- 3-1. [1] The Case of SHELKOV, LEPSHIN, SPALIN, Sophia FURLET and MASLOV
- 3-2. [2] The End of the Pyotr RAKSHA Case; [3] A Case about Bribery
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[1] The Trial of Shelkov, Lepshin, Spalin, Furlet and Maslov (concluded)
The entire activity of Shelkov, Spalin, Lepshin and the others was in open violation of the ‘Legislation on Religious Cults’. For example, they organized children’s meetings, which were often recorded on tape for later dissemination. Altogether nine tape-recordings of children’s meetings were confiscated …
Spalin and Lepshin were charged with participating in the activities of the ‘True Witness’ publishing house, writing (together with Shelkov), editing and publishing the letters to Carter and other works listed in the indictment in the section on Shelkov (about 100 titles).
In particular, it is asserted that
“in 1977, at the time when the whole people was considering the proposed new Constitution of the USSR, Shelkov, Spalin and Lepshin took the lead in composing letters disguised as suggestions to the Constitution Commission, entitled ‘The Rights of Man: Myth and Reality’, ‘Amendment and Correction are Needed’, ‘Our Opinion of the Proposed New Constitution’, ‘Some Observations on the Proposed New Constitution’, ‘On the Tendentious Article 52 Concerning Freedom of Conscience’, ‘A Discussion of Article 52, on Freedom of Conscience, in the Draft Constitution’, ‘On Articles 50 and 51’, ‘Suggestions Concerning Articles 34 and 36’, Concerning Article 39, on the Use of Rights and Freedoms’, ‘Notes on Article 59, Concerning Rights and Obligations’, and others — 13 texts in all.
“The above-mentioned letters, most of which were written by Spalin, contain knowingly false fabrications slandering the Soviet political and social system. In particular, it is stated that the legislation on religious cults and on national education, as well as the proposed new Constitution, are discriminatory and repressive towards believers, that the equality of citizens is not declared in the Constitution, and that the draft Constitution does not guarantee freedom of speech, of the press or of association.
“These letters, allegedly written by religious citizens, were sent in the name of non-existent persons, in large numbers, to various organizations and institutions of the USSR, although they were addressed to the Constitution Commission. The texts of the letters were disseminated among citizens and later published in separate collections.”
The indictment states that Spalin and Lepshin
“demand that members of the sect should not carry out Soviet laws, and should refuse to give evidence to investigation authorities.
“They also incite them not to fulfil their civic duties, forbidding adults and children to take part in public life and activity, and to ignore and disobey Soviet legislation on military service and religious associations.
Spalin, for example, had worked out
“a model declaration to the military conscription board containing reasons for refusal to take the military oath and serve in the Army ‘bearing arms’.”
On the basis of the above evidence, Shelkov, Spalin and Lepshin were charged under two Articles of the Uzbek SSR Criminal Code: 191-4 (= Article 190-1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code), and 147-1, pt 1 (“Violating the person and rights of citizens under the guise of performing religious rites”).
Lepshin, in addition, was charged with “avoiding a routine call-up for active military service”. According to the indictment, in 1972, when he was undergoing a medical examination at the Tersky Military Call-up Board (Kabardino-Balkar ASSR, North Caucasus) he simulated an eye infection.
Maslov and Furlet were charged under Article 191-4 (Uzbek SSR Criminal Code).
“In the house which Maslov owned as a private individual (8 Elektrotekhnicheskaya Street) in Tashkent, hiding-places had been constructed with the special aim of storing literature of the above-mentioned kind, so that it could later be distributed; also, sect members who were living outside the law could hide there …
“Also, in the house that Furlet owned as a private individual (6, Kyzyl-Arbatskaya Street, alley 2) in Tashkent, hiding-places had been constructed with the special aim of storing literature of the above-mentioned kind so that it could later be distributed. In addition, in Furlet’s house a portable Erika typewriter was discovered and confiscated: it had been used to type out a series of works which contained knowingly false fabrications which slander the Soviet political and social system.“
Maslov admitted his guilt in part; the other defendants pleaded not guilty. Shelkov and Spalin declared that in accordance with Article 259 of the Uzbek SSR Criminal Procedural Code (= Article 278 of the RSFSR Code), they wished to give reasons for their plea of not guilty. They achieved this only after lengthy disputes with the Judge, and with the active support of defence counsel. Nevertheless, neither Shelkov nor Spalin was allowed to finish his explanations.
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QUESTIONING
The questioning of the accused began on 13 March.
Sophia Furlet declared that the charges against her were false. She stated that she did not know how the objects discovered during the search got into her house and added that she had refused to sign the search record, us she had not been permitted to watch the proceedings.
