At the end of October at least 50 families in KIEV had their permission to emigrate cancelled.
The reason given was that their relatives were too distant. On 20 November the head of the Kiev OVIR told those who had come to see him that new instructions had been received and that people were now to be allowed to leave only if they had dose relatives abroad (parents, children, brothers and sisters of the same blood); he also said that all those who had no invitation from a close relative should get a job, as they had no hope of emigrating (in Kiev people wishing to hand in applications to OVIR have to leave their jobs, as otherwise their employers will not give them the necessary certificate for OVIR). In Kiev about 2,000 families are waiting for permission to emigrate. On 4 December some of them received refusals ‘because the relatives are too distant’.
In KIEV and LENINGRAD young families and unmarried people are receiving refusals if their parents do not apply to emigrate simultaneously. In these towns invitations with their validity extended by the Dutch Embassy [acting for the Israelis] and invitations with corrections authorized by the Dutch Embassy are no longer being accepted. In Leningrad the number of refusenik families has risen from 100 to 400 in a year.
In KHARKOV there used to be few refusenik families, now there are about 400.
In Kharkov and Odessa refusals are also being issued on the grounds that relatives are ‘too distant’. In Tashkent 20 families have received refusals on this pretext.
*
In PETROZAVODSK the following have been refused emigration visas because their relatives were too distant:
Mikhail Kozlov: as soon as he applied for a certificate for OVIR he was expelled from the Conservatory — he was in the fifth year); Ya. D. Karp and her son Mark Karp: she was the leader of the Conservatory orchestra, he is an economist — both lost their jobs; the Poznyakov couple: both are pianists, both were sacked — the husband from the Conservatory, his wife from a children’s music school; M. A. Pekler’s family: M. A. Pekler and his wife N. N. Avetisyan are Doctors of Philology, both are senior lecturers; M. A. Pekler was dismissed following a job competition, N. N. Avetisyan was transferred to the post of secretary at a wage of 100 roubles a month after a meeting of the academic council; T. D. Borisova: a pianist who taught at the Conservatory; she has now been transferred to the post of orchestra leader) and the family of Yu. M. Ryuntyu: a biologist who worked in the Karelian branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences; after handing in his application to emigrate, he was dismissed as having ‘no scientific prospects’.
*
On 7 December Olga Matusevich wrote an ‘Open Letter’:
… I ask you to help me to emigrate from the USSR, as I am being placed in an impossible situation by KGB officials.
(See CCE 54 and ‘Beatings-up in Ukraine’ in ‘Miscellaneous Reports’ in this issue CCE 55.). On 20 December she appealed again to Brezhnev, asking that obstacles should not be placed in the way of her emigration.
*
On 21 December Yevgeny Nikolayev (CCE 48, 49, 51, 52, 54) was refused permission to emigrate.
N. R. Baimasova, an inspector of Moscow OVIR, told him the reason for the refusal: he was not taking part in socially useful work and not participating in public life; she advised Nikolayev to get a job and obtain a good character reference there. Then OVIR might reconsider its decision. When Nikolayev protested that he was, for reasons connected with psychiatry, an invalid of the second group, with no right to work, she replied: ‘Well, you see — all the more reason why we can’t let you leave!’
*
In October Justas Gimbutas (CCE 53) was put under surveillance for a year. As before, he refuses to accept a Soviet passport.
He was summoned to the KGB and threatened with criminal prosecution for violating the residence regulations, also if he renewed his attempts to get in touch with the American Embassy (after his release from camp he had travelled to Moscow and tried to enter the American Embassy; he was detained and the declaration he had written asking the American ambassador for help in emigrating was taken away from him; he was then sent back to Klaipeda). Gimbutas had received an invitation from the USA, but OVIR would not accept any application if unaccompanied by a passport. At the end of November Gimbutas was told that materials for a criminal case against him on a charge of violating the residence regulations had been sent to the Procuracy.
