by Gubarev, Zograbyan was punished by Kytmanov for ‘a breach of discipline at work’ (on 12 June he had washed his socks in work time).

19 June: KGB official Shukin asked Shakhverdyan if he had not changed his opinions. Shakhverdyan answered in the negative.

20 June: The prisoner Yakov Kryuchkov began a conversation with Asselbaums, in which he said that Milberg, who had served 25 years for his wish to emigrate from the USSR» had been put in a psychiatric hospital after his release. Evidently this conversation was an attempt to scare Asselbaums, who has expressed his desire to emigrate from the USSR.

21 June: After Pronyuk was reported by Chaika, Kytmanov deprived him of access to the camp shop, for refusing to carry out an order from the officer on duty. Gimpu handed in a petition, asking for permission to receive some gastric lemonade from home (it contains no acid; he is an invalid of the second group, and there is no lemonade in the camp). Yarunin, the head of the medical section in the Perm camps, supported his request, but Polyakov refused it, writing on the petition: ‘The central hospital is supplied with all medical requirements.’

22 June: An assizes session of the Chusovoi town court transferred Shakhverdyan to Vladimir Prison. Khromchenko was transferred from the camp. The soup was completely inedible, as it had been made from a stock of rotting animal entrails.

26 June: At a meeting of the operations staff the prisoner Kaktits declared that the food had worsened because ‘the young people protest a lot, and that’s what we’ve got for their letters’. A cook, prisoner Dzenis, spoke in a similar, particularly hostile vein.

28 June: Gurny was transferred from the camp.

JULY

1 July: Svetlichny had an attack of high blood pressure, with vomiting and other brain symptoms.

2 July: At the insistence of the consultant doctor Utyro, and in spite of opposition from Dr Solomina, Pronyuk was sent to hospital.

4 July: A meeting of political prisoners took place on the bi-centenary of the United States of America. Some prisoners gave brief talks on the history and politics of the USA and the American political system.

Not counting Altman, Butman and Zalmanson, who carry on a regular correspondence with Israel, letters from abroad have been received by the following political prisoners:

Svetlichny (in 1975, from Anna-Halya Horbatsch in West Germany; in 1976, from the Hevryk family in Philadelphia and from Vera Selyanskaya in Rio de Janeiro),
Gluzman (in 1975, from Eva Butman in Israel; in 1976, from Eva Kurz in West Germany and from Josif Meshener in Vienna),
Kalynets (in 1975, two letters from Anna-Halya Horbatsch in West Germany; in 1976, also two letters from her),
Ogurtsov (in 1976, from Poland),
Evgeny Prishlyak (from his brother Yaroslav in Montreal: three letters in 1963, one letter in 1964, one in 1965, one in 1966, one in 1967. two in 1968, one in 1969, one in 1974, one in 1976) and
Kurtsinovsky (during his whole sentence, three letters from his sister in France).

On 5 July Miroslav Simchich’s wife and her two children (aged 4 and 8 years) came for a long visit with him. Simchich has been imprisoned since 1949 (see his letter below). They were at first given a three-day visit, but later this was unexpectedly cut to two days.

It is very difficult to reach the settlement of Vsesvyatskoye, where Camp 35 is located, from the railway station at Chusovoi. A car driver going in that direction who gave Simchich’s wife and her children a lift told her that people are punished for giving help to the relatives of political prisoners.

VALERY MARCHENKO

CCE 41.6-1 has already mentioned Valery Marchenko’s meeting with his mother. We now report more precise details.

On 6 July Valery’s mother, who had made her way with difficulty to Vsesvyatskoye from Chusovoi station, heard from the administrative authorities at Camp 35 that her visit would take place in Camp 36, which is in the settlement of Kuchino, about 100 kilometres from Vsesvyatskoye.

The administration at Camp 36 tried to find out from Valery’s mother how she had got to Kuchino from Vsesvyatskoye and who had transported her.

