The Right to Leave, August 1979 (53.25-2)

<<No 53 : 1 August 1979>>

25-1. General (1-13)
25-2. Jews, Germans, Pentecostals; Dyadkin’s Journey to Visit Friends (14-27).
Those who Have Left (28-32).

[14]

JEWS (14-23)

Several letters have been sent to the US Congress by Jewish refuseniks who are activists in the movement for emigration.

In reply to statements by American officials claiming that the emigration policy of the Soviet government has become significantly more lenient — statements based on the increase in the number of Jews leaving the USSR — they say that the increase in the number of those allowed to leave reflects a sharp increase in the number of applications.

They show that the number of refusals has increased to a far greater degree than the number of permissions.

[15]

On 19 April in Moscow a group of women refuseniks (about fifty in number) who are trying to get permission to leave for Israel [¹] went to the CPSU Central Committee, but were not received.

Then nine women from the group — Natalya Khasina, Faina Kogan, Batsheva Yelistratova, Elena Chernobylskaya, Mila Lifshits, Natalya Rozenshtein, Galina Kremen, Alla Drugova, and Marina Vigdarova with two children — stood in front of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs building at 4 pm with placards saying “A Visa to Israel”.

A crowd of curious onlookers gathered. Policemen and several people in plain clothes soon arrived. Their leader incited the crowd, with insulting shouts, to show indignation. Shouts of “Damned Jews!” “Hitler didn’t finish you off”, etc, were heard. The demonstrators were driven away to Police Station 5. The women pressed their placards against the windows of the vehicles in which they were driven away.

Marina Vigdarova and the two children were released from the police station after an hour.

After four hours the women started to demand noisily to be released.

Chernobylskaya was fined 20 and Kogan 10 roubles; the rest, except Batsheva Yelistratova, were given an oral warning and released.

Batsheva Yelistratova was taken to the Kiev district people’s court, where Judge Panina charged her with using unprintable language, shouting anti-Soviet slogans, resisting the police, and other sins. The jail sentence, 15 days.

She was taken back to the police station and the next day was taken to a detention cell in the Investigation Prison at Petrovka 38 of the city’s internal affairs department (UVD). There she was put to work as a cleaner. She was due to be released on 4 May at 4.30 pm.

At 1.30 pm, however, Yelistratova was taken out of Moscow to the Special ‘Birch-trees’ //[Beryozy] Detention Centre, and was released only at 8 pm.

[16]

On 24 April Batsheva’s husband Victor Yelistratov (CCE 50.8-1) was detained by police on the street and taken to the Moscow KGB.

There two KGB officials (one called Major Pavlov) ‘talked’ with him for two hours. During this talk Yelistratov was threatened with cautions ‘under the Decree’ and with criminal charges if he continued his activities in defending the right to leave.

On 1 May 1979, Yelistratov went to Kiev to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day with refuseniks in Kiev. He stayed there with Vladimir Kislik (CCE 45.16, CCE 45.18 [9], CCE 47.8-4).

In the afternoon, while his host was out, the telephone rang and Yelistratov answered it. Somebody speaking English said he was a tourist from America and asked if he could come and visit Kislik. A few minutes later the doorbell rang and Yelistratov opened the door.

Two people in plain clothes stormed into the flat, and ordered him to put on his coat, take his things and go with them. Yelistratov refused. Then they dragged him out just as he was and put him in a car.

They took him to the airport and sent him by plane to Moscow, demanding that he never come to Kiev again.

[17]

SEMINAR

The Kiev KGB is trying to put an end to the regular meetings of Jews for seminars on Jewish culture and history, held in refuseniks’ flats, as well as the consultation meetings at the Visa & Registrations Department (OVIR) on Saturdays.

At the beginning of April, the KGB obtained signed statements from several refuseniks who attend these meetings that in future they would neither go to the seminars or OVIR, nor meet activist refuseniks (Sergei Rotshtein, his sister Yelena Oleinik, Vladimir Kislik).

On Saturday 21 April, when the Kiev refuseniks gathered as usual in front of OVIR, a group of people in plainclothes and police uniforms, led by Kiev KGB officials Odintsov and Novikov, started to disperse them: “You’re not allowed to be in this area!”

