SIBERIA.
BODAIBO (Irkutsk Region). On 3 October Zinovy Antonyuk (CCE 53.20) wrote to USSR Minister of Internal Affairs N. A. Shchelokov.
He requested permission to visit a specialized medical institution for examination and treatment, or that his place of exile be changed to a town where there is a urologist, a specialist ‘in tuberculosis of the urinogenital area, and where the natural surroundings would not be as harmful for tuberculosis as they are in Bodaibo’.
Antonyuk writes that he contracted tuberculosis in Vladimir Prison and in October 1978 a special commission from Perm Regional Department of Internal Affairs (UVD) decided he should be sent to an MVD hospital in Leningrad (CCE 51.9-1).
This decision was not carried out. Antonyuk asks who was responsible for this and who concealed the fact that he had active tuberculosis when his place of exile was selected. Antonyuk’s statement was supported by several political exiles (including the Kalynets couple, CCE 51.9-1).
In October-November Antonyuk was very weak, tired easily and sweated a lot (especially at night); after an hour’s walk he had to lie down for half a day. His temperature was always 37-37.2° C. On 5 November Antonyuk was discharged from hospital. He is once again living in the hostel with the address: 666910, Irkutsk Region, Bodaibo, 38 ’30th Anniversary of Victory’ Street.
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ALTAI REGION [Krai]. Ivan Svetlichny (CCE 52.6) is in very poor health. He even finds it difficult to write letters.
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BAGDARIN (Irkutsk Region). During a routine search in Perm Camp 36, where Yevgeny Sverstyuk had served his sentence, some notes were found. They were written by a number of prisoners, including, apparently, Sverstyuk. In this connection an investigator came to see Sverstyuk,
On 20 October Sverstyuk was questioned about a visit from Pyotr Rozumny (see this issue ‘Events in Ukraine’ CCE 54.11). Sverstyuk works as a carpenter.
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FAR EAST
AYAN SETTLEMENT (Khabarovsk Region [Krai]). Alexander Sergiyenko arrived here in February 1979 (CCE 52.5-2) and worked as a joiner.
The house Sergiyenko [Ukr. Serhiyenko] he was given to live in was falling apart and he repaired it himself. When his mother Oksana Meshko and wife Z. Vivchar, who came to visit him in the summer (CCE 53.20), had left, a certain Rudyak was installed in his house. On several occasions Rudyak got drunk and attacked Sergienko — on one such occasion with a knife.
Oksana Meshko and Oles Serhiyenko (1981 photo)
Right at the beginning of Sergienko’s exile, his mother Oksana had requested that he be transferred to another place, even if it were still in Khabarovsk Region [Krai]: the climate in Ayan settlement, which is on a peninsula, was very bad for his health (he has suffered from tuberculosis since before his arrest). Her request was refused. During the summer Sergienko felt worse and worse and went to the clinic several times, requesting that they send him to Khabarovsk for examination, as he had been promised after his arrival. He was refused. In August, having spent a whole day in the clinic undergoing various tests, he was unable to obtain a medical certificate. The day was counted as ‘absenteeism’ and he was immediately dismissed from his job.
Sergienko wrote to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet stating that, on the strength of experience (his own and other people’s) in camp and exile, he did not trust Soviet doctors when they came to treating political prisoners. He requested permission to go for treatment to Australia, where he and his family had a long-standing invitation from relations.
In September Oksana. Meshko appealed to USSR Ministers, of Health and of Internal Affairs, to the International Red Cross and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, for help in obtaining her son’s admission to a hospital in Kiev.
Sergienko was given a warrant for treatment in Khabarovsk, on the grounds of suspected cancer, but the police would not let him go. In October Oksana Meshko wrote to the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in this connection. Colonel Karagezyan, Head of Section Five (concerned with exiles), whom she had seen and spoken to on the telephone several times, finally informed her: ‘We have arranged to send him to Khabarovsk’.