*
On 19 November Ivanov, head of the Odessa OVIR, refused the Sery couple (CCE 47, 49, 52-54) permission to emigrate; the reason given was that their parents had not agreed to it.
Not long before, KGB Captain Grazhdan (CCE 48, 54) had told Valentina Seraya’s mother that if she gave her daughter permission to emigrate, it would mean she shared her views; the mother was afraid that she would have trouble at work (she is a cleaner). Then KGB official Shumilo told Leonid Sery’s mother that the State had supported Sery’s family and given them a flat (their new address is: 270010, Odessa, 2 Geranievskaya Street, flat 58), but that they were issuing slanderous statements. The frightened mother wrote that she renounced such a son and signed a statement that she would never agree to Leonid’s emigration from the USSR.
The Serys have evidence that KGB officials have written in their name to people who were sending them parcels, stating that they did not need any ’hand-outs’.
On 28 December Leonid Sery was summoned for a talk by General M. Z. Banduristy, head of the Odessa KGB Department. L. Sery’s ‘guardians’, Colonel Kasyan and Captain Grazhdan, were also present in Banduristy’s office. During the conversation Sery was insulted and threatened with criminal charges. Kasyan asked Sery more than once about his friendship with Monakov, about their relationship and about the ‘Party of the Working People’ (CCE 53, 54). Kasyan and Banduristy tried to persuade Sery to be more open, as ‘this is not an interrogation, just a chat’. At present Sery is being constantly followed.
On 21 November the police of Svetlograd, Stavropol Territory, arrested Vasily Shatalov (b. 1958) for the second time — for refusing to serve in the Army — although In 1976-8 he had already served two years in a camp on this charge (CCE 48, 51). On 1 December his father N. P. Shatalov, who himself had served one-and-a-half years in camps under article 190-1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code (see CCE 48, 51 and ‘Releases’ in the ‘Prisons and Camps’ section of this issue CCE 55.), sent the following declaration to the USSR Procurator-General (with a copy to Amnesty International in London);
Such actions cannot be considered as anything but revenge directed against our family …
The authorities have taken revenge because in March 1976 our family of five renounced Soviet citizenship and applied to emigrate from the USSR. Now, when we have so often been told by officials that we will soon be able to leave, and, as we have discovered, the immigration committee in Geneva was also so informed.
At this very moment our son is again being conscripted into the Army.
(The Shatalovs had applied to emigrate to the United States at the invitation of Congressman MacDonald.)
*
In a letter to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, Riga resident Yury Maximov (CCE 53) again asks for permission to renounce Soviet citizenship and lists the ordeals he has undergone since 1974, when he first applied to emigrate.
*
In 1975, when Alexander Maximov (from the town of Uzhgorod) reached his sixteenth birthday, he refused to accept a Soviet passport. He was not allowed to graduate from school, not being permitted to take the examinations.
In 1977 A. Maximov and his mother G. A. Maximova tried to hand in applications to emigrate. The Uzhgorod OVIR refused to accept their documents, as they had no invitation from abroad. On 27 October 1978 the Maximovs renounced Soviet citizenship.
A. Maximov wrote to the Military Enlistment Office, stating that he would not serve in the Army as he was not a citizen of the USSR. He was summoned twice to the Procuracy and threatened with prosecution. However, he was not conscripted, as he is supporting his seriously-ill mother.
On 20 and 22 November 1979 the police tried to get into the Maximovs’ flat. On 28 November Maximov sent a declaration to the Moscow Helsinki Group, telling them about himself and asking for help in obtaining permission to emigrate from the USSR.
*
On 7 May B. A. Zalevsky and his family (wife and two children) received permission to join a relative in the USA. They sold their house in Vasilkov, Kiev Region, left their jobs and obtained passports for foreign travel. However, on the day of their departure the passports were taken away and they were told that their departure would be delayed.