Sergei Rotshtein, D. Raizman, Vladimir Kislik, Yu. Knizhnik and Ya. Beskin were detained and taken to a police station, where they were held for about an hour. KGB man Novikov declared: “I will not allow any more gatherings!”

Rotshtein’s arms were twisted when he was detained.

On 25 April Sergei Rotshtein’s flat, where a seminar was due to be held, was cordoned off. The same two KGB men were in command.

On 27 April 1979, Rotshtein was apprehended on the street and presented with a charge-sheet at the police station that accused him of “pestering passers-by, swearing, resisting the police on being detained”. It was dated 21 April and signed by ‘witnesses’ testifying that he had refused to sign himself.

Judge I. G. Sys jailed him for 15 days. Rotshtein was held in a detention cell, not with the ‘15-day’ detainees but, by turns, in solitary confinementand in a cell with criminals under investigation.

On 28 April during a routine dispersal of a refusenik gathering outside OVIR, Odintsov said to Vadim Rotshtein: “Your brother’s inside, so you see we can do anything!”

On 8 May Yelena Oleinik was summoned to the KGB. KGB official V. I. Polevoi promised her a visa within a month if she stopped her ‘activities’.

On 24 May KGB man Polevoi summoned the Rotshteins’ father and demanded that he “bring influence to bear” on his children.

[18]

KIEV. Leonid Varvak has suffered from diabetes from the age of five. Now he is a Group II invalid.

A sharp decline in his health, and the hope inspired by new methods of treatment used in the West, made Varvak and his wife decide to apply for an exit visa.

Varvak is a Cand.Sci. (Physical & Mathematical Sciences). His wife does not work, as she looks after their three children.

Their documents were not accepted at OVIR since Varvak’s mother-in-law had not given consent to her daughter’s departure. Leonid Varvak then decided to notify her through a notary of their intention to leave for Israel .

At Notaries’ Office No. 6, however, they refused to accept his letter for forwarding to her: in accordance with instructions from the Ministry of Justice, he was told, they were forbidden to accept letters in which the words ‘Israel’ and OVIR were mentioned.

They also refused to put their refusal in writing, and refused to pass his complaint about their refusal to a court: according to the Criminal Procedure Code a complaint of this kind must be handed over by the notary office in question.

At the court it was suggested to Leonid Varvak that he hand over his complaint to the Judge in person, which he then did. A week later, OVIR accepted his documents applying for emigration without the paper from his mother-in-law. After this the court returned his complaint, with the Judge’s refusal to accept the case, as the complaint had not come through the notary office.

[19]

KHARKOV. On 10 June refusenik Alexander Paritsky (CCE 47.8-4, CCE 48.17-1, CCE 52.12) was talking from Post-Office No. 91 on the telephone to New York.

Several minutes after the call was connected two men threw open the door of the telephone booth. They started shouting that Paritsky was a spy and a traitor and was, at that very moment, transmitting intelligence information in English to the USA. One of them called the police.

Lieutenant Statsenko came in and insisted that Paritsky terminate the conversation.

One of the people who caused the scene is someone called Steinberg, who works for the Kharkov Evening News paper. The other said he was a student: from the things he said, it was clear that he knew what Paritsky’s previous telephone conversations had been about.

Paritsky wrote a statement describing the incident to the chief of the Frunze district OVD; he also submitted a claim to the people’s court of Kharkov’s Frunze district.

[20]

On 8 March 1979, Boris Kalendaryov (b. 1957) was arrested In Leningrad.

He was charged with evasion of military service, although he had requested deferment while his application to leave for Israel was being considered. Kalendaryov first applied for an exit visa to Israel in November 1973, together with his parents. The family’s application was refused. His sister applied separately with her husband; they received permission and left.