A. Sergienko set off for the District Cancer Clinic in Khabarovsk on 11 October, straight from a police cell — a few days previously he had shouted at a doctor during his regular battle at the local clinic and been sentenced to 15 days (Rudyak was placed in the same cell).
The remaining 13 days of his sentence were not revoked, simply postponed until Sergienko’s return from hospital.
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BURYAT ASSR
In July Vasily Lisovoi (CCE 53.19-1) arrived for his three-year exile in eastern Siberia at: 671311, Buryat ASSR, Zaigraevsky district, Novaya Bryan settlement. He lives in a hostel. On 1 November he was admitted to hospital with jaundice.
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YAKUT ASSR
V. Chornovil (CCE 53.20) has moved to a district centre, the town of Nyurba,where he lives in a rented house. He works as a transport controller in a building administration.
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Towards the end of the summer a relative of Mustafa Dzhemilev (trial, see CCE 53.2) from Tashkent came to visit him in the settlement of Zyryanka, intending to stay and work there. He moved into the hostel with Mustafa and found himself a job.
However, the police refused to give him a residence permit, saying that no one who came to Zyryanka was issued one; one of the local officials had a ‘talk’ with him: ‘You are a member of the Komsomol, yet you get mixed up with an anti-Soviet!’ He was turned out of the hostel, the hotel was forbidden to admit him and Mustafa was moved to another room, occupied by a number of people, where no space could be found for his guest. The police began to threaten Mustafa’s relative with criminal proceedings under Article 198 (RSFSR Criminal Code: ‘Violation of the Residence Regulations’). He had to return to Tashkent.
On 9 September M. Dzhemilev sent a statement to the Uzbek Supreme Court demanding that criminal charges be brought against Yu. Kruzhilin, author of the article ‘Profession: Sponger’ (CCE 53.2) for defamation and libel.
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BOGUCHANY DISTRICT
(Central Siberia)
Pyotr Sartakov who left Mordovian Camp 19 on 22 June (CCE 53.19-1). did not arrive at his Siberian place of exile – the village of Irba, Boguchany district, Krasnoyarsk Region [Krai] — until 4 August. For 26 days of his 43-day journey he was held ‘at the whim of the warders in Krasnoyarsk Prison No. 1, noted for its inhuman conditions’ (from his letter).
Earlier he had requested to be exiled to a place near the town of Zima in Irkutsk Region where his sister lives, but the request was refused. To his request to be exiled to the village of Shushenskoe he received the reply that one had to earn such a place of exile. In Irba it was some time before his money arrived from camp, and at first he had to eat in the canteen on credit.
Divisional Police Inspector Sharoglazov and the chairman of the village soviet tried to give him a labouring job. despite the invalid’s certificate issued to him in camp. When Sartakov managed to find a job as a guard in a store, they forbade the store manager to employ him, saying that in their opinion he had no right to such a job. Sartakov managed to get the job in October, after numerous complaints.
As he suffers from a number of chronic illnesses, Sartakov wanted to move from Irba to the district centre of Boguchany, where there is a hospital. Travel there from Irba is very difficult and costly and possible only by air. In response to this request Sharoglazov threatened to pack him off to an even more remote village. Sartakov also received a written refusal from MVD official Soldatov, who is in charge of all exiles in the Boguchany district.
On 2 October Sartakov was beaten up by a local hooligan, who afterwards boasted that a KGB man had put him up to it. The same day Lieutenant Khmurovich, a KGB official from Boguchany, had visited Irba. At the local health centre Sartakov was not given the certificate listing the injuries he had sustained.
Letters written by Sartakov to people abroad are not accepted for dispatch. They tell him at the post-office that they are not sure whether he is allowed to send letters abroad, but promise to find out.
On 12 October Josif Dyadkin and Alexander Lavut wrote to the Boguchany district Procurator about the illegal persecution of Sartakov — according to the Corrective Labour Code an exile has the right to choose his job and place of residence within the confines of the administrative district to which he has been exiled.
