The Trial of Morozov, June 1979 (53.14)

<<No 53 : 1 August 1979>>

On 30 October 1978 the Morozov Case was detached from the criminal case against V. A. Orekhov.

According to Morozov, Viktor Alexeyevich Orekhov is a KGB captain, employed in the operations department; he is about 35; he gave Morozov secret official information and was sentenced to 10-12 years in mid-May. It is known, for example, that Morozov gave people prior warning of the searches on 15 May 1978 (///CCE 50) and the arrest of A. Podrabinek (CCE 50.7, CCE 51.8), and provided some passes for the trial of Yu. Orlov (CCE 50.1).

On 31 October the Morozov Case was accepted by the Investigations Department of the USSR KGB; Orekhov’s Case was conducted by the Moscow KGB and the Military Procuracy. Morozov was detained on 1 November (CCE 51.8) and arrested on 3 November. He has said that soon after his arrest he was shown Orekhov’s testimony about information he had passed on, and Orekhov’s request that he corroborate it. Morozov fulfilled the request.

At the pre-trial investigation Morozov gave detailed testimony (CCE 52.4-2).

On 29 June 1979 the RSFSR Supreme Court, presided over by Member of the Court P. P. Lukanov, sentenced Mark Aronovich MOROZOV (b. 1931), under Article 10 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, to five years’ exile.

According to the judgment, Morozov committed the following offences:

In 1974-6 he duplicated for the purpose of dissemination, and disseminated, The Gulag Archipelago.
In 1974 he provided Berdyaev’s The Sources and Meaning of Russian Communism for duplication.
In 1974 he disseminated Solzhenitsyn’s The Calf and the Oak.
In 1974-6 he disseminated Roy Medvedev’s article ‘The Near Eastern Conflict and the Jewish Question in the USSR’.
In 1975-6 he disseminated the second volume of Avtorkhanov’s The Origins of the Partocracy.
In 1976 he disseminated Amalrik’s Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?
At the beginning of 1977, at his home, he gave Orekhov the first and second parts of Turchin’s book The Inertia of Fear: Socialism and Totalitarianism (this is chronologically the first episode connected with Orekhov).
In 1976 he photographed, with the purpose of future dissemination, the collection From under the Rubble.
In August 1977 he wrote and posted abroad an appeal to the leaders of the Italian Communist Party (CCE 47.15).
In March 1978 he organized and personally participated in the manufacture by photographic means of about 100 leaflets; these were disseminated during the night of 13-14 March 1978 by his associates in various districts of Moscow (CCE 51.8).

Morozov pleaded guilty in court and declared that he thoroughly understood the hostility of his past actions to the Soviet Union and all their possible harmful consequences, which he had wanted to take place.

Expressing repentance for what he had done, Morozov said that he regretted the harm he had caused to the Soviet political and social system …

In considering the measure of punishment, the Judicial Board takes into account the fact that this was Morozov’s first crime, as well as his sincere repentance and the fact that through his evidence the accused has, to a significant degree, make it possible for light to be shed on the crime committed by him and for the truth to be established. On these grounds it is considered possible not to deprive him of freedom.

At the trial Morozov refused the defence counsel allocated to him and undertook his own defence. Morozov explained his behaviour at the pre-trial investigation and in court in one of his statements to the USSR Procurator-General:

‘I am answering your natural questions, namely: why did I give evidence against myself that the investigation and the court could not corroborate? and why, neither during the investigation nor during the trial did I object to violations of procedure?

‘The investigation, in the person of Col. V. I. Volodin [Senior Assistant Head of the USSR KGB Investigations Department, Chronicle; see note i], gave me a firm promise of a suspended sentence if I gave evidence, and also promised me help with getting work after the trial. I gave evidence that basically confirmed the investigation’s version, so as to get the trial procedure over and done with as quickly as possible … After the end of the investigation (Article 201 of the Procedural Code) Col. V. I. Volodin and Major N. N. Belyayev persistently reminded me to stick to my testimony in court, not to deny the facts set down in the indictment, not to refute the interpretations of the investigators, and even to force the witnesses at the trial to give evidence to the advantage of the prosecution, so as not, as they put it, ‘to spoil the whole case’.

‘V. I. Volodin also asked me not to try to engage E. A. Reznikova as my defence counsel, informing me that she was allegedly a dissident and therefore her very participation could only bring me harm, since the Judges would pay no attention to her arguments. These requests, which in essence denied me the opportunity to defend myself (as everyone present at the trial could see, I was passive and merely tried to compel witnesses to give the evidence needed by the prosecution), derived, as I now see, by no means from the desire to give me a suspended sentence, but from the knowledge that the outcome of the investigation was, in a legal sense, inconclusive. Supposing a promise from the KGB to be the word of the government, I took the risk of believing the investigators, and, although the indictment disturbed me by the tendentiousness, I ‘didn’t spoil the case’ in court.

‘Through my own experience I now know the price of KGB promises; I have understood how judges like Lukanov interpret socialist legality. I hope that my comrades will be able to draw the appropriate conclusions from my bitter experience.’

On receiving exile instead of a suspended sentence Morozov again ‘repented of what he had done’ (his behaviour at the pre-trial investigation and in court, and also his compact with the KGB) and returned to the ranks of the defenders of the rule of law. In the same statement he writes:

‘Lukanov has discredited socialist legality and damaged the prestige of the Soviet Union by his actions. I am now convinced that Soviet dissenters are right to criticize the court procedures at political trials. Undoubtedly one should also have doubts about other trials conducted by Judge Lukanov, the trial of Shcharansky in particular.’

Morozov also maintained that the charges connected with the leaflets and the collection From Under the Rubble were not proven in court although they were included in the judgment, and demanded that criminal proceedings be instituted against Judge Lukanov for ‘passing a deliberately illegal sentence’. He writes:

‘After November 1976. when I signed an official caution in connection with circulating anti-Soviet literature, practically no further instances of my doing so were established, except the episode with witness V. A. Orekhov, the now convicted KGB captain. Orekhov pointed out that his superiors knew and did not object to my giving him forbidden literature, as Orekhov, through the nature of his work had the right to read it. Since Orekhov, who has suffered for the help he gave to the movement to defend the rule of law could not have been leading me on for his own purposes, I have to presume that the KGB was conducting this unseemly matter.

‘The instance of circulating literature took place before I signed the caution; afterwards I drew the conclusions demanded by the authorities. To charge me now with these earlier episodes means to deprive the official caution of all meaning.’

In another statement to the USSR Procurator-General, Morozov asked for help as he is seriously ill (with infectious rheumatic poly-arthritis), and Judge Lukanov has not, in spite of his requests, applied Article 361 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (‘postponement of the serving of a sentence’ in cases where, for example, ‘the serious illness of a convict prevents him from serving his sentence’). In his statement Morozov explains Judge Lukanov’s refusal in the following way:

‘My complete immobility as a result of my illness is for him an acceptable alternative which compensates for the relatively light sentence he passed on me to avoid giving grounds for public protests against the severe sentences on Soviet defenders of the rule of law, especially before the 1980 Olympic Games.’

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