- 15-1. Human Rights Day. Komsomol Raid. Book Ban (3 entries)
- 15-2. One more deported ethnic group. The Right to Marry (11 entries)
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[1]
10 DECEMBER
MOSCOW
On 10 December 1978, the 20th anniversary of the UN General Assembly’s adoption of the Declaration of Human Rights, a ‘silent demonstration’ was to take place at 7 pm on Pushkin Square in Moscow, carrying on the tradition of the 5 December demonstrations (CCE 48.21 [9]).
However, it proved extremely difficult to get to Pushkin Square on that day. People suspected of gathering together to take part in the demonstration were detained on leaving their flats and taken to police stations or support points. Those who managed to slip away from the KGB’s ‘unsleeping eye’ were detained near Pushkin Square, from where they too were taken to police stations (to Station 108 as a rule).
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Pushkin’s statue and the whole square were enclosed by a fence specially erected for the occasion. In addition, a powerful compressor was placed near the statue (it ‘began to work’ at about 6 o’clock).
All the available space was taken up by KGB and police officers. Yet despite all this a demonstration, consisting of a few dozen people bareheaded in silence for five minutes took place. KGB and police officers assaulted the demonstrators, twisted their arms, grabbed them by the hair, beat them up and then dragged them off to police stations. Indignant passers-by who tried to defend the victims were also detained. All the detainees had been released by 10 pm.
In connection with the Pushkin Square events the following statement for the press was issued (40 signatures):
‘In our country’s conditions even standing bareheaded and silent for a few minutes is regarded as an ’anti-Soviet provocation’. We make a decisive protest against the illegal and violent actions of the authorities, which were against Soviet laws and the Constitution, as well as the basic points of the Declaration of Human Rights, which was ratified m this country.‘
On 10 December the following people were detained: V. Bakhmin, A. Khromova, T. Velikanova (KGB Major N. N. Kryazhin told her that the authorities had decided to choose the lesser of two evils when deciding whether to tolerate the demonstration or resort to illegal preventive arrests, Chronicle), M. Kremen (he was beaten up when detained), P. Yegides. T. Samsonova, Yu. Gastev, P. Starchik, S. Starchik, V. Yelistratov, Yu Grimm, A. Lifshits, L. Agapova, V. Baranov, V. Kuvakin, V. Samoilov, O. Svobodin, L. Ternovsky, I. Grivnina, Yu. Denisov, V. Nekipelov, F. Serebrov (his face was bloodied), V. Sorokin (beaten up) and S. Sorokina (this issue CCE 52.4-2); M. Vilyak, N Komarova, Yu. Rassamakhin, A. Lavut, S. Khodorovich, A. Smirnov, A. Naidenovich, A. Armand, D. Leontev, V. Abramkin, A. Romanova, E Nikolayev, E. Alekseyeva, N. Aptekar, L. Aptekar, A. Lipskaya, B. Chernobylsky, I. Fyodorova and A. Reznikov from Leningrad; Ya. Shmayevich, S. Yermolayev, M. Petrenko-Podyapolskaya, I. Kovalyov, O. Kurganskaya, V. Troitsky and P. Podrabinek.
From Police Station 108 V. Troitsky was taken home, where the documents of everyone in his room at the time were checked. The next day Troitsky received an order to go to the passport office of the district police station (his temporary residence permit had run out). On 12 December he went there and was arrested for five days for resisting the police.
Yelizaveta Alekseyeva, who was living with A. D. Sakharov’s family, was put in a car on the square, driven out of the town centre and dropped off in the suburbs.
As Georgy Vladimov was leaving his apartment building he was told that if he attempted to go to his car, a bus-stop or an underground station, he would be detained.
Pinkhos Podrabinek was seized when he left the house of P. Yegides, put in a car and driven to his home town of Elektrostal.
The heads of Police Stations 108 and 129, the Head of the district UVD, Colonel Zubkov, KGB Majors Kryazhin and Nesterenko, and also numerous police and KGB officers who refused to give their names or produce their documents, took part in the operation to avert or break up the demonstration.
Seitkhan Sorokina, who took part in the Pushkin Square demonstration, wrote a declaration to the Party organization of the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Africa Institute, in which she announced her withdrawal from the CPSU:
‘I cannot belong to a Party in whose name and by whose will all independent thought in this country is violently suppressed.’
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KIEV
Similar preventive arrests were made in Kiev, where at 4 pm the following were detained: G. Tokayuk, L. Kheina, Ya. Borodovsky, P. Stokotelny, V. Malinkovich, N. Gorbal, V. Dubrovets and O. Geiko. They were kept for five hours.
Some of them were presented with ‘charges’: infringing registration regulations, or engaging in book speculation, drugs contraband or illegal medical activities.
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VORONEZH
On 10 December Valery Gerasimov (CCE 47.4 [6]) phoned A. D. Sakharov in Moscow to greet him on Human Rights Day. Approximately one hour later eight people gave him a brutal, systematic beating in a public toilet. They also beat up his companion Georgy Olkhov (CCE 47.4 [6]).