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At the beginning of August Maria Semyonovna Rusnak arrived in Boguchany district to serve her term of exile.
She had lived in Chernovtsy until her arrest. She was sentenced to five years in the camps and five years’ exile under the first section of the ’religious’ Article 209 (Ukraine SSR Criminal Code). The equivalent Article 227 of the RSFSR Code carries a maximum sentence of five years in the camps. Under Article 209 of the Ukrainian Code the maximum is five years’ camp plus five years’ exile. She served her term of imprisonment in a camp near Odessa with the address: Odessa-59, penal institution YuG-311/74.
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Parcels and printed matter sent to Nijole Sadunaite from abroad (she is in exile in Boguchany, CCE 47.9-1) are systematically stopped at customs and returned to the senders.
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NORTHWEST RUSSIA
MIKUN (Komi ASSR). On 6 August Vadim Konovalikhin (CCE 52.6) wrote to the head of the Ust-Vym district OVD requesting permission to visit his parents (his father is a Group 1 invalid of the Great Patriotic War; his mother is a Group 2 invalid) and his wife during the time allotted for his holiday. On 9 August the deputy head refused his request. On 10 August Konovalikhin sent a statement to the Procurator of the Komi ASSR:
‘… The deputy head of the district OVD refused my request on the grounds that I am violating the moral code of the builder of communism!
‘To me, a person who has been suppressed by the Soviet authorities — who are led by communists — such a reason to refuse permission to travel sounds like mockery. I consider the refusal an inhuman act on the part of the Soviet authorities. As a protest 1 declare a hunger-strike from 12 to 22 August 1979!’
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Releases
Andrei Koroban’s (b. 1930) three-year exile term ended in September 1978 (CCE 18.5 item 3; CCE 44.19; CCE 46.23-2). He lives in the town of Vasilkov in Kiev Region. He is an English teacher by profession. He now works as a loader.
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The five-year exile sentences of Mark Nashpits and Boris Tsitlyonok ended in the summer of 1979. They were sentenced for a five-minute demonstration (CCE 36.4) on the steps of the Lenin Library, in support of their demand for permission to emigrate (see this issue ‘The Right to Leave’ CCE 54.20-1).
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Yevgeny Pashnin’s three-year exile sentence ended in October (the length of his exile term was given wrongly in CCE 43.3).
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Nikolai Kots’s (CCE 46.23-2) five-year exile sentence ended in September.
He returned home — to the town of Novovolynsk in Volynskaya Region — but has been unable to find anywhere to live or to get a job (before his arrest he taught Mathematics in a school). Kots travelled around the three neighbouring Regions in search of somewhere to live. When one woman finally agreed to register him as her lodger and he went to the police station with the house book, the book was taken from him and the woman was fined ten roubles (as if he had been staying with her without a residence permit) and threatened with criminal proceedings for ‘speculation in living space’.
Kots has been unable to obtain permission to visit his mother’s grave (the cemetery is two kilometres from the Polish border).
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The term of exile of Vasyl Stus (CCE 45.12 & CCE 51.10) ended in the autumn.
He returned to Kiev. At the beginning of October Stus wrote to the Ukrainian KGB asking for the return of the manuscripts confiscated by the KGB in 1972-78; he also demanded a job which would take into account his speciality and his undermined health. He received a reply to this effect: the manuscripts confiscated during a search in 1972 were in his case file; the other manuscripts had been burned, with Stus’s own consent and there was a report to this effect, which Stus had refused to sign. The manuscript of the collection of poems entitled Winter Trees had been confiscated from the publishing house ‘Ukrainian Writer’ and was also in his case file.
As he was unable to find a job in his own profession, the poet Stus found work as a moulder in a factory.
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Pyotr Vinnichuk’s (CCE 47.10) two-year exile sentence has ended.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 