The Trials of Adventists, March 1979 (53.3-1)

<<No 53 : 1 August 1979>>

3-1. The Case of SHELKOV, LEPSHIN, SPALIN, Sophia FURLET and MASLOV (Tashkent)
3-2. The End of the Pyotr RAKSHA Case; A Case about Bribery

[1]

The Trial of Shelkov, Lepshin, Spalin, Furlet and Maslov

On 12 March, after a six-week break (CCE 52.11), the Tashkent Regional Court resumed hearing the case of V. A. Shelkov (b. 1895), head of the ACTFSDA (All-Union Church of True & Free Seventh-Day Adventists) and his fellow-believers: Arnold A. Spalin (b. 1935), Ilya S. Lepshin (b. 1933), Sergei I. Maslov (b. 1920) and Sophia P. Furlet (b. 1924).

The judge was N. S. Artyomov; the prosecutor, V. I. Baimeyev. The defence counsels were V. G. Spodik, E. D. Trach and V. A. Popik.

Asked by the presiding judge whether he had confidence in the court, Shelkov replied: he trusted the court provisionally, but if the court showed an atheist bias, he would challenge it. Artyomov demanded “Yes” or “No” by way of an answer and he objected to Shelkov’s words being put on the record.

Defence counsel Spodik, however, referring to the appropriate Article of the Code of Criminal Procedure, declared that everything that happened in the courtroom should be set down in the record, word for word and in full; any actions contradicting this statute would be regarded by the defence as a gross violation of the law. He added that the defence was making its own record and that any distortions or omissions in the court record would be documented and appealed against.

Both the defence counsel’s statement and Shelkov’s reply were included in the record.

Vladimir Shelkov (1895-1980)

At the start of the court hearing Spalin and Lepshin reiterated their refusal to have defence counsels, but Spalin asked the court to allow him to receive legal aid from lawyer Trach.

The judge replied “There is no provision in law for such a half-way decision.” Trach then explained that according to the Code of Criminal Procedure, the defendant had the right to legal consultation, which did not bind him to engage a defence counsel.

Spalin’s request, supported by Trach, was upheld.

INDICTMENT

The indictment was read out. According to this document, Shelkov faced the following charges:

“that, being a Seventh-Day Adventist, after the schism in the 1920s [¹] he joined the reactionary Adventist trend, which did not recognize the law on religious cults, calling itself the ‘reformist’ or ‘true remnant’ of the All-Union Church of Seventh-Day Adventists (ACSDA).

“Under the guise of preaching the religious doctrines of the Adventists, he incited citizens to refuse to participate in public life and fulfil their civic duties. He has been brought to trial three times and sentenced for his illegal activities.

“In the post-war period, from 1954 onwards, after serving one sentence, Shelkov in fact became one of the leaders of the illegal ‘Reformed Adventist’ sect, giving himself the title of Chairman of the All-Union Church of True & Free Seventh-Day Adventists (AUCTFSDA), and unlawfully founded in this country a far-flung, highly conspiratorial organization with its own press, the ‘True Witness’.

“The literature issued by this publishing house was produced on printing-presses, duplicators and typewriters. On 22 August 1978 a printing-press, together with a large quantity of type, was discovered in the city of Pyatigorsk [southern Russia, pop. 109,901 (1979)]. It had been used to print literature confiscated during searches in the present case. The sect is living on the means of the believers, from whom two-tenths, i.e., 20%, of each member’s salary is collected.

“Shelkov set up the structure of this illegal organization, the lowest level of which (according to Part 3 of ‘The Basis of Church Order’) is the congregation, led by a presbyter. A number of united congregations make up an association. The association is headed by a chairman. The associations combine to make up Unions, which, taken together, constitute the All-Union Church (of the TFSDA) headed by Chairman V. A. Shelkov.

