CCE 52
The Deputy Chief of the Central Statistical Board, G. V. Ostankovich, lied to the Crimean Tatar delegates (CCE 52.9-2).
In fact, both in “The instructions for enciphering census sheets … for the All-Union population census for 1970” (Moscow, 1969) and in the document ‘A dictionary of nationalities and languages for enciphering answers to questions 7 and 8 of the All-Union population census of 1970’ (Moscow, Statistics Publishing House, 1969) the nationality ‘Crimean Tatars’ does appear (code, 081).
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CCE 48-51
Shagen Arutyunyan (CCE 48.6) was born in 1937.
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In CCE 51.20-1, [5], among the authors of the letter to Andropov and Brezhnev concerning Yu. Orlov’s scientific papers confiscated in Lefortovo, the name E. Barabanov was given in error; it should have been A. Barabanov (CCE 47). A. F. Barabanov is a Master of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and a student of Yu. Orlov.
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The searches at the homes of S. Yermolayev and I. Polyakov were on 18 January 1979, not 18 February (//CCE 51).
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The Ruban Case, 1976 onwards
The Chronicle is now able to expand and clarify its reports on the case of Ruban (CCE 44.27, CCE 45.3; CCE 46.23-2, 48).
In 1968-1973 Pyotr Ruban spent five years in Mordovian camps under Article 62 of the UkSSR Criminal Code (= Article 70 of the RSFSR Code) and Article 222 (‘The illegal carrying, possession, acquisition, manufacture or sale of weapons, ammunition or explosive substances’). While in camp, Ruban became a specialist in intarsia woodwork. The camp administration encouraged him to do woodwork and gave him orders to complete.
After his release in November 1973 Ruban was sent to the town of Priluki, Chernigov Region, where his wife had been sent to work in a factory after completing her higher education. In reply to her request for living quarters, the director of the factory said: ‘We won’t even let your anti-Soviet husband over the threshold of the hostel’. The Rubans, with their six-year-old daughter, had to rent a room. Only after appealing to the President of the Presidium of the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet were the Rubans allotted a plot of land on which to build a house. They started to build the house, living for the time being in a shed.
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Pyotr Ruban found work as a wood-carver at the Priluki furniture combine. He managed to interest the management in his artistic woodwork and in the possibility of using previously useless waste. Applying a technique he himself had worked out (he even made his own tools) he was put in charge of a mass-produced line of souvenirs.
After business trips to the Chernigov musical instrument factory and to Kiev, Ruban brought home a lot of rejected (i.e., free) veneer walnut which he needed for his intarsia work. At the same time, with the permission of the Ukrainian Artists’ Fund, Ruban handed in some pieces which he had made at home in his own studio, to the Artists’ Salon-Shop in Kiev.
His work was a success: more than once he completed orders from the Ukrainian Council of Ministers, he produced the souvenir ‘Chernigovshchina’ at the request of the Party Regional Committee as a present to the 25th Party Congress, and he completed orders from the Foreign Trade Organization [Vneshtorg]. His work ‘Chess Book’ won the second republic prize in 1974.
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The present ‘Ruban Case’ started after he produced in 1976 an album with wood-carved covers, entitled ‘Freedom’, as a present to the American people for the 200th anniversary of American Independence (he spent eight months working on it). People unknown broke down the door of his studio at home and stole this album. At the Procurator’s office Ruban was advised to ‘forget it’: ‘The trail would lead to a place where we we are not competent to carry out a search. There is no law giving you the right to do this work, but there is no law against it. The authorities found it necessary to take this step to prevent the presentation of the gift.’
On 13 October 1976 Ruban was arrested (CCE 44.27).