Zalevsky began to apply to all official departments to find out when he would be allowed to leave. In reply he started to receive threats that he would be charged with vagrancy and parasitism.
Zalevsky and members of his family have sent a complaint to A. Pelshe, the Chairman of the Party Control Committee attached to the CPSU Central Committee. In the complaint they ask to be provided with accommodation until they leave the USSR and for an end to their persecution. The Zalevskys also ask that permission for emigration be speeded up.
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JEWS
In December Mark Nashpits (CCE 54) issued a second ‘Open Letter to the Press’ (for the first, see below in this issue CCE 55), in which he described his battle to emigrate, now of several years’ duration.
On 1 February 1971 he and his mother applied to emigrate. Two months later they received a refusal, motivated by the fact that Nashpits’s father had failed to return from a trip abroad in 1956.
In 1972, during President R. Nixon’s visit to the USSR, M. Nashpits was called up into the Army; he refused, so as not to give the authorities a further reason for refusing him permission to emigrate (possession of ‘military secrets’) — he was then tried and sentenced to a term of corrective labour (CCE 26). M. Nashpits continued to campaign for emigration and took part in demonstrations.
In June 1974 a KGB representative told M. Nashpits that if he stopped participating in demonstrations he and his mother would soon be able to leave. M, Nashpits asked for guarantees: as his mother had not taken part in any demonstrations, she should be let out first, then he would ‘behave himself’ for a time and would leave later. The
KGB officials agreed — on 1 August 1974 Nashpits’s mother left the USSR.
In December 1974 KGB officials told Nashpits that he would soon be leaving, if he ‘gave them a little help’ first: if he did not, a criminal charge would be brought against him and he would take a trip to ‘some place that isn’t so far away’. In reply Nashpits put out ‘An Open Letter to the International Public’.
On 24 February 1975 he walked in front of the Lenin Library, together with others, carrying a placard saying ‘Visas instead of prisons!’ The response was his arrest, a trial and five years in exile (CCE 36).
On 26 July 1979 [note 13] he was released and returned to Moscow. The authorities now refuse to register him as a resident or accept his application to OVIR. He ends his ‘Open Letter’ as follows:
I have a feeling that a new trial is being prepared for me. I have no permanent place of residence and no job. 1 have been deprived of all this because the authorities, breaking their own Law, are refusing me the opportunity to obtain these things.
Soon a child will be born to our family, but where are we to live? Where will we bring him up? There is one sensible way out of this situation for the authorities — to allow us to emigrate to Israel.
*
On 11 December the Moscow refuseniks Viktor Yelistratov (CCE46, 47, 50, 53, 54) and Yakov Shmayevich went to Post-Office 288, where they had booked time to receive a telephone call at 7 pm from activists of the Campaign for Soviet Jewry in London. They had already rung Yelistratov and Shmayevich at this post-office a number of times.
Yelistratov and Shmayevich arrived 10 minutes before the appointed time and were somewhat surprised at the unusual amount of activity going on in such a small post-office: a man who later said he was on holiday from Chelyabinsk took 20 minutes to write a telegram, fussing about beside the counter; a woman was sitting at the table, pulling an air ticket out of her bag from time to time; another woman was having a lively discussion about her telegram with all those present and also displaying an air ticket; afterwards two more men appeared (one tall, one shorter) carrying ‘diplomat-type’ briefcases and parcels in their hands and sat down to write a letter, loudly discussing how to begin it.
At 7 o’clock a bell sounded and Shmayevich went into the telephone booth indicated to him by the woman on duty. At the same time Yelistratov stationed himself outside the door of the booth, which Shmayevich had closed behind him.