“From the materials taken during a search at the home of his closest colleague, Sergei Ivanovich Maslov, it is obvious that the territory of the USSR had been roughly divided into the Western, Central and Caucasian Unions: the Western Union is made up of the Kiev, Vinnitsa, Bukovina, Odessa and Baltic associations; the Central Union includes the Voronezh, East-Ukrainian, Donbass and Urals associations; and the Caucasian Union is made up of the West-Caucasian, North-Caucasian and Kuban associations.

“As the head of this far-flung and deeply conspiratorial organization, Shelkov came to a criminal agreement with his associates A. A. Spalin, I. S. Lepshin and Maslov (and other sect leaders whom the investigation did not discover). Together over the last ten years and especially actively in recent years, he and they prepared, reproduced and disseminated works containing deliberately false fabrications slandering the Soviet political and social system.

“These fabrications were mainly concerned with baselessly asserting that in the USSR there is no freedom of conscience, no religious liberty for believers, that the state organs repress people for ‘purely religious convictions’. In the course of their illegal activities, Shelkov and his associates joined with the illegal Baptist sect [CCECB] and with so-called dissenters — people such as Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn, Orlov, Ginzburg, [Tatyana] Khodorovich, Grigorenko and others.

“The works of the above-mentioned persons were widely used by Shelkov for slanderous ends.

“Such works by Solzhenitsyn as The Gulag Archipelago, The Calf & the Oak, and ‘Labour Camps of Death’ (part of the Gulag Archipelago),

“[Levitin] Krasnov’s ‘Light in the Little Window’,

“[Tatyana] Khodorovich’s ‘I Support you’,

“the Chronicle of Current Events (published in samizdat form),

“the Bulletin of the Council of Baptist Prisoners’ Relatives, and

“letters by Orlov, Ginzburg, Grigorenko and others,

which contained fabrications slandering the Soviet political and social system, were reproduced in typewritten form and disseminated in the USSR …

“Making use of all connections and possibilities, Shelkov systematically sent information abroad that contained deliberately false fabrications slandering the Soviet political and social system, and by means of this knowingly false information he intended to mislead world opinion about the true position of believers in the USSR.

“For example, on 18 February 1977 a letter from Shelkov addressed to J. Carter, US President, was produced in printed form in large numbers. In this letter, distributed in the USSR as well as abroad, Shelkov (calling himself Chairman of the All-Union Church of TFSDA and including his own photograph and a list of works which he wrote or contributed to) called on the President of the USA to interfere in the internal affairs of the USSR, using economic, political and diplomatic pressure to defend the rights of believers against the ‘persecution by State atheism’ allegedly going on in the USSR.

“On 23 February 1977 Shelkov published a second letter addressed to US President Carter, asking him [CCE 45.19-1 (1)] to use his influence and authority decisively to defend A. I. Ginzburg, Yu. F. Orlov and ‘other fighters for universal human rights and freedoms’.

“In June 1977 Shelkov and Spalin drew up and reproduced in typewritten form a document entitled ‘An Appeal to the Representatives of States Participating in the Belgrade Conference’, which includes a call to the participants in the conference to interfere in the internal affairs of the USSR on the pretext of the alleged absence of freedom of conscience in the Soviet Union. This document was distributed within the country as well as abroad.

“By interpreting the Decree on the Separation of Church and State in a manner favourable to himself, and declaring the decree to mean that the State had no right to interfere with any religious denomination, Shelkov was trying to show that his activities should he subject to no State oversight. He and his accomplices were doing all they could to blacken the existing system in the USSR, alleging it was anti-Leninist. These ideas permeate all the so-called works of Shelkov.“

It is stated in the Indictment that 110 works by Shelkov were confiscated during the search.

“The knowingly false fabrications were disseminated not only by passing round literature, but by means of tape-recordings. With this aim, the sect used its income to buy a great deal of portable recording and playing equipment; Soviet ‘Vesna 306’ tape-recorders. Japanese tape-decks, and standard cassettes. With the help of this equipment, recordings were made of foreign radio broadcasts to the Soviet Union in Russian. The radio broadcasts included false fabrications concerning the internal and foreign policy of the USSR.

