- 25-1. General (1-13)
- 25-2. Jews, Germans, Pentecostalists, and a Journey to Visit Friends (14-27).
Those who Have Left (28-32)
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13 ENTRIES
[1]
HELSINKI GROUP DOCUMENT 91
Moscow Helsinki Group Document 91 (CCE 53.30-2, 5 June 1979) says that tens of thousands of people have been trying for years to obtain permission to leave the country.
The absence of a law governing the right to emigrate, the arbitrariness of the authorities, and also the established tendency to consider those wishing to leave the country as semi-criminals results in thousands of people not only do failing to receive permission to leave but being subjected to persecution and oppression.
They are forced to resign from their work, dismissed from educational establishments and, frequently, criminal proceedings are taken against them on falsified charges. An effective improvement in emigration policy can be achieved only by the adoption of a law on emigration which will accord with the international obligations assumed by our State. This law must include clearly stated grounds on which permission to leave the country can be refused, a detailed procedure for dealing with cases of emigration, and a system of appeal in case of permission to leave being refused.
The basic points which this law should cover are enumerated in MHG document 91.
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[2]
ACTION COMMITTEE
In Moscow an “Action Committee to Fight for the Right of Free Exit from the USSR” has been formed. The committee publishes a newsletter: issue No. 2 came out in June 1979, and has been used in compiling this report.
Members of the committee are Vladimir Shepelev, Georgy Shepelev, Ludmila Agapova, Yevgeny Komarnitsky, Yury Koloskov and Ivan Lupachev.
Vsevolod Kuvakin (CCE 48.18 [1]) is legal adviser to the committee.
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The committee includes, as a collective member, a group of Iranians, more than two hundred persons, who are living in the USSR with ‘residence permits’ (not passports) and are not Soviet citizen. They have been trying for a long time to return to their homeland, but the authorities refuse them permission to leave. The representative of the group, Beibut Saman, lives in Dushanbe (Tajik SSR).
The aims of the committee are as follows:
- to collect and disseminate information on cases in the USSR of clear violations of the right freely to leave and return to one’s own country;
- to provide assistance to all persons wishing to exercise their right to free emigration from the USSR, not on the basis of reunifications of families, but for other reasons social, religious, or economic;
- to strive for a radical change in the emigration policy of the authorities and for the adoption of a law on emigration.
In June the committee sent to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet draft “Statutes on Procedures for Citizens Leaving the USSR”. The accompanying letter pointed out that the “Law on Citizenship” which came into effect on 1 July 1979 omits a section as important as ‘Procedures for Citizens Leaving the USSR’. The draft is intended to aid Soviet government bodies in filling the gap in existing legislation.
In June the members of the committee and others (49 signatures in all) sent an open inquiry to the Human Rights Committee of the US Congress:
“… Is Jackson’s Amendment, as applied to the Soviet Union, really concerned only with the repatriation of Jews? Or has its wider original intention (freedom of emigration) gradually been narrowed to mean only the right of one national minority to leave?“
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[3]
Victor Nekipelov applied for permission to emigrate in March 1977.
Since then he has received several verbal refusals. In August-September 1977 he announced that he had renounced his Soviet citizenship and sent his passport to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet (CCE 46.6 [2], CCE 46.9, CCE 51.21 [4, 13]).
On 11 April 1979, Nekipelov received the following note:
“On behalf of the authorities concerned I inform you that your request to emigrate to the State of Israel for permanent residence and to renounce your Soviet citizenship cannot be met, as your relative, living in the State of Israel, is not a member of your family, and surrendering your citizenship is contrary to the interests of the USSR.
A. F. Petrov,
Chief of the Department of Internal Affairs,
Vladimir Regional Soviet executive committee“
This is the first written refusal of permission to emigrate known to the Chronicle.
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[4]
Ivan Kandyba (CCE 51.12) has been refused permission to leave.
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[5]
KIEV. Grigory Tokayuk (CCE 48.17-1, CCE 51.16 [4]), who has been trying since 1977 to get permission to leave for Israel, was summoned to OVIR on 27 July where he was received by four KGB officials.
He was taken to a park in Kiev for a ‘chat’. There were no grounds for his emigration, he was told, but if he agreed to an arranged marriage with a woman proposed by the KGB, he would be in Vienna within two weeks.
Tokayuk wrote a complaint about this to Brezhnev and USSR Procurator-General Rudenko.
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[6]
LEONID SERY
ODESSA. Leonid Sery [1] is still trying to get permission to leave.
On 27 June, in the ship repair shop where Sehe works, a meeting was organized, at which his letter to American Trades Unions, which was published in the Parisian Russian-language newspaper Russkaya mysl [Russian Thought], was read out. Sery had written about the non-observance of safety measures, about the poor food in the works canteen, about the very difficult material situation of his family (he has eight children).
The organizers accused Sery of slandering the Soviet system; they even reached the point where they said that with his letter Sery was wrecking Soviet-US negotiations on arms control and the 1980 Olympic Games. He was also accused of bringing up his children wrongly: they do not wear Pioneer scarves or know the words of the national anthem. The organizers demanded that Sery be forcibly treated in a psychiatric hospital. The resolution of the meeting was: to petition for Sery to be deprived of his parental rights and isolated from society. ‘Unknown persons’ present at the meeting made a tape-recording.
