<< No. 43 : 31 December 1976 >>
SEVEN ENTRIES
[1]
GRITSYAK
Yevhen Stepanovich HRITSYAK, who lives in the West Ukrainian village of Ustye (Snyatinsky district, Ivano-Frankovsk Region), is asking to be allowed to emigrate together with his family. He writes about this in detail in his statement (dated 5 July 1976) to the Chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium.
It is clear from the statement that since 1972 Hritsyak has been trying to establish links with the small township of Auroville [1]. Auroville was founded in India by enthusiasts who support the idea of unifying and mutually enriching all national cultures, as a model for the united humanity of the future [2]. At the 15th UNESCO Conference, India introduced a resolution asking for international assistance to the town, particularly calling on governments to encourage their citizens to form contacts with Auroville. The resolution was passed unanimously by all UNESCO members (including the Soviet Union).
In 1972 Hritsyak sent a letter to Auroville, asking for more details about the town.
Soon he received a polite reply, informing him that the Auroville Newspaper and other literature about Auroville had been sent to his address. Hritsyak received none of it. He tried again to make enquiries of his correspondents. After this attempt his links with them were broken off for good.
*
In an appeal to Indian president Indira Gandhi and Leonid I. Brezhnev (dated 3 January 1976), Hritsyak related all this. He called on the governments of India and the USSR to work out an agreement based on the above-mentioned UNESCO resolution, to establish unhindered contact between Soviet citizens and Auroville.
Hritsyak wrote:
“My understanding of unhindered contact is:
- (1) Unimpeded postal communication;
- (2) Freedom for Soviet citizens to visit Auroville privately and to come back;
- (3) Emigration for interested Soviet citizens to live permanently in Auroville.“
*
Hritsyak was arrested in 1949.
In 1956 he was released. In 1959 the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet revoked the decision to release him and Gritsyak was sent to serve out his 25-year sentence. (He was charged with having founded a local cell of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in Vinnitsa as soon as he was released).
In 1964 the Military Tribunal of the USSR Supreme Court reviewed Hritsyak’s case and admitted that all the charges against him had been completely false. On 6 October 1964 Hritsyak was released again.
*
On 30 May 1976 the newspaper Prikarpatskaya Pravda published an article by I. Kolodyazhny, which ‘exposed’ Hritsyak’s ties with his labour camp friend, the ‘Zionist and spy’ Abram Shifrin.
A former political prisoner who emigrated to Israel in 1970, Shifrin was one of the people who spoke at the ‘Sakharov hearings’ in Copenhagen. He was also author of The Fourth Dimension, a book about the political camps of 1953-1963 [3].
According to the Kolodyazhny article, Hritsyak “systematically violated the regulations and spread malicious slanders about the Soviet system” while in the camps.
In his statement to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet of 5 July 1976 Gritsyak writes:
“I never broke the regulations, I just agitated against them; I never spread any slanders, I merely protested.”
He quotes a long extract from his letter of 1 November 1961 to the CPSU Central Committee. This extract describes the camp conditions against which the prisoners of Norilsk revolted in 1953, after Stalin was already dead.
Hritsyak considers that the insinuations made by the paper are a reaction to his intended emigration (after the collapse of his hopes for Auroville) following an invitation from Israel. Hritsyak demands the right to leave the country.
*
The following four cases have been investigated by the Moscow Helsinki Group and included in its documents (see “The Helsinki Groups” CCE 43.6). The Chronicle draws here on the materials published by the Moscow Helsinki Group [4].
*
[2]
IVANOV
Valentin Anatolyevich IVANOV (b. 1930), a worker and electrician, lives in the settlement of Yermolino, Kaluga Region.
On 3 August 1976, Ivanov sent a statement to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, asking for permission to emigrate. He wrote that in 1959 he had tried to cross the border illegally, and had asked for permission to emigrate in 1964 and 1966.
He also gives his reasons: low wages, the workers’ defencelessness because of the absence of free unions, the absence of independent and objective courts, the cruel and humiliating treatment of people in camps, the use of psychiatry to strengthen the KGB’s powers of investigation and punishment (Ivanov gave examples from his own life to illustrate all these points). He wrote that he had sent a copy of his statement to the US embassy, asking for it to be published so as to
“call the attention of Western public opinion and the workers of the West to the situation of a Russian worker who tries to defend his economic interests and his dignity as a human being.”
On 21 September 1976 V. A. Ivanov went on to Revolution Square in Moscow, carrying a placard which read:
“To the Soviet authorities. I demand to emigrate. Tve been through the hell of your camps and mind-bending hospitals. What more? Russian worker V, A. Ivanov.”
Ten minutes later Ivanov was detained by the police. He was held for a day, then delivered to his home. On 9 November 1976 Ivanov sent a letter asking George Meany, the American trade union leader, to help him emigrate.