Maslov admitted his guilt only concerning the storage of literature and a typewriter.
Shelkov and Spalin asked Maslov questions on this point, but they were all disallowed by the court.
Spalin said that Maslov denied the literature confiscated from him was libellous, but admitted that he was guilty of storing it. The prosecutor was formulating his questions to make it sound as if, in admitting that he was guilty of storing literature, he had admitted it was necessarily libellous.
Lepshin declared that the charges against him were unproven, that not one real violation of the law by himself, Lepshin, had been demonstrated. He remarked that during the pre-trial investigation he had been questioned only once, about the believers’ letter to the Constitution Commission. He had rewritten this text with his own hand and had sent it to the addressee, but he was not the author. In any case, Lepshin added, such a letter could not be regarded as libellous. Referring to the charge of avoiding military service, Lepshin described his illness and stated that in 1953 he had been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for refusing to bear arms. (The court had not known of Lepshin’s previous conviction. Lepshin explained that no one had asked him about it.) In 1972 Lepshin was already much over the age of military conscription (he was then 39), so he could not in any way be sentenced under this Article.
Both Lepshin and Spalin insisted that the literature published by ‘True Witness’, which figured in the charges against them, did not contain any knowingly false fabrications. It was of a purely religious nature or was in defence of people’s rights. Spalin defended the position of the All-Union Church of TFSDA concerning registration of communities and observance of the commandments, “Remember the Sabbath Day” and “Thou shalt not kill”. He stated that the legislation of 1929 was unlawful, as it did not follow from the Leninist Decree of 1918, but contradicted it.
Shelkov gave evidence to the court on 15 March.
Quoting excerpts from the indictment, he tried to reply to them in succession. However, the Judge constantly interrupted him, forbidding him to go into the history of Adventism (described in the indictment as a sect which in the first years of the Soviet regime was hostile to the Soviet government; Shelkov could not agree with this), and finally telling Shelkov to end his explanations and start answering questions put by the prosecutor.
Shelkov stated that the Judge was biased and asked that his challenge be placed on the record. He managed to achieve this with the aid of defence counsel Spodik. The court, after considering Shelkov’s challenge, turned it down. In protest, Shelkov refused to answer the questions of the Judge and prosecutor.
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WITNESSES
The indictment mentioned 18 witnesses who were to be summoned by the court.
Among them were a number of people who had been interrogated at the pre-trial investigation (in order to refute the Appeal to the Belgrade Conference) in the following way; those who had lost their jobs were asked if they had been deprived of their parental rights, while those who had been deprived of parental rights were asked if they had lost their jobs. In court none of them was questioned.
(Over 80 Adventists — all mentioned in the Appeal — sent written reports about the acts of repression they had suffered to Judge Artemov and the Defence Lawyers’ Association. All of them wrote that they were prepared to present their reports personally in court. None of them was allowed in. Their evidence was not taken into account.)
On 6 March, Fyodor Stotsky from the Belorussian town of Elsk, Gomel Region, was shown a summons to the Tashkent Court by two officials from the Procuracy. He was not given a copy, but was asked to write that he had no time to attend the trial. He refused. He was still not given a copy of the summons.
Polina Trofimovna Neverova, a resident of Krivoi Rog in Ukraine, was informed on 8 March by KGB official Chernyayev, who came to her house, that she had been summoned to the court as a witness. Not letting the summons out of his hands, he told her to write that she could not attend the trial for family reasons. Neverova said that she wanted to go to the trial and give evidence in favour of Shelkov. Chernyayev began to threaten her. He did not give her the summons. At work Neverova was refused time off, either as holiday or at her own expense. A watch was set up to see that she went to work every day. Nevertheless, Neverova tried to fly to Tashkent — but at the airport they refused to sell her a ticket. At the trial, Chernyayev’s report that Neverova had refused to attend was read out.
Four witnesses were questioned in court. The witness Nedogreyeva, who had attended meetings of the sect, stated that the sect leaders kept telling believers that the government of the USSR was persecuting them. She also supported the charges against Furlet.
Nedogreyeva’s 15-year-old son Volodya Vorontsov testified that he had attended prayer-meetings of the sect where both adults and children were present. Special trips out of town were organized for the children.
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ILLARIONOV
The chief prosecution witness was V. V. Illarionov.
Illarionov is a non-believer, but as the son of active sect member Mikhail Murkin [1], he knows his father’s fellow-believers well. In 1976 Illarionov was sentenced to 11 years in strict-regime labour camps for stealing state property by means of fraud and forging documents.