Suddenly complete silence reigned in the building. What Shmayevich was saying could not be heard. All at once the taller man rushed towards the booth, shouting: ‘Listen to what they’re saying! Anti-Soviet talk! They’re relaying anti-Soviet information!’ Pointing out Yelistratov to the shorter man — ‘Hold him, Kolya, make sure he doesn’t get away!’ — he pushed his way into the booth, grabbed some papers lying in front of Shmayevich and started to drag him away from the telephone. Shmayevich shouted into the receiver: ’We’re being dragged off to the police station!’ The taller man forcibly twisted Shmayevich’s arm and showed him his little red [KGB] book with the gold stamp; in giving orders to his assistants, he remarked more than once: ‘It’s a good thing Kolya has such a sensitive ear for music!’ Yelistratov kept asking ‘Kolya’: ‘What did you overhear, then?’ In reply ‘Kolya’ mumbled indistinctly: ‘He was speaking against the Soviets’. ‘What Soviets? What exactly did you hear?’ The only answer was silence and an impudent grin.
Yelistratov and Shmayevich were pushed into ‘a car that happened to be passing’ and taken to Police Station 101. During the journey the taller man actively demonstrated that he was in charge of dangerous criminals: he constantly told his assistants to hold Yelistratov and Shmayevich tightly, and when the car drove up to Police Station 101, he would not open the door until a sufficiently large force of policemen had come up to convey the ‘criminals’ from the car door to the reception office. The policeman on duty at Station 101 detained Yelistratov and Shmayevich for two hours, then ordered them to be searched and confiscated Yelistratov’s notebook and a few papers. Then he let them both go.
*
On 13 December the police broke into the communal flat in Kiev where Sergei Rotshtein (CCE 53, 54), a Jewish activist and refusenik, lives.
At the time Rotshtein was being visited by some tourists from the USA who had come to see him and his sister Elena Oleinik (CCE 53, 54), who had served 30 days of administrative arrest from 12 October to 11 November (CCE 54 reported only the first half of this term). Sergei would not allow the policemen to enter, but they broke in when Sergei’s neighbour left the flat. The police were accompanied by men in civilian clothes, one of whom Sergei knew by sight (he had taken Sergei to KGB headquarters on a number of occasions). This official asked the tourists in English for their identity documents. The tourists gave their names, after which the uninvited guests left, leaving a summons for Sergei to come to the police station on 15 December. Sergei did not go to the police station. He was subjected to round-the-clock surveillance.
On 20 December, when Jews who had applied for emigration (about 20-30 people) had gathered at the city OVIR building, they were attacked by police, men in civilian clothes and vigilantes, who told them to disperse. The Jews crossed over to the other side of the street, but the police nevertheless detained a number of people: two were fined and Iosif Bussel was sentenced to 15 days’ administrative arrest for ‘resisting the authorities’. E. Oleinik went to see the relatives of those who had been fined, but they refused to tell her their names.
Sergei Rotshtein was caught by the authorities while still only approaching O VIR. He was pushed into a car and taken to the detention cells. Later the police took him to a court, where the Judge sentenced him to 15 days for ‘resisting the authorities’, for obstructing traffic and pedestrians, and for having ‘the intention to organize a disturbance’. This is the fourth 15-day sentence S. Rotshtein has served since April this year.
The Moscow Jewish refuseniks sent the following telegram to the Central Committee of the Ukrainian CP:
On 20 December the police detained a number of Jews on the streets of Kiev just because they allowed themselves to meet openly at the city O VIR to discuss the problem of emigration from the USSR to Israel. Two of them — Sergei Rotshtein and Iosif Bussel — were later sentenced to 15 days’ imprisonment on fabricated charges. We strongly protest at the campaign of repression against the Jews of Kiev who want to emigrate from the USSR. We demand the immediate release of Rotshtein and Bussel.
