Eduard Yakovlevich KULESHOV (b. 1936), a worker from Taganrog, was arrested on 6 December 1978 (CCE 51.8 & CCE 52.4.2-6). On 19 December he was charged under Article 190-1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code. On 5 February 1979 the pre-trial investigation was completed.
On 6 March the Rostov Regional Court began to examine Kuleshov’s case. Kuleshov declared that the investigators had violated Article 47 of the Code of Criminal Procedure: because the accused had a physical impediment (from childhood Kuleshov has suffered from a severe stammer), he should have been allowed a defence counsel from the moment the charge was made.
Medical specialists present in the courtroom confirmed that Kuleshov suffered from a stammer to a degree that made the aid of a lawyer imperative. The case was remitted for further investigation.
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TRIAL
The trial reopened on 11 May in an empty courtroom. Even the mother of the accused was not admitted.
In reply to Kuleshov’s demand for the trial to be open the Judge announced that the case would be heard in camera. The Procurator explained that it was impossible to admit the public to the courtroom as this would be tantamount to disseminating the slanderous fabrications which the court would be examining. Even the defence lawyer supported the Procurator’s explanation. Kuleshov stated in reply that because of the violation of the law on the openness of court proceedings he refused to take part in the trial. The court resolved to continue the hearing. However, when it was made clear that petitions sent by Kuleshov asking for additional witnesses to be summoned had not been presented to the court, the hearing was postponed until 15 May.
The third court session took place on 15 May. Deputy President of the Rostov Regional Court M. T. Rebrov presided. The prosecutor was the Rostov Procurator Ya. F. Antropov; the defence lawyer, A. A. Sheshtanov from Taganrog.
The session began with a petition from the lawyer that the case be heard in open session. The Procurator supported the lawyer. The court granted the petition. The courtroom was immediately filled with a specially invited public, 50 or 60 people, including many students from the Law Faculty of Rostov University. From Kuleshov’s intimates only his mother was allowed into the courtroom.
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The first day of the trial was devoted to reading the indictment and to the accused’s petitions. The indictment charged Kuleshov with:
- Recording on tape, from Deutsche Welle radio-station broadcasts, chapters of The Gulag Archipelago and listening to this recording in the presence of his acquaintances M. Slinkov (CCE 51.8) and A. Kurbatsky.
- The circulation in conversations with the same witnesses of ‘deliberate fabrications, defaming …’ (examples: the majority of Party members joined the Party to further their careers; it is now even more difficult for workers’ children to get places in further educational establishments; the freedoms provided for by the Constitution exist only on paper; there is no mass political activity in the USSR).
- The circulation in conversations with cell-mates in the investigations prison S. Panchenko and V. Bespalov of ‘deliberate fabrications’.
- Writing letters ‘about Soviet justice, the activities of the KGB, particularly in connection with the case of Buzinnikov’ (CCE 51.3).
Kuleshov submitted around 30 petitions. In particular he asked for historical experts to determine whether the events described
in The Gulag Archipelago constituted ‘deliberate fabrications’ or whether they had really occurred. He petitioned for a number of additional witnesses to be summoned to the trial. Kuleshov also asked for a tape-recording to be made of the trial, or at least of the testimonials of the chief witnesses.
The court rejected all the petitions of the accused. The petition regarding the tape-recording was rejected on the grounds that the court did not have the necessary ‘technical means’. On 16 May the witnesses were examined (granting a petition from the Procurator, the court decided to examine first the witnesses and then the accused).
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WITNESSES
The chief witness for the prosecution, Slinkov, declared that he had not been permitted to write his evidence in his own hand, that investigators Netsvetai and Pavlenko had distorted his evidence, and that he had not wanted to sign it but that they had threatened him with prison. He said that he had not listened to a tape-recording of The Gulag Archipelago at the home of the accused and had not heard any slanderous utterances from him.
The presiding Judge said that in signing false testimony at the investigation Slinkov had committed a crime punishable by up to seven years’ deprivation of freedom. (The Judge was lying: since Kuleshov had been charged under Article 190-1, Slinkov could be threatened only with Article 181, part 1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code ‘up to one year’.) Slinkov replied that he was guilty of cowardice and was prepared to serve time for that. The Judge disallowed most of the questions which Kuleshov put to Slinkov.
Witness Bespalov testified that he had not given any evidence against Kuleshov, and that Investigator Pavlenko had forced him to sign evidence that had been prepared in advance, informing him that otherwise he would get Article 102 — malicious homicide, which carries the death penalty. (Bespalov was in prison for killing his mother and was accused of homicide without aggravating circumstances Article 103.) When the escort was taking Bespalov out of the courtroom, he shouted, ‘You can shoot me then, that’s what all your policies are!’