Illarionov repeated those accusations against the accused and the sect as a whole which were the least substantiated by the evidence. In particular, he stated that Spalin and Lepshin were close aides of Shelkov and that they had helped to prepare libellous literature. Spalin was accepted as a member of the sect by Shelkov and sent to the Northern Caucasus, where he led a youth wing of the //AUCTFSDA; later he began to edit and revise Shelkov’s works.
Illarionov described Furlet as ‘a junior Bible worker’ who played an active role in the sect, transporting libellous literature all over the country. He declared that the sect had bought houses and registered them in the names of people especially dedicated to Shelkov. He also stated that the children of believing Adventists could join the Pioneers or the Komsomol only against the wishes of their parents, and that if a conscript from among the Adventists wanted to join the Army, he would not be physically prevented from doing so, but would be condemned by everyone.
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A declaration by 155 members of the All-Union Church of TFSDA was sent to the court, stating that Shelkov’s activities had never been accompanied by violation of believers’ rights, and that he had supported those who had suffered from persecution by the authorities.
In this declaration the Adventists also state that the events mentioned in Shelkov’s letter to the Belgrade Conference did indeed take place. The declaration ends with a plea that it be read out during the court proceedings. It was not read, nor were any of the signatories summoned as witnesses.
The prosecutor upheld the charges in full in his speech. The defence position was as follows: at the time when he was disseminating his works Shelkov did not know they contained false information. He was sure that the persecution of believers was really a fact. The actions with which he was charged under Article 147-1 (Uzbek SSR Criminal Code) were directed only at believers, so there was no basis for a criminal charge.
Referring to the evidence of Illarionov, defence counsel Spodik said that it was subjective and emotional, full of allegories and images, but did not prove anything with regard to the charges. He then added that all the expressions used by the state prosecutor directly contradicted the law and the logic of the evidence. How could a person be charged with forcing others to do something, if there was no one who had been forced to do anything? How could a person’s guilt be talked of if there was no proof of his guilt? And the lack of proof involved certain legal consequences — the case must be abandoned for lack of evidence.
All the defence counsels asked that the cases against their clients be abandoned for lack of evidence. The accused, in their final statements, demanded their acquittal for lack of material or any other evidence of a crime. The two sides summed up their cases on 21 March. The court conferred until the 23rd.
SENTENCE
Shelkov and Lepshin were sentenced to five years in strict-regime labour camps and confiscation of property. Spalin was sentenced to five years in ordinary-regime labour camps and confiscation of property. Furlet was sentenced to three years in ordinary-regime camps. Maslov received a suspended sentence of two years. The houses belonging to Furlet and Maslov, as well as the typewriters, tape-recordings and literature confiscated during searches, were confiscated on the orders of the court as instruments of crime.
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Throughout the trial only a few relatives of the accused were allowed into the courtroom. The other places in the courtroom were occupied by the traditional ‘public’, also by officials of the KGB and the Procuracy in charge of the case.
On 14 March, thinking that the sentence would be announced that day, Academician Sakharov came to Tashkent once more (see “The Trial of Mustafa Dzhemilev”, this issue CCE 53.2). He was not allowed into the courtroom and was told there were no seats free. After the recess, one of the relatives who had been allowed in asked that Sakharov be allowed in, in place of himself. As a result, this relative was not allowed back into court himself after the recess.
Later, a middle-aged Armenian came out of the courtroom and engaged Sakharov in conversation. He presented himself as a relative of the people who died in the Moscow Metro explosion in 1977. Starting to shout, he accused Sakharov of responsibility for people’s deaths, saying he had blood on his hands and was defending murderers. He threatened Sakharov, saying that if the latter did not leave Tashkent, he and his relatives would not be responsible for their actions. After uttering these threats, he immediately calmed down and went away.
On 28 March Sakharov appealed to Pope John-Paul II, to the Heads of those States which signed the Helsinki Agreement, and to the world public, calling on them to assist in obtaining a review of the sentence and the quick release of all the accused.
“This sentence — the third to be passed in Tashkent in recent months — is yet another shameful page in the 60-year history of the fanatical persecution of religion in the USSR.