(signed) Yelistratov, Shvartsman, Bogomolny, Falkovich, Chernyak, Minkin, Sapiro, Vail, Levitansky, Rozenshtein, Lerner, Mai, Seidel, Meiman, Ioffe, Livshits, Talyanker, Chernobylsky, Drugova, Rakhlenko, Kosharovsky, Zherdev, Shmayevich, Krivonos, Kremen, Lukatsky, Sorin, Okimeva, Tufeld, Shchiglik, Shcharansky, Sorkin, Gabovich, Goldstein, Shabashov, Liberman, Fiskin, Elinson, Blitshtein, Likhterev, Cherkassky, Khasina
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The ordeals of Kiev resident Igor Kushnirenko (b. 1953) are continuing (CCE 54).
At the order of Kiev Procurator Gaidamak, the resolution dropping the criminal case against him was rescinded and the case was sent to the District Procuracy for further investigation (I. Kushnirenko was exempted from military service by a medical commission, then accused of deliberately avoiding it; he and his family had already received permission to emigrate to Israel).
On 21 November police and officials of the District Military Enlistment Office broke into I. Kushnirenko’s flat and took him away. As Igor’s mother and wife were out at the time, he had to take his three-year-old son with him. It was only in the evening that his wife managed to find her son and husband at the Enlistment Office. Igor handed his son over to his wife and said to her: ‘Don’t believe anything they tell you. I refuse to be examined by any commissions and I’m going on hunger-strike’.
On 27 November I. Kushnirenko rang from Kharkov, gave the number of the military unit he was with, and stated that he would not take the military oath. Igor’s wife Viktoria Kushnirenko was informed at the CPSU Central Committee building that the criminal case against her husband had been closed (retrospectively).
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GERMANS
On 20 November 67 Germans from many different places in the Soviet Union, ‘reduced to despair by their unsuccessful efforts to return to their historical homeland — Germany (both parts)’, appealed to the CPSU Central Committee and the Soviet government, ‘calling for a show of good will and generosity’.
*
In 1977 an accumulator assistant at Taganrog combine harvester factory, Zoya Antonovna Vagner (b. 1935, Russian by nationality, had worked in the factory since 1953), began to ask for permission to emigrate from the country ‘to stop the harassment of her son’ Yury Vagner (b. 1961, German by nationality).
On 22 June 1979 Yury himself appealed to Brezhnev, asking for ‘a visa to emigrate from the USSR’:
I am a German and I want to live and work together with my own people…
Soon I should be called up into the Army, but how can I defend another people if I love my own? It’s not my fault that my ancestors landed up in Russia for various circumstances and reasons …
I earnestly beg you to expedite the granting of my visa. By so doing you will save me from persecution and harassment, which have intensified over the last few years.
I have been forbidden to fall in love or to have any friends, 1 was not allowed to study and was not even given a job. I have known nothing in my life except beatings and mockery, merely because I am a German and love my people.
On 12 September Z. A. Vagner appealed to the Military Commissar of Taganrog, S. S. Loginov, asking him ‘to exempt my son from military service because he is waiting for permission from the Soviet government to emigrate from the USSR’.
On 27 September Yury Vagner renounced Soviet citizenship. On 1 November he wrote to Loginov:
Now that I have renounced citizenship of the USSR, I am being called up for active service in the ranks of the Soviet Army.
Who am I to defend? Those who have mocked me, those who will not let me join my own German people, and threaten me with imprisonment for wanting this?
Never!
I am not a citizen of the USSR.
In November Z. A. Vagner began to receive urgent invitations to visit a psychiatric clinic. (On 5 February 1979 psychiatrists wrote to the town police station: ‘… Z. A. Vagner’s statements regarding persecution are not considered by us to be symptoms of illness.’)
‘
On 10 November the Laub family from Ordzhonikidze (Ossetian ASSR) appealed to Brezhnev in an ‘Open Letter’, asking for permission to emigrate to the Federal Republic of Germany. They report that they had been trying to achieve permission for four years, so that:
we can live out our lives among our nearest and dearest, in a familiar culture, a national and religious environment we are used to.