Kalendaryov, a third-year student at the Kalinin Polytechnic Institute in Leningrad, was excluded from courses in the Military Department His grant was then withdrawn, and in December 1976, before the beginning of examinations, he was expelled from the Institute,

In January 1977 he applied to OVIR to leave to join his sister, but had not received permission when he was called up for military service. The district Military Commission told Kalendaryov to get a certificate from OVIR confirming that he had applied to leave, but OVIR refused to issue such a certificate. As its reason for refusing permission OVIR referred to the enterprise where his mother E. Lutskaya worked until 1973. This enterprise, however, states that it has no claims on B. Kalendaryov and no objection to his leaving. In May Kalendaryov was sentenced to two years in camps.

[21]

In 1972, the Gitelman family (five members) from David-Gorodok (Brest Region) applied to leave for the USA on an invitation from their close relative.

So far permission has been refused, the reason being the military service of one member of the family, which he completed in 1973.

[22]

GABOVICH

MOSCOW. On 20 April 1979, Yevgeny Ya. Gabovich, Cand.Sci. (Physical & Mathematical Sciences), asked A.S. Bogdanov, Director of the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Deep-Sea Fishing & Oceanography [VNIRO], to send OVIR a certificate stating that there were no financial claims against him. The same day Bogdanov issued an order dismissing sector chief Gabovich because of ‘staff cuts’ as of 23 April.

On //April (a Sunday!) Bogdanov issued an order

“to cut out … the position of sector chief and chief research officer in the sector of the automated system of ‘raw material supply’.”

On 23 April the VNIRO Trades Union Committee approved Gabovich’s dismissal.

On 21 May Gabovich filed a suit with the Sokolniki district people’s court for reinstatement.

When Bogdanov received a copy of the statement of claim and a request to send his representative to court, Bogdanov issued, on 22 May, an order reinstating Gabovich in his previous position as of 23 May and authorizing payment for his enforced absence.

On 14 June 1979, Gabovich sent another statement of claim to the same court:

“It is now clear that the reinstatement was purely fictitious. The management has not taken measures to reinstate my post on the staff list.

“For three weeks I have been given no work to do. The management has tried with threats and intimidations to force me to leave VNIRO voluntarily. An attempt was made to obtain approval from the union committee for a second dismissal in ignorance of an essential legal requirement — that attempts must be made to find a new job for me.

“Although there are two posts vacant at VNIRO, the management is again trying to dismiss me on account of ‘staff reductions …“

Gabovich asked the court to examine his suit of 21 May and to oblige VNIRO to take the necessary steps for him to be reinstated in a genuine way.

On the morning of 15 June Gabovich handed in a statement to the administration office addressed to the Acting Director of VNIRO, P. A. Moiseyev (Bogdanov retired on 1 June), in which he pointed out the two vacancies at VNIRO.

The same morning there was a telephone conversation between Judge Novikov and the Deputy Personnel Director, Yu. A. Korzhovaya. In the afternoon Moiseyev asked Gabovich to come to see him and offered him the post of senior research officer which he had mentioned in his statement. Gabovich accepted.

On 19 June Moiseyev issued an order to this effect. Gabovich wrote on it, “I agree to the conditions as set out in my memorandum of 10 June.”

In his 42-page report on this whole story, Gabovich writes:

“After this, as a sign of reconciliation … I was invited to have tea in the Personnel Department, where some women employees thanked me for my lesson to them on legal matters and asked me about the procedure for applying for an exit visa to Israel (in particular about the payment of alimony to former spouses remaining in the USSR).“

[23]

//YAROSLAVL.The artists Alexander and Irina Pasmur have been trying for three years to get permission to leave the USSR. On 23 May they sent a letter to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet in which they express in sharp terms their disapproval of the official Ideology and demand to be allowed to go abroad.

[24]

GERMANS (24)

Fifty Germans held a demonstration in Dushanbe.

They proceeded from the Tadzhikistan hotel to the square where the Presidium of the Tadzhik SSR Supreme Soviet is located, carrying a banner that read: “Let us out to our Motherland!”

On the square something resembling a public meeting took place. Bobosadykova, 1st secretary of the City Party Committee, talked with the demonstrators. She said that before holding a demonstration they should have informed the authorities. In answer to complaints that people seeking permission to emigrate had been trying unsuccessfully to obtain interviews with leaders of the republic, or at least to obtain firm answers to their applications, Bobosadykova promised that in future they would be received.

