Miscellaneous Reports, December 1979 (55.9)

<<No 55 : 31 December 1979>>

FIFTEEN ITEMS

[1]

On 18 October the RSFSR Supreme Court examined the appeals of Eduard Kuleshov and his lawyer (CCE 53.10).

It ruled that the judgment of the Rostov Regional Court was based on insufficient evidence (the testimony of the single prosecution witness Kurbatsky was contradictory), cancelled the sentence and sent the case for a new investigation from scratch. The Procurator who spoke at the Supreme Court hearing also considered it necessary to cancel the sentence.

TARTU (2-3)

[2]

Annes Enehielm, sentenced in Tartu on 20 September to 18 months in ordinary-regime camps (CCE 54.22 [2]), was not taken into custody until 13 December. That was after the Estonian SSR Supreme Court examined his appeal and left the sentence in force.

Until then he was at liberty on condition that he did not leave Tartu.

[3]

On Christmas Eve, 24 December, many of the inhabitants of Tartu visited the cemetery in order to place candles on the graves of relatives and fellow-patriots who had died during the 1918-1920 War.

A large crowd went from the cemetery to the town square. There speeches were made in which liberty and national independence were discussed. The police detained several people, but soon released them.

There was a second meeting at the cemetery on 31 December.

[4]

HUMAN RIGHTS DAY IN MOSCOW

On 10 December 1979 the traditional silent demonstration (CCE 52.15-1) was due to take place on Pushkin Square.

By 6 pm about a hundred KGB officials, policemen and vigilantes had gathered around the statue of Pushkin. Several people decided that the demonstration should begin at 6 pm, so at that hour they uncovered their heads and stood silently for several minutes — they were not hindered.

At 6.40 pm all available ‘officials’ led by a police lieutenant-colonel, began, very roughly, to clear the area around the statue. When they were asked why people were being driven off the square they gave various answers; for example: “Something else is taking place here; the City Council will explain tomorrow”, or “They’re about to start repairs on the statue”.

By 6.50 pm the area around the statue had been cleared of ‘bystanders’ and enclosed with metal barriers; lamps were lit around the statue and the exit from the Metro to the statue was closed.

The ‘bystanders’ were taken to the Pushkin Square metro station and escorted through the pay-barriers. KGB officials picked out various individuals and loaded them into minibuses; while one of the buses was being loaded a searchlight on the Izvestiya building was turned on. About 50 people were loaded into the buses and about the same number were detained at the approach to the square. The people detained (Sergei Khodorovich, S. Nekipelov and Olga Matusevich were among them) were taken to various Police Stations (but mostly to No. 108) and ‘support points’.

Their passport particulars were noted down and they were asked where they worked and why they had been on the square. When some of them protested against their illegal detention, with the use of force, moreover, the man in civilian clothes talking to them said that he knew nothing about it and could not himself deal with complaints. When one of those detained asked permission to phone his wife and put her mind at rest a woman in civilian clothes turned the request down. She quoted words from the poet Nekrasov: “She’ll bear all and carve for herself a wide, clear road”. Gradually, all those detained were released, at 15 to 20-minute intervals.

Alexander Lavut, on getting out of a trolleybus on the other side of the square, was immediately shoved into a waiting car.

The ‘explanation’ “We’re from the Criminal Investigation Department” was given, to Lavut who was putting up a token resistance, and to passers-by who had begun to gather round. They then drove Lavut round the city in complete silence for 90 minutes, stopping at several places: by the Ilych Gates at the beginning of the Enthusiasts’ Highway (formerly Vladimirka); at the USSR KGB investigations block (Lefortovo); at the gates of the USSR KGB Investigations Prison; at the apartment block on Solyanka Street where Lavut had once lived; at the City Visa & Registrations Department (OVIR); and in the courtyard of Police Station 26 (18 Lyalin Alley).

They let him out of the car behind the Triumphal Arch.

Moscow Helsinki Group members Ivan Kovalyov and Tatyana Osipova were detained when leaving the building where they live.

They were asked to go home and, when they refused, were taken to the nearest support point, where they were detained for a couple of hours. Yu. S. Zakharov, who had taken part in the search on 11 October (CCE 54.2-1), was in charge of the detention. (At the search he had presented credentials as a Criminal Investigation official; to judge by all the evidence, however, he must be a KGB official.)

During their talk at the support point Zakharov told Kovalyov and Osipova that he considered their ‘chronicling activity’ an unnecessary occupation and hoped that they would grasp the error of their ways and mend them.