The Laubs write:
Is it really possible that in the evening of our lives we will be left with no choice but that of renouncing Soviet citizenship and chaining ourselves to the Kremlin walls? Must we really pay the price of imprisonment for the right to emigrate to our historic homeland? If there is no other alternative, Comrade Brezhnev, we feel it would be better to burn ourselves to death. We would thus rid ourselves of your country and of people whose activity is devoted to the forcible detention of others.
In December the Laubs received permission to emigrate.
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PENTECOSTALISTS
THE ARREST OF N. P. GORETOI
On 13 December in the settlement of Starotitarovskaya (Krasnodar Territory), Senior Bishop Nikolai Petrovich Goretoi (CCE 47-9, 54) was arrested. During a search of his home, all those present were subjected to body-searches, including the women and children. Goretoi’s relatives were informed that criminal charges were to be pressed against him.
On the same day searches took place at the homes of seven other Pentecostalists in Starotitarovskaya, who, like Goretoi, had applied to emigrate from the USSR. The following were confiscated: religious and legal literature, photographs, tape-recorders, cassette-recorders with tapes, and a record course of English Language lessons.
On 16 November in the town of Bataisk, Rostov Region. N. P. Goretoi’s son Ilya (b. 1954) and I. Goretoi’s brother-in-law Vladimir Morozov (b. 1956) were sentenced under article 198-1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code for refusing to participate in military instruction. In August 1978 they had both renounced Soviet citizenship, and so regarded their summons for military instruction as unlawful; they wrote about this to the highest authorities.
After I. Goretoi and V. Morozov had studied the indictment they wrote a declaration to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, the Procurator-General of the USSR, the Procurator of Rostov Region, and the Procurator of Bataisk, stating that their summons for military instruction was unlawful but agreeing to attend the course. Nevertheless they were sentenced: I. Goretoi to six months’ imprisonment and Morozov to one year of corrective labour with confiscation of 20% of his wages.
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On 11 December Pavel Matyash (b. 1961) was arrested in the settlement of Starotitarovskaya. He had renounced his citizenship, applied to emigrate and refused to accept a Soviet passport. While he was being called up for military service, he wrote more than once to the Enlistment Board, stating that he would Join the Army, but would not take the military oath.
In reply to a demand from Matyash’s parents for the release of their son, investigator Gnoyevoi took them to court: on 21 December Pavel’s father was sentenced to 10 days’ imprisonment and his mother was fined 10 roubles.
*
In 1977 Pavel Lupanov from Zhdanov handed in an application to emigrate and in August 1978 he renounced Soviet citizenship. After the failure of a number of attempts by KGB officials to make him take back his application, he was sentenced to six months’ corrective labour on a fabricated charge.
On 22 November 1979 Pavel was summoned to the Military Enlistment Board for a medical examination. He wrote a declaration to the Board and to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, giving reasons for his refusal to serve in the Army. On 27 November he was arrested. During interrogation Lupanov’s parents were told that he was accused of ‘avoiding a standard call-up for active military service’ (article 72 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code).
*
On 15 December a search was carried out at the home of Presbyter V. S. Bilyk (CCE 48, 54) in the town of Sukhodolsk, Voroshilovgrad Region. Letters and religious poems were confiscated from him. On 26 December he was handed an order from the police chief forbidding him to leave town until he received special instructions. Bilyk is again under threat of imprisonment in a psychiatric hospital,
*
A. A. Filipenko from the town of Zhdanov (CCE 52) applied to emigrate in 1978 and renounced Soviet citizenship. She has to support three small children and a paralysed mother. She works as a cleaner. For three years KGB officials and police have been trying to force her to give up the idea of emigrating, threatening to take away her children. When religious friends or relatives of the Filipenkos have come to their home to visit the sick woman, the police have driven up, taken everybody’s names and fined the mistress of the house. On 27 May 1979 her mother died. The funeral procession was escorted by the police. The procession was forbidden to stop. A religious service was not allowed.
*
The Roshchupkin family applied to emigrate and renounced Soviet citizenship.