Panchenko told of how he had signed evidence that had been prepared for him in advance. He explained that he had done this because he had been badly beaten the day before on instructions from the operations unit, and he did not want to come ‘under the hammer’ again. Panchenko said that his additional statement to the Procurator, which he had sent from prison, had been dictated to him by the Deputy Head of the Investigations Prison. Witnesses I. Chursina (Kuleshov s wife) and A. Udodov (Kuleshov’s brother) gave no evidence against Kuleshov. Witness Kurbatsky confirmed that he had heard excerpts from The Gulag Archipelago, at a Party at Kuleshov’s home, but could not be certain whether this was from a tape-recording or a radio broadcast. He also could not say whether the Party took place in 1977, 1976 or even 1975. Kurbatsky only confirmed one of Kuleshov’s ‘slanderous fabrications’ — that corruption exists in the USSR and it is impossible to secure justice.
On 17 May the remaining witnesses were examined. Witness T. Udodova (the wife of A. Udodov) testified that at a Party in 1975 Kuleshov did not listen to any tape-recordings of The Gulag Archipelago. Witness L. A. Dushkina (Kuleshov’s former wife) did not confirm the evidence she had given to the investigation, explaining that it had been twisted by Investigator Pavlenko to support the charge, and that he had written down something completely different from what she had said.
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After the examination of the witnesses, Kuleshov began to give explanations of each point in the indictment. The explanations continued on 18 May (in view of the accused’s acute stammer).
Kuleshov pleaded not guilty and denied all the charges in the indictment. He refuted the charge of ‘preparing materials defaming the Soviet political and social system’ by means of recording chapters of The Gulag Archipelago from radio broadcasts. ‘How could I have prepared these materials, and with what deliberate intent?’ said Kuleshov. ‘If I was the author or wrote the text down from memory, then one could talk of preparing. But I taped an unknown text from a radio broadcast. That is, I obtained it, but I did not prepare it. Obtaining an unknown text does not constitute a crime’.
Explaining his allegedly ‘slanderous’ utterances about the Constitution, Kuleshov noted that the USSR Constitution contains many statements conflicting with reality, and also articles which contradict each other. For example, Article 2 states that ‘all power in the USSR belongs to the people’, and Article 6 states that the Party is the leading and directing force in the country.
The Judge often interrupted Kuleshov as he was giving his explanations. ‘You could have said that in your final speech’, said the Judge. ’Oh, no’, replied Kuleshov, ‘You might deprive me of my final speech. I will say what I wish, and as much as I wish’.
The Judge asked for whom Kuleshov’s letter concerning the Buzinnikov Case was intended. ‘For handing to a representative of the USSR Procuracy’, replied Kuleshov. ‘But judging by the contents of the letter, it was intended for quite another place; people do not write letters like that to the Procuracy!’ ‘And what do you think?’, asked Kuleshov. ‘That I would be embarrassed to hand such a letter to the Procuracy?’ ‘Well, no’, said the Judge. ‘Judging by your behaviour in court, I wouldn’t think that’.
On 21 May, the fifth day of the trial, several of the tape-recordings made by Kuleshov of The Gulag Archipelago were played in court. Kuleshov had petitioned for this earlier, but the Procurator had objected for a long time; now he asked for it himself. It turned out that the court had both a tape-recorder and a specialist technician. Chosen at random, the extracts heard were the chapter on the Solovki Islands, an extract from the chapter on the transporting of prisoners, and extracts from the chapters ‘Imbeciles’ [‘Pridurki’] and ‘Women in the Camps’.
Afterwards, Kuleshov explained that the book The Gulag Archipelago is not ‘slanderous’, as it describes events which really happened.
He said that he was in full agreement with Solzhenitsyn’s evaluation of the events.
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FINAL SPEECHES
On 22 May Procurator Antropov made his prosecuting speech. He declared that he considered that the five points of the indictment had been proven in the course of the court examination: the circulation of a recording of Solzhenitsyn’s book The Gulag Archipelago, the slanderous oral utterances (three episodes), and the writing of a slanderous letter on the Buzinnikov Case. The Procurator asserted that the crime constituted a serious danger to society and, taking into account the personality of the accused, asked for the maximum sentence under the given Article — three years of strict-regime camp.
The lawyer Sheshtanov said that in his opinion not one point of the indictment had been corroborated in the courtroom. He tried to convince the court that since out of five witnesses four had retracted their evidence, the unconvincing and contradictory evidence of witness Kurbatsky should also be placed in doubt. ‘If you couldn’t hang on to the mane’, said Sheshtanov, ‘don’t hang on to the tail’. He asked for Kuleshov to be acquitted.
After the speech for the defence, the trial was postponed until 30 May, as Judge Rebrov was unexpectedly informed that his father had died. The session on 30 May did not, however, take place, in view of the Judge’s illness — it was postponed until 4 June.
On 4 June Kuleshov made his final speech. He refuted all the conclusions drawn by the Procurator in his speech for the prosecution. ‘To assert, on the far-fetched evidence of a single ‘witness’, Kurbatsky, that the charge is proven — this means to lose all respect for one’s duty and one’s calling’, said Kuleshov. In conclusion he said:
‘The Procurator doubts the truthfulness of Solzhenitsyn’s description of camp life. I doubt his sincerity, for at that time, as is now recognized, violations of Soviet legality occurred.