On 10 December Pyotr Yegides, Yury Grimm, Vladimir Gershuni, Gleb Pavlovsky, Victor Sokirko, Seitkhan Sorokina, Vsevolod Kuvakin, Pyotr Starchik and Sergei Belanovsky were all summoned to the police for 5.00 pm appointments: Pavlovsky and Sorokina did not go; Belanovsky went to the address shown on the summons, where he discovered that the Procurator’s Office had moved two weeks previously.

Maria Petrenko, Naum Meiman and Adele Naidenovich were put under house arrest the same day. Vyacheslav Bakhmin, Irina Grivnina and Yevgeny Nikolayev were demonstratively followed all day.

On the evening of 9 December a man who introduced himself as ‘KGB official Vladimir Nikolayevich’ (later he gave a surname, ‘Alexeyev’) telephoned the flat where Valery Senderov lives.

‘Vladimir Nikolayevich’ asked for a message to be given to Senderov, that he should not leave the flat ‘today or tomorrow’. When Senderov left the flat on the morning of 10 December he was detained “on suspicion of robbing a flat” and taken to Police Station 68. There ‘comrades in plain clothes’ asked Senderov questions about his acquaintances and how he spent his time.

Senderov asked one of the ‘officials’ to show him his identification and was shown a pass in the name of Kukhtinov, a City Computer Centre engineer.

Senderov asked for something more plausible and ‘Kukhtinov’ fulfilled his request: he made a telephone call and was brought a document identifying him as a Criminal Investigation official. When Senderov mentioned that his detention was illegal, a man whose documents identified him as ‘V. N. Nikolayev’ objected: “What detention? Nobody’s twisted your arm”.

After three-and-a-half hours one of the officials took Senderov home and again told him not to leave the house that day. Senderov took no notice. At 1 pm he was on the street when a car approached him and the occupants asked where he was going.

“To the Foreign Literature Library.” “Will you be long?” “Till 8 pm.” “Come on — we’ll give you a lift.” Senderov was not allowed to refuse their ‘kind offer’. When he left the library at 8 pm his ‘guardians’ had disappeared.

A short time before 10 December Leonard Ternovsky sent a letter to the Moscow City Procurator:

“I am hereby informing you that on 10 December 1979 at 7 pm I intend to take part in a peaceful demonstration on Pushkin Square in support of the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was adopted on 10 December 1948 by the United Nations. I am informing you of this because on the same day last year my constitutional rights were crudely violated.

“I was detained for no reason at the exit from the Metro Station Pushkinskaya and taken to Police Station 108, where I was held for one-and-a-half hours. I have already described all this to you in my statement dated 26 December 1978. I appeal to you to take active steps to defend my constitutional right to peaceful demonstration from illegal infringements from whatever source.“

(On 28 December 1978 Senior Counsellor of Justice V. D. Matyukhina informed Ternovsky that his letter of 26 December that year had been sent to the Procurator of Frunze district for examination and reply; however, Ternovsky did not receive a reply from there.)

On 10 December 1979 at 5 pm a ‘commission’ of three people appeared at the X-ray department where Ternovsky works. The ‘commission’ looked through a journal until past 7 pm. D. Leontyev and V. Shepelev were also detained at work. On the same day Deputy Director of the All-Union Vitamin Scientific Research Institute E. I. Kozlov summoned Nina P. Lisovskaya for an ‘educative chat’. The ‘chat’ ended with a threat:

“If we discover that you’ve taken part in today’s action, then we’re going to have to consider the question of your future employment at this institute.”

LENINGRAD. A demonstration took place on 10 December outside Kazan Cathedral. KGB officials nosed around and greeted the dissidents they knew. When the police started to break up the demonstrators, they sprayed something from portable cylinders. The crowd quickly dispersed.

[5]

LENINGRAD. In November one of the editors of the almanac Women and Russia (CCE 55.11), T. A. Mamonova was summoned to the Kuibyshev district KGB Department in Leningrad.

KGB officials Yefimov and Khazanov tried to persuade her to stop helping to produce the almanac. Mamonova refused. They also asked her whether she had any intention of emigrating.

On 10 December she was again summoned to the KGB, where she was cautioned ‘in accordance with the Decree’. According to the record, Mamonova was accused of being “one of a group of people who are producing a tendentious, ideological journal entitled Women and Russia with the intention of giving it to representatives of capitalist states for publication abroad”.