The daughters — Vera, Valentina and Maria — work at the ‘Tyazhmash’ [heavy machinery] factory in Zhdanov. In trying to get them to renounce emigration, the KGB is operating through the factory administration. Valya’s wages fell from 150 roubles a month to 37. In her workshop, meetings have been organized more than once where the 20-year-old girl has heard cries such as ‘Get rid of them to Israel, kill them!’ At a meeting on 20 August the department head and the head of the workshop suggested that there should be a vote on the question of sacking the Roshchupkina sisters.
The meeting voted to deprive the girls of their jobs and, if possible, to drive them out of the USSR. However, as there was no genuine reason to dismiss them, their work conditions were made unbearable. On 22 August Valya was forced to resign her job.
* ‘
After Lyudmila Yarets from the town of Dzerzhinsk, Donetsk Region, renounced her citizenship in August 1978, she was summoned many times to the City executive committee, which tried to force her to take back her application for emigration from the USSR. On 18 August 1979 she was visited by Reutskaya and Polupon, officials of the City executive committee. They threatened Lyudmila that she would not be allowed to take her children with her, as they were Soviet citizens, ‘The Soviet authorities will not allow the souls of children to be crippled by religious rubbish’, they told her on leaving.
*
THE TRIAL OF IGOR KORCHNOI
On 19 December the case against 20-year-old Igor Korchnoi on a charge of evading call-up for military service (article 80 of the RSFSR Criminal Code) was examined in Leningrad.
Igor Korchnoi is the son of Viktor Korchnoi. In August 1977 Viktor Korchnoi’s wife Bella and Igor applied to emigrate (CCE51). After this Igor was obliged to leave college and thus lost his right to deferment of military service. In November 1977 the Korchnois were refused permission to emigrate. They then appealed to the Party City Committee to allow Igor to return to the institute. They were told that, as a condition, they would have to renounce their intention of leaving the USSR. They did not agree to this and again submitted a petition to emigrate.
On 5 May 1978 Igor Korchnoi received his call-up papers. On 24 May he was detained by the police. A statement was drawn up concerning his non-appearance in response to call-up. Igor stated that he would not go to the Military Enlistment Office and refused to sign for another set of call-up papers. Criminal Investigation Department official Semchenkov (who appeared at the trial as a witness) officially cautioned him that evasion of military service was a criminal offence, but Korchnoi stood his ground. After this he left home and stayed away for eighteen months. He was arrested on 15 November 1979,
The case was examined by Vasileostrovsky District People’s Court in Leningrad and presided over by N. N. Kubasova. The prosecutor was Procurator Skrilsky; Drabkin defended. They tried not to admit
*
relatives and friends of the accused into the courtroom, giving the usual excuse — ‘no places’, but after stormy arguments the police admitted 12 people. The Judge ordered another three people to be admitted after the first break and another five after the second. About twenty more people were unable to gain admittance to the courtroom.
The accused pleaded not guilty. He explained that in current practice people who wanted to emigrate after they had served in the Army were often refused permission on the grounds of safeguarding State secrets. He also considered that it was unjust to refuse him the right to higher education and at the same time demand him to fulfil the duty of serving in the Army. This, he said, contradicted the unity of the rights and duties of citizens declared in the USSR Constitution. He explained that the reason why he had gone into hiding after his refusal to serve in the Army was that he feared his arrest would be too traumatic for his father, who was at the time preparing for the World Championship match (in 1978).
B. Korchnaya, who was summoned as a witness, expressed the same considerations. She further stated that she and her son were being used as hostages to put psychological pressure on her husband, and, in her opinion, this was the reason why her son had been called up and why they had been refused permission to leave the USSR four times without explanation.