Valery Marchenko was taken to Kuchino in a prison van. The compartment where he sat filled up with gas from the exhaust. As the guards had closed the little window of his compartment, he was choking. In answer to Valery’s plea for the window to be opened, the guards said ‘You should be rattled about for a bit and then thrown out.’ Only after Valery kept knocking to attract the attention of the officer riding in the driver’s cab was the window opened. When they arrived, Valery could not get his breath back for several hours. When Marchenko’s mother told officer Mikunov, after the visit, how her son had been brought there, he replied that Marchenko was lying; the guards were Young Communists and could not have behaved like that.

Valery had been allotted a two-day visit from his mother. People kept coming into the room where they met, asking if everything was in order, if the water pipes were working, and so on.

18 hours after the visit began, eight people suddenly rushed into the room. The visit was terminated. Marchenko was taken away. A search began; they looked for something in the soup bowl, in the box of sweets, they even unscrewed the water pipes … In his mother’s suitcase they found 129 roubles, which she had saved for her return journey. She was told that she had wanted to pass them illegally to her son. The money was confiscated, without any record being made of the confiscation. On this, the visit came to an end.

Valery Marchenko was born in Kiev in 1947. His uncle was a well-known Ukrainian historian, Professor Mikhail Marchenko of Kiev University. His parents were teachers of Ukrainian language and literature. In 1970 Valery graduated from the Ukrainian section of the Department of Philology at Kiev State University. From September 1970 to June 1973 Marchenko worked as a literary journalist on the newspaper Literaturnaya Ukraina. At the same time, he taught Ukrainian language and literature in a school, did translations from Azerbaijani to Ukrainian and engaged in academic work.

On 25 June 1973 Valery Marchenko was arrested by the KGB. On 29 December 1973 the Kiev Regional Court under Judge Zavgorodny sentenced him to 6 years in strict-regime labour camps and 2 yeans’ exile, for ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda’. The prosecution was conducted by Procurator Silenko.

The charges against Marchenko in the indictment were that:

‘under the influence of nationalist ideas, which he had acquired as a result of reading illegal anti-Soviet literature and listening to hostile broadcasts by foreign radio stations, and having an incorrect understanding of certain aspects of the Soviet government’s nationalities policy, he systematically involved himself, from 1965 to 1973, in activities hostile to Soviet society, with the aim of subverting and weakening the Soviet regime: he spread slanderous fabrications by word of mouth, discrediting the Soviet political and social system; he produced, stored and disseminated documents of an anti-Soviet, nationalist character, containing malicious attacks on Soviet reality and on the nationalities policy of the CPSU, together with calls to struggle against Soviet power. He tried more than once to send abroad the hostile documents of which he was the author, so that they could be published in the anti-Soviet nationalist press.’

Apart from Valery Marchenko’s ‘slanders by word of mouth’, the evidence against him consisted of three of his own works and Dzyuba’s work Internationalism or Russification? which he had distributed (he gave it to three friends to read).

In the camp Marchenko, in spite of the difficult conditions and his weak state of health, translates from English to Ukrainian and writes articles on current affairs.

Marchenko’s illness (chronic nephritis) is getting worse. In the camp he has become an invalid. There is no medicine for him in the camp, while the medicines sent by his mother are sent back.

He is made to sew sacks from 9 am to 6 pm six days a week. He is deprived of access to the camp shop if he does not fulfil the norm. As a result, Marchenko makes use of the camp shop only four or five months in a year. When Marchenko’s mother told the camp administration that her son was catastrophically thin, she received the reply: ‘What do you expect? He doesn’t fulfil the norm.’

***

In summer 1976 Ivan Svetlichny was in the prison hospital for an examination. After leaving the hospital, he was removed from his post as a librarian (he was replaced by ‘a free worker’) and sent to work on a machine-press, work quite unsuited to his state of health (above).