The next day about twenty people went to the Tadjik Communist Party Central Committee.

They were seen in ones and twos: by the head of OVIR; by Kholov, Chairman of the Tadzhikistan Supreme Soviet Presidium; and by Dzhonov, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs. In December and January, the number of people who received permission to leave was higher than usual.

In February and March 1979, 15-20 people conducted a demonstration outside the building of the Presidium of the Tadzhikistan Supreme Soviet. They stood from 7-8 in the morning until 8 in the evening, seeking an interview at the Presidium.

On 5 March, early in the morning when the demonstrators were just beginning to gather, about a hundred vigilantes cordoned off the square; the police kept on one side.

As they arrived, the Germans were shoved into a car and taken to a police station.

The women were held until the evening and then released, with bills made out for a 20-rouble fine for hooliganism and disturbing the peace. Two men, Josif Bergel and Losing, were given 10 days, and Robert Gulm 15 days, in jail.

PENTECOSTALISTS (25-26)

[25]

PERCHATKIN

At the beginning of January 1979 KGB Major Rudnitsky from Nakhodka summoned Boris Perchatkin [²] and suggested he should persuade the Vashchenko family, who have been in the US Embassy since June 1978 (CCE 51.16), to leave the building.

A week later KGB Lieutenant-Colonel Velkov from Vladivostok asked Perchatkin to travel to Moscow for this purpose. At that time the Pentecostalists of Nakhodka were trying to find a way of sending to the US Embassy a letter for President Carter and lists of the members of their community who wish to emigrate. So Perchatkin agreed to go.

Velkov took him and Vladimir Stepanov, Presbyter of the Nakhodka Pentecostalists (CCE 47.8-1, CCE 48.17-2, CCE 51.16) to Vladivostok Airport and handed them tickets to Moscow. In Moscow, Perchatkin and Stepanov entered the Embassy without any obstacle and gave the letter and the lists to the Embassy officials. Then they were taken to Vashchenko. As he was convinced that the Embassy rooms were bugged, Perchatkin advised the Vashchenko family aloud to leave the Embassy, but wrote down on a piece of paper that they should not leave.

After his return to Nakhodka Perchatkin was taken to an hotel, where Lieutenant-Colonel Velkov rebuked him for deception.

In June Boris Perchatkin and Yury Zherebilov came to Moscow. On 19 June they were seized on the street by agents of the KGB and taken to Police Station 30, where Perchatkin was detained for interrogation, while Zherebilov was put in a cell but sent home the following day.

Perchatkin was told by a man in civilian clothes at the end of his interrogation: it has been decided that you have no right to travel beyond the limits of Nakhodka without the permission of the local KGB. If you take no notice of this decision, watch out.’ Afterwards Perchatkin was deprived of his passport and money and taken to Domodedovo Airport, where he was put on a plane for Magadan. The passport and about sixty roubles were given back to him only on the plane. When the plane landed in Krasnoyarsk. Perchatkin escaped. Searches took place at the airport, and over the radio he was asked to call in at the police station. Perchatkin hitched a ride in a passing car as far as Achinsk and spent two days in a forest there, then got back to Moscow by train.

Perchatkin s wife Zinaida, with their eight-year-old son and Valentina Poleshchuk, an active fighter for the right to emigrate, left by tram on 18 June to take declarations, letters and photographs to Moscow. On 21 June they were detained at the Petrovsky Zavod Station. Junior Lieutenant Ivanov of the Criminal Investigation Department told them that an anonymous letter had been received, which contained the information that B. Perchatkin was an American spy and Z. Perchatkina was his associate and was taking espionage documents to Moscow. First the compartment was searched (at this point Perchatkina’s purse, containing 500 roubles, disappeared), then both women and the boy were taken to the station office, where a body-search was carried out. Both women were made to strip, squat down and jump over a skipping-rope in the presence of the little boy.

The boy had hysterics and began to vomit, but there was still an attempt to search him. Ivanov boasted: ‘We’re not fools, we listen to all the telephones.’ (Z. Perchatkina had informed her husband by telephone that she would be bringing to Moscow documents on Pentecostals who wanted to emigrate.) After the search, the women were sent back to Nakhodka.