‘But come along to cell no. 10 in Rostov Prison and see for yourselves what sort of conditions prisoners are held in today, when socialist legality is observed. In a dirty, stuffy basement with dilapidated, soot-caked walls and ceiling, on solid iron bunks and dirty, lousy mattresses, half-naked people lying side by side. Personal bed-linen is not given out. 25 men share three mugs; there are not enough spoons; the cell has neither a table, a bench, nor a hook; as well as lice and bedbugs it is full of other insects. The chipped cement floor is unwashable and even difficult to sweep, and mice run about freely, Gorky’s Lower Depths in real life.
‘But instead of paying attention to the flagrant violations of human rights taking place under his nose, the Procurator tries to determine in scrupulous detail what people were talking about at a Party … I hope that the court will not take the Procurator’s path: to save the honour of his uniform he is trying to push the court into a step that is incompatible with justice.
‘Therefore I ask the court to be guided exclusively by the law, and to rule for acquittal.‘
‘The Judge interrupted Kuleshov several times when he was making his final speech, informing him that he was digressing from the matters for which he was being tried — the circulation of slanderous fabrications defaming the Soviet political and social structure.
The verdict was pronounced after the lunch-break on the same day; deprivation of freedom for three years in a strict-regime camp. (The justification for strict-regime is that in 1958 Kuleshov got 15 years for ‘theft’. He was pardoned in 1970.)
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JUDGEMENT
The judgment contained all five points of the indictment which the Procurator had presented in his final speech:
1. Organizing a hearing of tape-recordings of The Gulag Archipelago;
2. The assertion that tyranny allegedly exists in the USSR and that it is impossible to secure justice;
3. The assertion that Soviet reality does not allow for the spiritual enrichment and growth of Soviet citizens;
4. The uttering of deliberate fabrications about the constitutional freedoms of Soviet citizens and the democratic nature of the electoral system;
5. The preparation of a letter of information on the Buzinnikov Case which contains slanderous fabrications concerning the activities of the law-enforcement organs in the USSR.
The basis of the sentence, in spite of Slinkov’s refusal to give evidence, was his testimony from the pre-trial investigation. In the judgment this circumstance is explained as follows:
Witness Slinkov could not give a convincing explanation for changing his testimony at the trial. In addition, he testified to the Judicial Board that he had given evidence to the pre-trial investigation voluntarily. The Judicial Board evaluates witness Slinkov’s alteration of his evidence as an attempt to lighten the burden of the accused’s responsibility and takes Slinkov’s evidence on the episode in question given ut the pre-trial investigation to be the true version.
The sentence was handed to Kuleshov only on 27 June. In violation of Article 265 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and in spite of several requests, Kuleshov was not shown the record of the trial, nor given the opportunity to add his comments to them.
On 6 June in Novocherkassk Prison, where Kuleshov was held after the trial, all the notes relating to his criminal case were confiscated. Kuleshov wrote a statement to the head of the prison requesting to have the notes returned, as he needed them to compose his appeal. An official of the prison operations unit informed Kuleshov that the ‘administration was acquainting itself’ with the notes and that they would not be returned to him.
On 3 July Kuleshov sent his appeal to the RSFSR Supreme Court. Kuleshov’s lawyer Sheshtanov also sent an appeal. It is known that Slinkov sent the RSFSR Supreme Court a statement, in which he set down his truthful testimony instead of the testimony distorted by the investigators and the court.
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RESPONSES
On 18 July V. Nekipelov, a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, wrote a short article entitled ‘Why was Eduard Kuleshov convicted?’
‘I dare to assert that in this way — by juggling facts, using force on witnesses and declaring opinions and criticisms ‘slanderous’ — every political trial in the USSR is constructed, regardless of its scale.
‘Of course, the materials of the trial will be falsified. The fact that Kuleshov was not allowed to see the record of the court proceedings after the trial speaks for itself — the record will be rewritten.
‘But documents remain. And I am sending them to Amnesty International, deliberately disseminating these — no, not ‘deliberate fabrications’, but authentic facts which alone, without any commentary, thoroughly disgrace a state system which is forced to protect itself with the help of such trials.
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On 30 July S. Kalistratova and V. Nekipelov, members of the Moscow Helsinki Group, addressed a statement to the USSR Procurator-General:
‘Personal! Urgent!
‘STOP THIS CRIME!
‘In spite of the circumstances disclosed, the court returned a verdict of guilty on Kuleshov, founded on the shaky evidence of a single solitary witness. There was no accompanying decision about the criminal activities of the investigating organs.
‘A large number of violations of procedure were allowed by the court, and these are set down in the appeals of the convicted man and his lawyer. After the trial the convicted man was denied his right to see the record of the court proceedings, which forces one to suppose that the records have been falsified.
‘The appeal hearing in the Kuleshov Case is due to take place in the USSR Supreme Court within the next few days. Fearing that the sentence will be automatically upheld, we ask you to take urgent measures to restore the legality so crudely trampled on by the Rostov court.’
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