On 1 August the anniversary of the conclusion of the Helsinki Agreement, 27 prisoners (Asselbaums, Altman, Basarab, Butman, Verkholyak, Gimpu, Gluzman, Grabans, Zalmanson, Zakharchenko, Zograbyan, Kalynets, Kivilo, Kiirend, Kovalenko, Marchenko, Mashkov, Mikitko, Motryuk, Ogurtsov, Pidgorodetsky, Prishlyak, Pronyuk, Svetlichny, Soroka, Shakhverdyan and Shovkovoi) held a hunger-strike (see also ‘Camp 37’).

***

4.2: Camp 36

The camp is located in a swamp. So the water, especially at work, is unsuitable not only for drinking but even for washing. In the bath-house the water is quite rusty in colour. This water leaves dirty stains on the sinks. When clothing is washed in it, it turns rusty in colour.

Commissions which have come here because of complaints by the prisoners have admitted, as has Major Yarunin, the head of the medical service of camp complex V S-389, that the water is bad, but they have said there is nothing to be done, the camp is in a swamp.

The toilets are about a hundred metres from the living quarters. In winter this distance makes itself felt, especially for invalids. The toilets are not heated.

In the punishment cells and the cooler the drains and water-pipes are fitted out in each cell in the following manner: instead of a water closet, there is a hole with a cover; above it is a sink with a hole stopped by a plug; above the sink is a water-pipe, which has a tap in the corner. In the mornings and evenings the guard turns on the tap for a short time. The rest of the time he has to be specially asked to do so.

The work (assembling the parts for irons) takes place in two workshops.

Workshop No. 1 is hot and officially ‘dangerous’; this is where the assembly takes place. Workshop No. 2 has three noisy machine-presses and semi-automatic lathes. The work is very dirty. No one has any spirit left after work is over.

Baths are once a week, on Saturdays. On Sundays clothes are washed individually. Ordinary soap is given out in the bathhouse. Toilet soap is sold in the camp shop within permitted limits.

SERGEI KOVALYOV

CCE 41.6-1 reported that in May Sergei Kovalyov was put in the cooler again.

In the middle of May Kovalyov was faced by a pile of documents accusing him of infringing the regime regulations. One of them stated that on 30 April, in the morning, he had been ten minutes late for his shift. In actual fact, on the morning of 30 April Kovalyov had felt unwell on arrival at work and had asked the officer in charge, Lyapunov, for permission to go to see the doctor. The latter made no objection. Kovalyov, not finding the doctor at work, at once returned to the shift detail and went back to work.

Later the same day, the doctor excused him from work. His other infringements of the rules were of the same kind.

After his 7 days in the cooler Kovalyov was immediately given another 3 days for the following infringements of rules: he had not got ready for the cooler quickly enough, he had been late at the work cell (he was finishing a declaration, with the permission of the guard); while his cell was being searched he tried to break through into the cell, using force against Ensign Titov (actually, Kovalyov had said, on being taken out into the corridor during the search, that a search should take place in his presence).

In protest at this, Kovalyov began a total hunger-strike. Fyodorov, the deputy commandant for regime, came into his cell and threatened to put him in the punishment cells or send him to a prison. Kovalyov wrote a number of declarations. In a declaration addressed to Major Istomin (his former interrogator, an official of the Perm KGB) Kovalyov described these unjustified punishments and threats and stated that he would be forced to adopt the most resolute forms of protest. Many prisoners expressed protests at the prolongation of Kovalyov’s term in the cooler. Evgeny Sverstyuk went on hunger-strike.

In June Investigator Istomin visited Camp 36 and talked to Kovalyov. After this visit the tormenting of Kovalyov almost ceased.

Kovalyov appealed to the camp doctors to send him to a Leningrad hospital for prisoners, so that he could have an operation. (He has a severe form of haemorrhoids, with much loss of blood. Before his arrest he already had an operation arranged.) The doctors, including Major Yarunin, replied that they could not remember any case of a prisoner being taken there, and nor would this happen. Petrov, the head of the medical section in Camp 36, told Kovalyov: ‘We’ll give you treatment if you behave well.’