“While proclaiming freedom of conscience and separation of Church and State, the totalitarian system in fact does not allow any freedom of religion or propagation of it, any independence from Party-State control. The sentence passed on 84-year-old Vladimir Andreyevich Shelkov is an example of especial cruelty violating all norms of humanity.“
On 9 April the All-Union Church of TFSDA made an appeal to the Supreme Court and the Procurator of the Uzbek SSR and to the Uzbek SSR KGB Chairman. The Adventists wrote that Shelkov and the others were not proved guilty, either at the pre-trial investigation or in court:
“We categorically repudiate the invented, false charges made against these persons, whose lives are sufficiently well known to us.“
The declaration describes how the court did not examine the facts reported in the letter to the participants in the Belgrade Conference, how defence witnesses were not summoned to court, and how written evidence by believers whose persecution had been reported by Shelkov was not attached to the case files or taken into account.
Members of the All-Union Church of TFSDA began demanding a re-examination of the case.
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REACTIONS
On 13 May (12 May in Moscow) the newspaper Izvestiya published “What was Going on in the Apostle’s Bunker”, an article by Kassis and Mikhailov. On 27 and 28 May an article by Illarionov, “A Fanatic in the Role of an Apostle”, appeared in the newspapers Pravda Vostoka and Vecherny Tashkent [Evening Tashkent].
It is known that a number of refutations of the articles in Izvestiya and the Tashkent newspapers have been written by the TFSDA Church. The Adventists state who Illarionov is, and report that he is already free and living at home in Tashkent.
On 16 May the Christian Committee and the Catholic Committee put out a joint press statement about the article “What was Going on in the Apostle’s Bunker”. The article in Izvestiya was composed on classical lines, they wrote, with regard to believers: the accused were pursuing political, not religious ends, it said; Shelkov was motivated by greed; he was working with ‘our enemies’; he was the son of a rich peasant; he helped the German occupying forces; and so on.
On 2 July the Supreme Court of the Uzbek SSR heard the appeal by the defendants and their lawyers. The sentences passed on Shelkov [2], Spalin, Maslov and Furlet remained unchanged.
The judgment regarding one of the charges against Lepshin — “avoidance of military service” — was revoked. With regard to the other charges against Lepshin, the sentence remained unchanged [3].
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[2] The End of the Raksha Case
Pyotr Raksha was arrested in Tashkent on 26 April 1978.
On 7 July the Tashkent City Court sentenced him to six years’ hard-regime under two Articles of the Uzbek SSR Criminal Code: 192-1, pt 2 (“Resisting a police-officer or people’s vigilante”), and 194-1 (“Attempt on the life of a police-officer or people’s vigilante”). However, the falsity of the charges was so obvious — at the time of the ‘attack on a Tashkent police-officer’ Raksha was in the Kiev Region of Ukraine — that on 5 October the Uzbek SSR Supreme Court repealed the sentence at an appeal hearing and sent Raksha’s case back for fresh investigation. Raksha remained in detention (CCE 51.6).
Between 20 and 29 March 1979 the Tashkent City Court sentenced Raksha under the same Articles as Shelkov — 191-4 and 147-1, pt. 2 (Uzbek SSR Criminal Code) — to three years’ imprisonment. The chief witness at the trial was once again Illarionov.
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[3] A Case about Bribery
On 2 February 1979 in Tashkent a trial of a group of Adventists, which had been going on for almost a month, came to an end.
S. F. Bakholdin and T. I. Krivoberets were charged with having given bribes to a hostel manager, G. P. Astashova (also an Adventist) and to passport registrar V. S. Yutsevich, in order to obtain residence registration for their fellow-believers.
Bakholdin and Krivoberets were arrested in April 1978 (CCE 49.14). Soon after, a series of searches ‘in connection with the Bakholdin Case’ took place all over Uzbekistan. Religious literature was confiscated.
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In court, evidence against Bakholdin, Krivoberets and Astashova was given only by the accused, Yutsevich, and the witness Illarionov (see above). The remaining witnesses spoke about the falsification of their testimony at the pre-trial investigation. Astashova’s defence counsel showed Judge Dubrovin the forgery in the record of her interrogation (the Judge was surprised: ‘The investigator was careless!’).
Nevertheless, the court found all the defendants guilty and sentenced them as follows [4]:
- Bakholdin to seven years in hard-regime camps and three years’ exile;
- Krivoberets to eight years in strict-regime camps and five years’ exile;
- Astashova to eight years in ordinary-regime camps and confiscation of property;
- Yutsevich to three years’ imprisonment (suspended).
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NOTES
- Murkin is mentioned in an article by A. Zabrovsky in Pravda Vostoka, Tashkent, 11 March 1979.
↩︎ - Shelkov died in a Far Eastern camp in January 1980 (CCE 56.2).
↩︎ - Most of the documents referred to in this report are available at Keston College (UK). They total several hundred pages.
↩︎ - The article by Zabrovsky (mentioned in note 1) is about the trial of Bakholdin et al.
↩︎
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