[26]

VILNIUS. Pentecostal Victor Vasilyev is trying to emigrate to the USA (CCE 48.17-2, CCE 49.15 [8]).

On 28 March 1979 Zemgulis, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs in Lithuania (in CCE 49.15 [8] his surname was misspelled ‘Zimbulis’) declared that Vasilyev and his family had been refused permission to emigrate, as they had not been invited by relatives and “we don’t allow people to go to acquaintances”.

Vasilyev has been deprived of his residence permit and is being threatened with prosecution for violating the residence regulations. At school his children are called traitors to the Motherland and ‘Americans’. They are always being beaten up, even in the presence of teachers, who encourage the insults and beatings. The school authorities refuse to punish those responsible.

A Journey to Visit Friends

[27]

KALININ. In May Josif Dyadkin [³] and his wife applied to OVIR to make a private trip to Czechoslovakia in response to an invitation from friends.

Dyadkin’s character reference, signed by the ‘triangle’ (three top officials) at his Research Institute [VNIIGIS], included personal details: geophysicist, Cand.Sc. (Technical Science), senior research officer; length of service, 27 years; scientific papers, 50. Which were followed by these words:

“Modest, never subject to administrative or legal proceedings, has not participated in secret work.

“Sometimes speaks and acts on political and religious issues in ways not considered appropriate in our society.

“His application to travel abroad is not supported.“

Dyadkin attached a statement to his application papers in which, referring to the Covenants on Human Rights, he expressed the opinion that his right to travel abroad privately could not be affected by this character reference. Dyadkin substantiated this reference with a quotation from a speech by Sudarikov, the Soviet representative on the UN Human Rights Committee: “Soviet citizens can refer directly to the Covenants in courts.”

Two months later Dyadkin was summoned to OVIR, where he was seen by MVD Colonel Vinogradov.

Vinogradov: I have been instructed to tell you that your wife is allowed to travel, but not you.

Dyadkin: Why?

Vinogradov: Because you conduct anti-Soviet conversations!

Dyadkin: What makes you think that?

Vinogradov: Your character reference. Haven’t you read it?

Dyadkin: Of course, I have. ‘Not appropriate’ is not the same thing as ‘not legal’.

The question then arose whether a Soviet citizen was obliged to adhere to communist ideology. “Maybe I am more attracted by the teachings of Lev Tolstoy!”

Dyadkin’s wife, who works at the same Institute, and their son made the trip to Czechoslovakia.

THOSE WHO HAVE LEFT (28-32)

[28]

On 1 April 1979, Romas Giedra and his wife left the USSR.

He is the first of the seven former political prisoners who appealed to Brezhnev and Carter in September 1977 (CCE 47.8-1 [8]) to receive permission to emigrate to the USA.

[29]

The following have all left the USSR:

former political prisoner Dmitry Mikheyev (CCE 21.2, CCE 44.17-3, CCE 49.15 [6]);
Valery Gerasimov (CCE 47.4 [6], CCE 52.15-1 [1]);
the workers Vadim Baranov (CCE 45.15, CCE 46.22, CCE 47.15 [27]) and Vladimir Pavlov [⁴];
Ambartsum Khlgatyan [⁵], and
Vladimir Slepak’s younger son (CCE 50.8-3), Leonid (CCE 47.8-4).

[30]

The Jewish refusenik couple Khait (CCE 50.8-1 [3], CCE 51.16 [20]) has left the USSR.

[31]

See ‘Political Releases’ (CCE 53.1) for:

departures of Anatoly Altman, Gilel Butman, Vulf Zalmanson, Penson, and Arie Khnokh;
the compulsory ‘departures’ of Georgy Vins and his family (L. M. Vins, N. L. Vins, Pyotr Vins and others);
the compulsory ‘departures’ of Alexander Ginzburg; Mark Dymshits; Eduard Kuznetsov; and Valentyn Moroz.

[32]

In April Marina Voikhanskaya’s mother and son were allowed to leave the USSR (CCE 47.8-1).

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