On 14 December Mamonova sent a statement to the Procurator of Leningrad, Solovyov:

“… I still consider that feminism is a progressive phenomenon and that the women’s movement is an essential part of the world democratic movement. Our publication, the almanac Women and Russia [¹] is no more ideological or tendentious than any other feminist publication.

“KGB officials are deliberately distorting our almanac’s purpose and incorrectly interpreting its sense, I and my like-minded associates are not ashamed of communicating our beliefs to anyone and everyone — Russians and foreigners. We very much regret that KGB acts of repression are depriving us of the chance to work in the field of feminism.

“I am requesting that you protect my associates and myself from the illegal actions of KGB officials.“

On 27 November Sofia Sokolova was summoned to the Leningrad KGB. KGB official Yegerev [²] issued her with a caution ‘according to the Decree’ for her participation in the almanac Women and Russia. Sokolova refused to sign the caution.

[6]

On 30 November the same Yegerev issued a caution to Yury Melnik (CCE 24.2, CCE 35.7, CCE 36.14) for “signing letters detrimental to the interests of the Soviet State”.

Melnik wrote on the record of the caution: “I do not agree with this caution”.

[7]

On 21 November Yury Ushakov (CCE 54.12) was summoned to the Leningrad KGB.

KGB official A. I. Kulakov told Ushakov that he had signed letters which were passed to him by Volokhonsky (CCE 53.11) and Nikitin (CCE 54.12). The letters were “ruled by a court to be anti-Soviet and were detrimental to the interests of the Soviet State”.

Ushakov wrote that neither Volokhonsky nor Nikitin had handed him any letters, that he did not consider the letters he had signed to be either anti-Soviet or slanderous, and that he would study the text of the letters carefully in order to see whether they could cause damage to the Soviet State.

[8]

ATTACKS IN UKRAINE

At 6 pm on 24 November Mikhailina Kotsyubinskaya (CCE 45.7) was beaten up on a Kiev street. She lost consciousness.

At 4 pm on 29 November Olga Matusevich was struck by a passer-by on one of Kiev’s main streets. Vasily Kulya, who was with her at the time, tried to intervene and was immediately attacked by a second passer-by. At once a policeman appeared, grabbed Matusevich’s arms and pushed her into a waiting car. The attackers also got in.

On the way to the police station they threatened Matusevich with an even worse beating.

When Matusevich and Kulya arrived at the police station they discovered that their attackers were police officials in civilian clothes. The police detained them for five hours and then informed Matusevich that she would have to appear in court for starting a fight on the street and resisting police officials.

At the end of November the father-in-law of Nikolai Gorbal (CCE 54.11) and grandfather of political prisoner Valery Marchenko was beaten up in Kiev.

Two hooligans insulted and then attacked him, a very old man, as he was taking his daily walk near his home. One assaulted him while the other smeared him with something green. Afterwards he went down with pneumonia and became mentally disturbed.

On 7 December 55-year-old Leonida Svetlichnaya, the wife of political exile Ivan Svetlichny (CCE 52.6, CCE 54.14 [2]), was attacked at the entrance of the building where she lives in Kiev. She was threatened with rape.

At the beginning of December Nadezhda Lukyanenko, wife of political prisoner Lev Lukyanenko, was attacked on a staircase landing in Chernigov. She was almost suffocated.

Nadezhda Lukyanenko does not receive any of the letters or parcels sent to her from abroad. Not all the letters which are sent to her from inside the Soviet Union reach her. In December she was ‘made redundant’ (she had worked in a factory as an engineer).

Several days before the beginning of the December trials (CCE 55.1-1) Vera Lisovaya’s telephone was disconnected. It was reconnected a few weeks after the trials.

The day before the start of Yury Badzio’s trial his wife Svetlana Kirichenko’s telephone was again disconnected (CCE 54.11).

[9]

On 29 November the Ukrainian Union of Writers held an evening in memory of the Ukrainian writer Kosynka, who was arrested in 1937 and rehabilitated after his death.

Policemen stood in front of the Writers’ Union building and checked the documents of everyone trying to get in to attend.

Antonenko-Davidovich (CCE 45.7), who spent about 20 years in Stalin’s camps, wanted to attend. In order to make this impossible he was subjected to house-arrest and KGB officials came to ‘chat’ to him.

After the ‘chat’ Antonenko-Davidovich’s health deteriorated sharply.