On 4 October Kovalyov had a two-hour visit from his wife, Ludmila Boitsova. A. P. Lavut, who had accompanied her, was not allowed to participate in the visit. During the meeting Kovalyov said that representatives of the camp administration had asked him if he wanted to see A. D. Sakharov. Boitsova said that Andrei Dmitrievich was preparing to visit him. The guard supervising the visit, Captain Rak, interrupted: ‘You mustn’t speak about Andrei Dmitrievich.’

After the visit Boitsova and Lavut were received by Major Zhuravkov, the camp commandant, and other representatives of the administration. Boitsova was allowed to hand over some medicine and photographs of her children for Kovalyov. Zhuravkov said that Kovalyov was ‘getting used to the camp regime with difficulty’ and that he was trying ‘to instruct the administration in the law’ to a KGB official.

They spoke to Sverstyuk in Ukrainian; he answered them in Russian.

‘But, it seems, you fought for the right to speak in Ukrainian?’ said the KGB man.

‘I talk to the secret police in Russian.’

‘If you consider me a secret policeman, well, my colleague is a philosopher.’ ‘A secret policeman with a philosophic deviation,’ said Sverstyuk, and put an end to the conversation.

***

Certain details have become known about Ashot Navasardyan’s stay in the KGB investigation prison in Erevan.

When in August 1974 he went on hunger-strike, forcible feeding was carried out with the intention of causing him pain: although he did not resist, his jaws were forced open and his tongue was pulled out of the way with iron pliers, squeezing it severely. On 27 October 1974, when he was about to be dispatched from Erevan station, his escort (Russians and Turkmens led by a single Armenian, Ruzvelt Sagatyan) entered the ‘cage’ where Navasardyan was and beat him up severely (with their fists and feet). When Navasardyan asked ‘What’s this for?’ Sagatyan said ‘So you’ll know what a Soviet escort’s like!’

When Navasardyan was being taken to Yerevan (CCE 41.6-2) attempts were made to get him to write a plea for pardon.

Ladyzhensky (CCE 34.3) is being kept in special conditions in the camp: he gets extra visits, extra parcels, a special food diet, and freedom from work. Ladyzhensky’s minor infringements of the regime regulations are overlooked, while other people are punished for the same thing.

In April 1976 Ladyzhensky was a witness at the trial of Andrei Tverdokhlebov (CCE 40.2). In June Izvestiya published an article, ‘A Well of Foul Water’, which said:

“The regime there [in the camps, Chronicle] is organized strictly according to the law. This has been confirmed by, among others, prisoners serving terms of punishment in labour colonics, Dudenas, Paulauskas, Dzhaburia and Ladyzhensky. According to them, no illegal pressures have been brought to bear on them. They are asked only to observe the rules laid down and to work, besides which they receive an appropriate wage for their labour, as provided for in Soviet law.“

Trying to justify himself to the other prisoners, Ladyzhensky said that Izvestiya had deliberately presented his situation as typical for the camp as a whole; after all, in his testimony he had talked only about himself. (In fact, Izvestiya gives this part of Ladyzhensky’s testimony accurately, see CCE 40.2.) According to him, the conditions created especially for him were a premeditated provocation; he himself had not asked for privileges.

In 1975 Josif Mendelevich appealed to the Helsinki Conference in a letter, stating that there was no freedom of religion in the camp.

He got a reply to this letter from Syroiyatov of the Perm Corrective Labour Department. The reply stated, in particular, that the Final Act of the Helsinki Conference was declaratory in character; it did not have the force of law and there was no obligation to observe it.

On 31 July 1976. the anniversary of the Helsinki Conference, Mendelevich was put in the cooler for two days for refusing to work on a Saturday.

On 1 August Kovalyov and Sverstyuk went on hunger-strike in protest at the punishment of Mendelevich.