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STAVROPOL REGION (Krai).
Before 10 December leaflets were pasted up in Pyatigorsk, Zheleznovodsk and Kislovodsk. They read as follows:
“If you are aware of your own and the general lack of rights in the USSR, come to the flower-stall next to the ‘Kristall’ shop in Pyatigorsk at 6 pm on 10 December 1978 for a ‘Minute of Silence’ meeting.
“There is nothing illegal in this meeting. On 10 December 1948 the Soviet Union signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.“
On 9 February 1979 KGB officers visited Oleg Georgievich SOLOVYOV, a resident of Zheleznovodsk, at his flat. The purpose of the delegation, which included Senior Investigator of the Stavropol KGB Derbinyan whether or not Solovyov had put up the leaflets.
They showed him a number of leaflets which had been taken down from walls O. Solovyov admitted that he had distributed the leaflets but stated that he saw nothing illegal in doing so. He was subjected to an interrogation. Derbinyan enquired: ‘Did those Muscovites give them to you? ‘
In 1969 O. Solovyov was arrested under Article 190-1 of the Russian Criminal Code on the same charge of distributing leaflets. He was then ruled not responsible and placed in an SPH and ordinary psychiatric hospitals for about three and a half years. Then, as now the investigator in O. Solovyov’s case was Derbinyan. Even after Solovyov had been placed in a psychiatric hospital he told him: ’From now on I will be your guardian for the rest of your life.’
O. Solovyov is qualified as a chemist. He graduated from Tomsk University. At present he is a stoker in a gas boiler house. He is widely known as the writer of an essay entitled “Mentally III? No socially dangerous!”, which was included in a samizdat collection of the memoirs of former psychiatric hospital inmates From the Yellow Silence, and also published in Kontinent No 18 [1]. Solovyov’s essay “Russian Kaleidoscope” and a number of declarations by him, including one about his desire to join the Free Trades Union (CCE 48.21), have also been circulated in samizdat. In November 1978 Solovyov resigned from a State trades union after writing a declaration headed “Why I left the trades union”.
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In connection with the 30th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Moscow Helsinki Group has published a Document (No. 69, CCE 52.16-2), which says in particular:
‘The huge number of police and KGB officers, the direct part in the operation played by high-ranking police officers, and the wide geographical compass covered (Moscow, the Moscow suburbs, Kiev) leave no doubt whatever that this operation was sanctioned at a high level, possibly the highest … , the level at which the Declaration Itself was ratified.’
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[2]
KOMSOMOL RAID
On 25 January 1979 the Leningrad newspaper Smena (the outlet of the Regional and City Komsomol Committees) published the following report:
A Regional Komsomol Raid
“On 16 and 18 January Smena published a report on the work of Komsomol vigilantes and appealed to Leningrad citizens to provide further addresses for a raid.
“During the week from 18 to 25 January Smena correspondents read 57 letters about parasitic people. 49 telephone conversations on the same subject took place during this period in the letters department. As a result, more than 106 addresses for the raid have been reported by our compatriots … These addresses have already been handed to the operations squads of vigilantes. From the moment that you, those of you who responded to our appeal, sat down with pen and paper or dialled our number, you became participants in a Regional Komsomol raid. And the more of us who join the ranks of the intransigent, the more decisive and accurate wilt be our evening itinerary through the town …
“From 15 to 22 January 1979 members of the vigilantes’ operations squads investigated 4,926 flats. 2,522 people were handed over to the police. The overwhelming majority of those detained were drunk; every other one was a parasite.“
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[3]
BOOK BAN
On 3 and 12 January B. M. Shain (CCE 51.20), a senior lecturer at Saratov University, received two book-parcels. The wrapping of each was stamped: “In accordance with the International Postal Convention (Article 33, pt 2), one book has been confiscated.”
In both cases, the ban on import into the USSR concerned English translations of books by the American writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, who writes in Yiddish and won the 1978 Nobel Prize for Literature. On 25 January Shain sent a protest to the Head of the International Department of the Post Office stating that the import ban and the return of Singer’s books contravened Article 46 of the 1977 USSR Constitution: “USSR citizens have the right to benefit from cultural achievements.”
On 6 February E. S. Maikov, the Deputy Head of the International Department, replied:
“The book ‘The Slave’ by Singer was withheld under Article 33, part 2, point ‘f’ of the International Postal Convention, and under internal legislation, as it cannot be distributed on USSR territory, delivered to the addressee or returned to the sender.
“With regard to the second book, ‘Séance’, by the same author, this may pass through freely; however, it is not possible to carry out verification of your complaint as ordinary printed matter is not registered en route.“
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NOTES
- It later appeared in English as an appendix in Harvey Fireside’s Soviet Psycho-prisons, Norton, New York, 1979, together with similar memoirs by Vladimir Gusarov and Mikhail Kukobaka.
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