*
[3]
SIVAK
Ivan Mikhailovich SIVAK (b. 1926), lives with his wife and three sons in the West Ukrainian town of Dubrava (Ivano-Frankovsk Region).
In 1970 Sivak asked for permission to emigrate to Canada. His father had lived there for a long time and died there in 1965. Sivak was asked to apply for Israel. He agreed to do so, but did not receive permission. Sometime later he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. In a letter addressed to Brezhnev, Sivak writes:
“I have lived for thirty years in the Soviet Union, not living but existing.
“In these years little has changed in the workers’ life. I live in poverty and need, My wages scarcely suffice to feed me. Moreover, there is no justice or freedom in the Soviet Union. In all spheres of life there are restrictions. Everywhere and in every place a person feels himself unfree …”
Sivak refers to the Helsinki Agreements and the Declaration of Human Rights in his letter.
In a letter to the Helsinki Group Sivak asks for “help in emigrating to Israel or any other country in the free world.”
*
[4]
PAVLOV
Vladimir Maximovich PAVLOV (b. 1929), a driver, lives with his wife and son in Maikop (Krasnodar Region).
He first declared his wish to emigrate in 1966. In 1971 Pavlov was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment under Article 190-1. He was accused of expressing his views and also of “showing satisfaction when any member of the CPSU committed a misdemeanour or a crime”. V. M. Pavlov appealed to the Supreme Court of the RSFSR to review his case.
On 10 May 1976 A. K. Orlov, President of the Supreme Court, answered him:
“The legal definition of the crime committed by you was correctly assessed by the court as corresponding to Article 190-1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code.”
*
[5]
EMILIA ILYNA
Emilia Pavlovna ILYNA was born in 1926 in Izhevsk (Udmurt ASSR), into a working family.
Emilia (commonly called ‘Hina’) graduated from technical college and then the Institute of Communications in Odessa. Today she lives in Leningrad, working as a design engineer. She has two daughters, who are students.
In the summer of 1976 Ilyna applied to the authorities for a visa to leave the USSR. On 2 August she sent a letter to the UN Secretary-General (copied to Brezhnev, the US Congress and the International Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, FIDH), in which she asked for help in emigrating. She explained that her decision was due to unbearable living conditions.
“An engineer with a diploma and 20 years’ experience … I receive 125 roubles as a month’s wages … I live in a large communal flat [5] shared by 10 families, so I have 30 people as my neighbours.”
(Hina also writes about the inferior medical services.)
Party agencies involved themselves in ’Ilyna’s case’: she is not a Party member.
At first they came to see her at home, then on 5 October 1976 she was summoned to the city Party committee. A. T. Shipova, a city official, called Hina a traitor to her country and threatened to have her sent to a psychiatric hospital (“A normal Soviet citizen would not even think of such a thing,” Shipova explained). On 8 October Hina answered these insults and threats in a letter to Romanov, secretary of the Regional Party committee:
“Is a working woman’s desire to live in normal, human conditions really treason? Is this a new slogan of scientific communism? …
“I am not a traitor to my country. The traitors are those who are making use of their power to grab privileges and exploit them. Their treason is not only to our homeland but also to three revolutions and two wars: the Civil War and the Second World War; it is treason to the ideals for which so many of our best people died.“
In the same letter Ilyna declares:
“I am a free woman, not a serf; I have the right to leave the USSR and to return … On 7 November I shall begin a hunger-strike in protest at the unlawful actions of the authorities and at my lack of rights.”
*
Ilyna has several times been summoned by the KGB for ‘a chat’; they advised her to apply to OVIR.
At OVIR she was asked to produce an invitation from Israel. Iyina replied that she was not Jewish and had no need of an invitation in any case, as she had the right to leave the USSR on the basis of the UN Covenant on Civil Rights (1966) and the 1975 Helsinki Agreements.
On 7 November (Revolution Day) Ilyna began her hunger-strike.
On the ninth day, after she sent a telegram to Podgorny, she received a telephone call from OVIR, telling her that they were willing to accept her application without an invitation and that she could apply to emigrate to any country, Ilyna named Canada.
She stopped her hunger-strike, but on 22 November it turned out that OVIR was once again offering her an exit visa to Israel, now providing the necessary invitation itself. Ilina resumed her hunger-strike.
On 27 November she appealed to President Jimmy Carter for help and support. She wrote:
“I shall continue my hunger-strike until I receive permission to emigrate, not to Israel with payment of a colossal sum in return for my freedom, but to Canada.
“I do not want to live in this God-cursed country, where most people work for almost nothing, where the people are fed an inedible pap called ‘the Soviet way of life’ and the population does not resist …”
In mid-December Ilyna gave up her hunger-strike on the advice and urging of her friends, and agreed to apply for emigration to Israel. At the end of December OVIR gave her permission to leave.