On 29 December 1976 the Priluki Town people’s court heard the case of Ruban (in CCE 45.3 there is an inaccuracy here), charging him under part 3 of Article 81 (UkSSR Criminal Code: ‘Misappropriation of state …properly by theft’) and Article 150 (‘Private enterprise activity …’). Under Article 150 Ruban was charged with handing in to the Artists’ Salon 73 souvenirs which had been ‘made at work with no account rendered’; furthermore, the investigation claimed that during his trips for veneer wood Ruban ‘used the cover of an existing socialist enterprise for free enterprise activity’. Under Article 81 Ruban was charged with stealing material to the value of 72 roubles 10 kopecks from the furniture combine, as well as five completed souvenirs. Judge Shekera said to advocate E. A. Zanko, when he demanded Ruban’s acquittal (a demand which caused applause in court): ‘You’ll soon be in the dock yourself’. The court sentenced Ruban to eight years’ deprivation of freedom and five years’ exile.
After the trial Ruban was not allowed to see the record of the court hearing, and distorted entries in the record were then used by the prosecution at the following trial under Article 187-1 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code (= Article 190-1 of the RSFSR Code). For example, in his final statement Ruban said that he was being tried because he had ‘struggled for the separation of the Ukraine from the USSR’; in the record this was given as ‘I have struggled and will continue to struggle for the separation of the Ukraine from the USSR’.
Ruban put in an appeal to the Chernigov Regional Court — the sentence was repealed and the case sent for re-examination. On 10 February 1977, ten days after the repeal, the deputy Procurator of the Ukrainian SSR, Skopenko, pointed out the need to ‘verify whether a charge should be brought under Article 187-1 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code’. Included in the new investigation group of five people were two KGB officials, Lieutenant-Colonel Lisovets and Captain E. I. Polunin.
Ruban, in protest against a trumped-up case, sent a letter to Andropov. As a result of this letter, a talk was arranged with a Major from the Chernigov KGB, who promised that Ruban would get a reduction of sentence to the minimum if he admitted that the trial in Priluki was held in accordance with the law and the KGB organs had no hand in it; if he said that his utterances of a slanderous nature made at the trial did not correspond with his inner convictions; and if he made sure that the Western mass media did not use his name for anti-Soviet purposes. Ruban declined the deal.
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TRIAL
On 20 April 1977 the Chernigov Regional Court heard the case charging Ruban under the same two Articles as at the first trial, and also under Article 187-1. The prosecution based its charge under Article 150 on the impossibility of making such articles at home.
The court took no notice of statements from witnesses to the contrary or of Ruban’s offer to do a ‘demonstration for the investigators’. Photographs of the lathe and the twin-screw press owned by the accused were not included in the case-file, but there were a lot of photographs to prove how little space he had for them at home. The prosecution used the testimony of the president of the street committee, Tereshchenko, who had once been inside the Rubans’ house and ‘had not seen’ a lathe or press in the house. Investigator Maksimenko had (during the first investigation) attributed to witness A. Logvinov the testimony that the souvenirs handed in to the salon had been made at the combine. In answer to Logvinov’s objection that he did not know where the souvenirs had been made, Maksimenko said: ‘Just say what I told you in court — they’ll believe you’. The court also did not want to take into consideration the difference in size between the mass-produced articles and those handed in to the Salon.
The Chernigov court withdrew the charge against Ruban of stealing material. The theft of five souvenirs was based on an expert chemical examination which showed that the lacquer was the same both on them and on the mass-produced souvenirs. The court refused to allow the advocate to have an expert artistic-biological examination carried out. Another distortion of evidence in the pre-trial investigation came out in court: the Chief of the Investigation Department of the Regional Procuracy, Krivolapov, wrote down the testimony of the porter Sonets as stating that, on checking Ruban’s brief-case, he had seen in it paints, brushes and ‘pictures on wood’. In court Sonets mentioned only paints and brushes. When the Judge read him the entry in the record of questioning during the pre-trial investigation, Sonets stated categorically: ‘There were no pictures in the brief-case’. Nevertheless, in his speech for the prosecution the Procurator referred to the porter’s evidence and to the brief-case as an instrument of crime.