[10]

Galina Tomovna DIDYK (CCE 54.16 [3]) died at the end of December.

[11]

MOSCOW. Refusenik G. Rozenshtein (CCE 50.8-1) worked as a home help to A. Ginzburg’s mother L. I. Ginzburg, as well as doing his official job at the Zarya firm.

At the beginning of December his chief told him that he was forbidden to visit Lyudmila Ilynichna. Rozenshtein objected that she was an old, sick woman who needed help, to which his chief replied that he would find him another sick person. In the second half of December his chief told him that since he was still working for L. Ginzburg, despite the ban, he was considered to have been absent without leave and was dismissed.

[12]

On 26 November a local policeman and a man in plain clothes visited Tatyana Osipova.

They said they were investigating ‘a leak’ but started to examine passports. Seeing that Osipova was not yet formally married to Ivan Kovalyov (the wedding took place on 15 December), they said to her; “He’s not going to live here”, and told her that if ‘this’ continued they would fine her and then evict her (I. Kovalyov is registered in Moscow). During the conversation the policeman called the man in plain clothes ‘comrade Major’.

[13]

An unofficial Moscow seminar on the humanities and legal subjects has entered its third year of operation.

The seminar is concerned with questions relating to Jewish traditions and history and also to the legal problems which arise when people want to leave the USSR. There are a large number of refuseniks and people petitioning to emigrate among those who attend the seminar; the number attending reaches 65 at some sessions.

The founders of the seminar — former refuseniks and engineers Ilya Tsitovsky, Yury Fishman and Eduard Nizhnikov — have already emigrated from the Soviet Union.

For the past year the seminar has been headed by D.Sc. (Physical & Mathematical Sciences), engineer and mathematician Mark Berenfeld, who is also a refusenik.

Since autumn 1979 the seminar has been based in the flat of mathematician Yevgeny Gabovich (CCE 53.25-2, CCE 54.11). Sessions take place every fortnight.

Six papers have been read since September: “Labour Conflicts and their Resolution under Soviet Labour Law” and “Alimony under Soviet Family Law” by Mark Berenfeld; “The Dreyfus Case” by Ruth Okuneva; “The Agencies of Internal Affairs and the Procuracy” by Gennady Shakhnovich; an historical survey, “The Legal Position of Jews on Russian Territory”, by Yevgeny Gabovich; and “Relations between the Family and OVIR in Practice” by Mikhail Lomonosov.

The seminar’s materials and related items are published in the typewritten collection Emigration to Israel: Legal Theory and Practice (see CCE 54.24 [8-10] and CCE 55.11 [3]).

On 12 December the police tried unsuccessfully to break up a session of the seminar.

Police Lieutenant M. V. Smirnov, a Criminal Investigation inspector from Police Station 19, and three vigilantes tried to burst into the flat where the seminar was taking place in order to check documents, but were stopped by the flat occupier. On 13 December Gabovich sent a letter to the Procurator of the Dzerzhinsky district of Moscow complaining about the police actions.

On 26 December, before the next session of the seminar, policemen stood in front of the entrance to the flat, checked the documents of everyone who passed, and asked questions about their purpose in coming. Some people were sent away. However, the session still took place, with 30 people present.

[14]

In December Victor Yerofeyev and Yevgeny Popov, two of the five compilers of the Metropol almanac (CCE 52.14, CCE 54.21), were expelled from the Writers’ Union.

In protest Vasily Aksyonov, also one of the compilers, resigned from the Union.

[15]

After the signing of the Salt-2 Agreement Nikolai Galaibo, a taxi driver based at Taxi Park 14 in Moscow, put up a picture of Carter in his car. The man who drove the car on the next shift immediately reported this to the administration.

Deputy head of the taxi park Lifshits ordered the picture to be removed. When Galaibo refused, Lifshits said that he would not allow him through the gates of the park.

Galaibo gave in, but once he had left the park, he stuck the picture back up. Several taxi controllers on duty at train-station taxi ranks demanded that he remove the picture and communicated his refusal to the taxi park. Lifshits asked Galaibo to resign. He stated that Galaibo was anti-Soviet because he was not a member of a trade union, and promised to inform the KGB about him.

Several days later the head of the taxi park and the Party organizer summoned Galaibo to see them.

Again they demanded that he resign. Galaibo refused. Soon afterwards a park controller submitted a complaint against Galaibo for violating regulations and on this basis Galaibo was transferred to cleaning duties.

Galaibo does not intend to resign.

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