One of Sery’s acquaintances was told at the KGB that the Serys would of course be allowed to leave, but that meanwhile it was imperative to ‘tell people the truth about them.’
On 25 July 14 people signed a letter ‘In Defence of Leonid Sery’ demanding that ‘the persecution of this family should stop and they should be allowed to leave the Soviet Union.’
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[7]
TAMARA LOS
BELAYA TSERKOV. Tamara Los is still being subjected to pressure from the KGB (CCE 52.12).
The Chief of the Belaya Tserkov KGB, V. A. Batrakov, has demanded that Los renounce her ’anti-Soviet’ activities and her intention to leave the country. The inhabitants of the town have been forced to sign declarations slating that Tamara Los has been engaging in anti-Soviet propaganda.
A third-year student at the Agricultural Institute, Aleksei Breus, refused to sign the text dictated to him. Batrakov promised that Breus would be expelled from the Institute as a result. Some inhabitants of the town wrote declarations to the KGB saying that Los was not engaged in anti-Soviet propaganda but fighting against violations of the law.
Pressure is also being put on Tamara Los’s relatives. On 14 June an attempt was made at the KGB to force her brother Georgy to state in writing that he did not intend to leave the USSR. On 18 June Antonina Josifovna, Tamara’s mother, was persuaded to influence her daughter, or she might face imprisonment.
T. Los is continually being summoned to the KGB and threatened with Article 187-1 (UkSSR Criminal Code (= Article 190-1, RSFSR Code); at the same time, it is being suggested that she cooperate with the KGB after reaching the West.
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[8]
RIGA. Yury Maximov (CCE 51.16 [5]) has sent a letter on 24 May to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet in which he asked, for a second time, to be released from Soviet citizenship and for permission to leave the USSR.
The first letter of this kind which he sent was in 1975, and as a result he was subjected to forcible internment in a psychiatric hospital for two-and-a-half months.
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[9]
KALININ. Anna Kotelnikova and her ten-year-old daughter are trying to get permission to leave for England to join her adoptive father N. A. Budulak-Sharygin (CCE 51.22).
The formal obstacle is that her former husband, from whom Kotelnikova has been divorced for 10 years, has not given his consent. (After Budulak-Sharygin’s arrest, the husband’s family insisted on a divorce, evicting her from the house with her young daughter.) All Kotelnikova’s attempts to make contact with her former husband are unsuccessful [2].
His father (a KGB officer) replies that he is abroad on business and will not give the address.
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[10]
KIBLITSKY
The Moscow nonconformist artist Josif Kiblitsky (CCE 53.29), persecuted for organizing unofficial art exhibitions (at present he is living in Podolsk). In April 1978, he married a German citizen in Moscow: she lives in Düsseldorf (West Germany).
For over 18 months Kiblitsky has been trying to get permission to leave for West Germany to join his wife, who is now expecting a child. Kiblitsky has not received one written reply to any of his numerous enquiries.
OVIR refuses to give him permission to leave, referring orally to ‘secret work’ while he served in the Army. I. Kiblitsky was demobilized eleven years ago. He has never signed any statement about access to secret work, either while he was in the Army or afterwards.
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I. Kiblitsky and his wife Renata agreed to stage simultaneous protest demonstrations (she in Germany, he in Moscow) on 15 June 1979.
Kiblitsky informed the party, the MVD, the KGB and the Moscow Soviet in writing of his intention to demonstrate outside the CPSU Central Committee building. On 14 June Kiblitsky was detained by police in Moscow, taken to Podolsk and kept under house-arrest until 20 June (Renata Kiblitskaya conducted her demonstration in Germany).
The Kiblitskys decided to hold a second demonstration on 31 June.
Again I. Kiblitsky was put under house arrest for two days.
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[11]
KRASNOYARSK. A. Zimin has twice applied to OVIR to emigrate out of political and economic considerations. Both times he was refused because of ‘lack of reasons for emigration’.
Then the KGB tried to exert pressure on his mother. On 13 June he was taken from his home to the KGB. He was planning to go to Moscow that day. They tried to persuade him not to go, and threatened to arrest him for anti-Soviet activities if he met any dissenters. That evening he set off for Moscow.
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[12]
NOVOSIBIRSK. Yu. Skomorovsky on 4 June 1978 and 20 March 1979 handed in to OVIR applications to join his relatives in Israel. He was refused both times on the grounds that he had closer relatives still living in the USSR.
His appeals to various authorities have been unsuccessful. On 8 May 1979 he sent a statement to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet renouncing his Soviet citizenship.
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NOTES
- On Leonid Sery, see CCE 42.3, CCE 47.14 [9], CCE 49.18, CCE 52.15-2.
↩︎ - In September 1979 they were allowed to leave, and joined Budulak-Sharygin (English form ‘Scharegin’) in Britain.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 