Ruban was charged under Article 187-1 because of notes he had made while in the Mordovian camps (eight notebooks) and letters to his wife from camp (both, in their time, had gone through the camp censorship). His oral opinions were also brought into the charges. For example: ‘As an artist he is being restricted, he does not have the chance to do his work properly’ (witness I. P. Kukhabik), and looking at defective products Ruban said: ‘Made in the USSR’ (witness Yurchenko). The distorted record of what he said at the trial in Priluki (see above) was also used.
The court sentenced Ruban to six years’ detention in a special-regime camp and three years’ exile, ordered him to return 5,330 roubles of ‘illicit income’ (the value of the articles sold through the Salon), and confiscated his property — the unfinished house, (Ruban’s family have been living in the shed for nearly three years.)
When Lydia Ruban was on her way to Kiev, where the appeal was to be examined, she was detained at the Priluki Station ‘on suspicion of theft of money’. During the search documents relating to her husband s case, which she was taking to the appeal hearing, were confiscated.
On 28 June the Ukrainian Supreme Court examined Ruban’s appeal and let the sentence stand without alteration (//CCE 46).
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In camp (Voroshilovgrad Region, Corrective-Labour Colony-60) Ruban made souvenirs by hand (he did not even have a fretsaw but used a metal saw instead) similar to those he had given in to the Salon. Major Egorov of the Voroshilovgrad KGB, when he saw the place where the work was done and the finished products, asked to see the case report.
When he had looked at it, he said: ‘I have examined your case. As an expert in legal matters, I consider that infringements of Articles 81 and 150 have not been proven, but that is not my business’ (See also //CCE 48).
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LETTERS
On 10 November 1977 Pyotr Ruban sent a letter to the President of the USA:
‘The case against me is not a miscarriage of justice but a deliberate act by the authorities against those who speak out in defence of human rights in the USSR.
‘I appeal to you, Mr President, as a principled defender of human rights throughout the world, and as the head of a government to whom I wished peace and freedom on the 200th anniversary of your independence, these wishes being the reason for the imprisonment which has reduced my family to total poverty — to help to ensure that human rights are observed in the USSR.’
On 13 August 1978 Ruban sent a ‘letter of protest’ to the Procurator-General of the USSR:
‘It is with great pain that I learn of invented cases against defenders of human rights, one of these being the case of Lev Lukyanenko … I protest with anger and indignation against the flouting of human rights in the USSR. I call for the release from camps, and an end to the persecution, of members of the ‘Groups to Implement the Helsinki Agreements’ — who are true patriots of their fatherland!’
On 8 December 1978 Ruban sent a complaint to the Procurator-General of the USSR:
‘Since my arrest… my wife and I with two small children (one is three and the other ten) have had to appeal to various state and Party organizations for protection and justice. In this web of evasions, deceptions, and all kinds of mystification and shuffling.
‘The only reality remains the articles I created with my own hands and talent.
‘I do not agree with everything in the present state of affairs and relations in our society, not by a long way, but all my thoughts, actions and intentions were aimed at better human relationships in our society.
‘All this became the reason for starting criminal proceedings against me for crimes I had not committed.
‘I am appealing to you in the hope of an unbiased investigation of my appeal and of the essence of the case against me.’
On 9 December 1978 Ruban sent another ‘letter of protest’ to the same person (with a copy to the Ukrainian Helsinki Group):
‘Various acts of harassment by the authorities, provocations, blackmail and psychological torture have ruined the health of my wife Lydia Fedoseyevna Ruban — at present she is in the municipal hospital seriously ill (with tuberculosis). On the occasion of Human Rights Day, having considered my situation, the actions taken by the law, and the situation of my family, I voice my decisive protest against the flouting of human and civil rights by the Soviet authorities.
‘I demand the immediate release of all political prisoners in the Soviet Union.
‘I am reinforcing my protest with a one-day hunger-strike on Human Rights Day 10 December 1978.’
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A Chronicle of Current Events 