In February 1976 the prisoner Taratukhin declared at a ‘press conference’ that he had worked with KGB representatives and that he was now ceasing this collaboration.

He sent a corresponding declaration to the administration. Taratukhin told the prisoners how he had ‘informed’ and on whom. He said he had become an informer to discover who the other informers were. However, he had not succeeded in this, because they were not made known to each other. Taratukhin said that Major Chernyak of the KGB was in charge of the informers, but that they rarely met him. They passed their information on to Drs Petrov and Titov, who ‘paid’ them in chocolate (six bars a month). In addition, the doctors prescribed them a special diet and gave them time in hospital. Informers received extra parcels and packages. Besides reporting on conversations and the mood in the ‘camp zone’, the informers inflamed national prejudices (especially against the Jews) and spread slanderous rumours about the more respected prisoners.

Taratukhin also revealed the text of his ‘oath’:

‘I, Sergei Mikhailovich Taratukhin, agree to work with the Committee for State Security, I promise to keep secret any State Secrets which may become known to me in the course of this co-operation. For reasons of security, I will use the pseudonym ‘Andrei’.’

Taratukhin (b. 1956) landed in the political camp from a common criminals’ camp.

Pyotr Lychak has been transferred to Camp 36 from Camp 37 and put in the punishment cells for two months.

On 4 July Ganibari Mukhametshin (CCE 37.3) went on strike for the day, in honour of American Independence Day. The next day he was put in the punishment cells.

4.3: Camp 37

On 24 February eight people went on hunger-strike in honour of the 25th Congress of the CPSU.

In March Izrail Zalmanson and Mikitko were transferred to Camp 35.

On 2 May Vinnichuk, Vorobyov, Gimpu« Vladimir Marmus, Pronyuk and Sinkov held a one-day hunger-strike in solidarity with those who took part in the ‘Freedom March’ in the USA.

At the end of May the following incident occurred.

In the prisoners’ barracks the bunks are of the prison type: a few long thin strips of cloth stretched over an iron frame. They are very uncomfortable to sleep on. Sometimes the prisoners manage to acquire some planks or a second mattress. One day the guards took away all these ‘illegal’ improvements.

Then 17 people demanded that the ‘net-bunks’ laid down by Decree 020 should be given out and, throwing their bunks out of the barracks, they started to sleep on the floor. The administration asked them for several days to put the bunks back, then offered a compromise: while their complaints (to the Procurator’s Office and the Administration for Corrective Labour Institutions) were being examined, planks would be welded to the bottoms of the frames. The prisoners agreed. Gimpu, who was suspected of being the instigator, was put in the cooler on 23 May, ‘for another reason’. He was transferred to Camp 35 and sat out his 10 days in the cooler there.

The Procurator’s Office replied that the present bunks in the labour colony are in fact ‘net-bunks’.

(There was a similar incident in Camp 35, CCE 39.2-1).

On 1 August, the anniversary of the end of the Helsinki Conference, seven prisoners — Avakov (CCE 39.13 [6]), Vinnichuk, Vorobyov, Kvetsko, Vladimir Marmus, Reznikov and Sinkov — held a hunger-strike.

Reports that ‘the living conditions in Camp 37 are something unprecedented’ (CCE 38.12-2) have unfortunately turned out to be exaggerated.

5. In Camps for Common Criminals

ARKHANGELSKY

Vladimir Arkhangelsky (CCE 38.19 [34], CCE 39.14) is serving a term in the Buryat ASSR (penal institution 94/4).

His state of health is bad: he has severe pain in his lungs, he vomits every day and is very weak. He has become very thin and weighs about 50 kilograms. He is given valerian as a form of medicine.

A letter from the Medical Services Administration of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) dated 27 September 1976, sent in answer to a complaint, reads:

‘At present the prisoner Arkhangelsky is healthy and capable of working. The medical officials who failed to give timely aid have been reprimanded.’

Bobylev, Deputy head of department,

Medical Services Administration, USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD).

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