“In all, during the searches at the homes of Shelkov, Maslov, Furlet, [Alexander] Onishchenko and others in Tashkent, 12 tape-recorders and 605 cassettes with various recordings of the above-mentioned kind were confiscated.

“Shelkov and other leaders of the sect systematically collected facts about citizens being brought to justice, allegedly for their religious convictions, and deliberately depicted them in a false light, with the aim of misleading public opinion within the country and abroad. Reports concerning the alleged repression of religious citizens were sent abroad by Shelkov without the knowledge of these citizens and against their wishes …

“Under Shelkov’s leadership, with the aim of creating favourable conditions for the illegal activities of the sect and making its rapid exposure impossible, active members of the sect bought houses in the names of other people in various towns, where carefully concealed hiding-places were constructed and stores of paper, recording tapes, typewriter ribbons and so on were established.

“As leader of the illegal ‘reformist Seventh-Day Adventist’ sect [TFSDA], Shelkov systematically incited citizens not to fulfil their civic obligations. From 1967 to the day of his arrest, 14 March 1978, he forbade both adults and children to take part in public life, telling them to ignore and disobey the laws of the USSR concerning religious associations.

“For example, in the articles which make up his book Legislation on Religious Cults, Shelkov peremptorily asserts that this legislation is reactionary and anti-Leninist. He states the same in the above-mentioned appeal to President J. Carter. In refusing to register his sect with the state authorities, Shelkov refers to the fact that the state authorities do not have the right to interfere in the affairs of believers, as the Church in this country is separated from the State. This demagogic declaration was put into practice by Shelkov in all his activities.

“In the pamphlet ‘Defence of the Fourth Commandment (“Remember the Sabbath Day”)’, Shelkov calls on believers not to go to work on Saturdays; pupils are told not to visit educational establishments on that day.

“In his book The Childhood of Jesus (in the series ‘Biblical Talks’) Shelkov insistently advises parents to check upon their children and ‘to expel all that has been sown in their hearts and consciousnesses by the school and to neutralize in good time the whole negative, amoral influence of the state school.’

“In his book Pure and Impure Religion, on page 122, he refers to the allegedly forced enrolment of believers’ children into the Pioneers: to forced wearing of the Pioneer necktie, forced visits to atheist films and plays, and so on, i.e., Shelkov asserts in the two above-mentioned books that the aim of the state — the education of young people in the spirit of communist morality — should not apply to children of believers. He calls on parents not to allow their children to enrol in the Octobrist, Pioneer and Young Communist organizations.

“Insisting that the Sixth Commandment, ’Thou Shalt not Kill’, be strictly obeyed, Shelkov firmly instructs members of the sect to serve only in the Army’s construction battalions, and not to take the military oath or take up arms in defence of the Motherland. In every concrete case where conscripts, not only from the Adventists but also from any other illegal sect, refuse to take the military oath or serve in the armed forces, and are therefore brought to justice, Shelkov distorts the facts and brings them to the notice of large numbers of citizens, organizations and institutions in this country, and also sends these falsifications abroad. For example, he depicted in such a false light the so-called case of Miller, who refused to serve in the Army and was sentenced in 1977 by the people’s court of Djambul under Article 66, part 1 (Kazakh SSR Criminal Code) …

“Obviously aware of the illegality of his actions, Shelkov asked not to have to give evidence to the investigation authorities. His book The Foundations of the Truth of the TFSDA Faith includes a call not to answer questions from officials, and, if they insist, he advocates ‘holy silence’. The same proposals are included in the article ‘How to Behave before the Ill-intentioned’, discovered in the house where Shelkov had been hiding, 56 Soyuznaya Street.

‘Not content with his own instructions to sect members, Shelkov armed himself with a pamphlet by somebody called Volpin-Yesenin, entitled Those Faced with Interrogation [CCE 6.8 (8)], which put forward the same theses as Shelkov, in more detail, and was distributed by Shelkov.“

Concluded in Trials of Adventists, August 1979 (53.3-2)

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