*
[6]
Ivan P. Kopysov (see CCE 43.8) is also trying to emigrate from the USSR.
*
[7]
In Defence of Zosimov
In September 1976 military airman Valentin Ivanovich ZOSIMOV flew to Iran in a small aeroplane and asked for political asylum in the USA. At the end of October, it became known that Iran was preparing to surrender Zosimov as a criminal — a ‘hijacker’ or even an ‘air pirate’.
On 26 October P. Grigorenko, A. Sakharov, Yu. Orlov, M. Rudenko and Yelena Bonner issued an appeal to the United Nations and the Shah of Iran. They note:
“Senior Lieutenant Zosimov used an antiquated biplane to cross the border. He used no violence, risked no one’s life except his own, and therefore his actions cannot be described as air piracy. He did not harm the aircraft, which can be returned to its lawful owners.“
The authors of the letter ask the Shah not to surrender Zosimov to the Soviet authorities and consider that ‘such a decision would be in accordance with the interests of humanity and the international principles which recognize the right of asylum’. The letter ends as follows:
“We appeal to the UN, asking it:
- to condemn the practice of governments who deprive their citizens of freedom of movement, and to come to the defence of those who are suffering repression for their attempts to exercise that right;
- if Valentin Zosimov is surrendered to the Soviet authorities, to appeal to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet to show mercy, taking into account all that has been mentioned above.“
On 29 October, after V. I. Zosimov had already been handed over to the Soviet authorities, Bonner and Sakharov called on the Shah of Iran and US President Gerald Ford “to use their influence to save Valentin Zosimov’s life!” On 3 November they handed in their appeal to the Iranian Embassy in Moscow.
On 26 November the authors of the first statement published the following appeal:
‘To the heads of the governments which took part in the Helsinki Conference. It is exactly a month since the Soviet government persuaded Iran to hand over to it the political emigrant from the USSR, Valentin Ivanovich Zosimov. The stated grounds for that unlawful and inhuman act — that he committed an act of air piracy — clearly lack substance. V. I. Zosimov made use of an aeroplane without using violence, without stealing any valuables and without using the aeroplane for blackmail and extortion, as air pirates have often done. His one aim was to use the aeroplane to exercise his lawful right to leave the country.
‘This international right, made lawful in the USSR by the fact that the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet has ratified the Covenants on rights, is grossly violated by the Soviet government; this forces individual citizens of our country to try to find means of crossing the State borders of the USSR illegally. V. I. Zosimov did this by using an aeroplane which he was flying in the course of carrying out his duties. His actions, reprehensible from the point of view of any normal execution of one’s duties, were justified by the Soviet authorities’ gross violation of generally accepted international laws, including the Final Act of the Helsinki conference. His action clearly demonstrated to the whole world the existence of such violations, and therefore he may be made to pay for this very harshly — not so much for breaking the law, as for exposing actions which the government is trying to hide.
‘Historical experience shows that the legal policy of the USSR is often based on the concepts of revenge and setting an example to others. In all such cases it is unjust, cruel and merciless. It cannot be ruled out that Zosimov will be made to pay for Belenko [6] as well. And that could cost him his life, although the law does not provide for the death penalty for stealing an aeroplane.
‘We beg you to appeal to the Soviet government and to insist that, in view of the exceptional circumstances which forced V. I. Zosimov to make illegal use of the aircraft, the case should be positively reviewed and that he should be amnestied and allowed to leave the country at the same time.’
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NOTES
- A participant in the 1953 Norilsk camp uprising, Hritsyak became a Yoga enthusiast in the camps after Stalin’s death.
Years later he spoke in 1992 at the first “Resistance in the Gulag” conference (Moscow), organised by Simeon Vilensky and the Vozvrashchenie association.
↩︎ - In its first twenty years Auroville (the ‘city of dawn’) had no more than a few hundred residents.
↩︎ - Chetvertoe izmerenie, Possev Verlag, Frankfurt, 1973. Several years later this book was sharply criticized in Pamyat, Khronika Press, 1978 (pp. 444-454), by Revolt Pimenov and the almanac’s editors.
↩︎ - The texts were published in English in Reports of Helsinki-Accord Monitors in the Soviet Union, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, US Congress, Washington DC (vol. 1, 24 February 1977 and vol. 2, 3 June 1977), and in The Right to Know, the Right to Act: Documents of Helsinki Dissent from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (same publisher), May 1978.
↩︎ - One of the common forms of residence in the Soviet era, especially in old, established cities, inhabitants of a communal flat usually had one room for their family and shared all other facilities (shower, toilet, kitchen, hallway) with the other families in the flat.
Self-contained flats were less common under Stalin; another, even more widespread, form of accomodation were factory barracks in and around urban centres and the enterprises whose workforce they accommodated.
↩︎ - Belenko was a Soviet airforce pilot who defected to Japan with his fighter plane a little earlier.
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