The court did not even begin to consider the particular circumstances of Igor Korchnoi and his mother. (The Judge merely ascertained that they could not name an official source for their information about secrecy’ after military service.) Witnesses’ evidence concerned the facts of I. Korchnoi’s evasion of call-up. The court also rejected a petition from the lawyer to appoint a medical team to ascertain Igor’s fitness for military service. The lawyer said that if Korchnoi had the right to deferment on health grounds he would have committed only a so-called ‘notional offence’, for which he could not be charged. The court pointed out (and repeated in the judgment) that the degree of fitness of the accused for military service was determinable by the Military Medical Committee of the District Military Enlistment Office, and not by a court. (It should be noted that during Igor’s pretrial imprisonment he did undergo a medical examination, on the investigator’s insistence, and was ruled fit.)
The Procurator said in his speech that Igor Korchnoi’s guilt had been fully proven. He did not analyse Korchnoi’s reasons for evading military service and brushed them aside as unworthy of attention. ‘The accused and his mother’, announced the Procurator, ‘hold forth about so-called human rights to try to cast a shadow over the organs of the Soviet power’. He demanded the maximum sentence for Korchnoi — three years in camps.
The defence lawyer’s speech was devoted to the inner motivation of Igor Korchnoi’s actions. He said that the yearning for his family to be reunited, which had gradually come to dominate his consciousness, his life and his behaviour, lay at the root of his actions. He called the court’s attention to the fact that ‘it was not without external influence’ that Igor had made his choice between observing the law and trying to reunite his family.
In his final speech Igor Korchnoi emphasized that he had acted as his duty as a son and love for his father demanded. If this was considered a crime then he admitted his ‘crime’ and his ‘guilt’. He pointed out that he had not chosen the situation which had come about he had had no alternative but to refuse to do military service. Korchnoi asked the court to ‘bear in mind that the situation is unique’, and also to take his mother’s ill-health into consideration and to show humanity by passing the minimum sentence allowable by law. The sentence was two-and-a-half years in ordinary-regime camps.
*
After the trial Bella Korchnaya sent a telegram to the World Champion A. Karpov and to the players in the challengers’ matches — Grand Masters Adoryan, Petrosyan, Polugayevsky, Portisch, Spassky, Tal and Hubner. She said that the charge against her son had been ‘trumped-up’.
With harsh words she accuses the Grand Masters of ‘silent participation in the reprisals’ against Igor, and asserts directly that ‘he was convicted so that you would find it easier to fight for the championship’ — in order to ‘prevent Viktor Korchnoi from playing at full strength’.
B. Korchnaya considers that it would be enough for one chess player to threaten to refuse to take part in the next round of the World Championship Tournament to stop the persecution of herself and Igor:
Why can you not resolve to demonstrate your sense of honour and attain the right to fight Viktor Korchnoi on equal terms? … If you do not do this, how can you fight with a clear conscience for the title of World Champion?
With these words Bella Korchnaya concludes her appeal.
Bella Korchnaya sent an even harsher telegram to the President of the World Chess Federation [FIDE], Grand Master F. Olafson. She accused the Federation and Olafson personally of ‘silent connivance’ and ‘practical cooperation’ in the persecution of V. Korchnoi, and, in particular, in the reprisals against his son:
Only decisive intervention can save us. Summon a World Chess Federation Congress. Suspend the matches for the world title. At least, do something! Maybe, Mr. Olafson, now that Igor Korchnoi is in jail, this time you will have enough courage and energy?
This was Korchnaya’s appeal to the president of FIDE.
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THOSE WHO HAVE LEFT
The mathematician Boris Shain (CCE 54) left the USSR on 18 November.
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The former political prisoners Svyatoslav Karavansky and his wife Nina Strokata (CCE 54) left the USSR on 30 November.
Even when, just after 20 November, they were given permission to leave (and they had to leave not later than 30 November), surveillance of them was not lifted. They were only allowed to travel from Tarusa to Moscow individually to fill out their emigration papers, and each time they had to ask the permission of the ‘surveillance officials’. Just before they left, they were each reported for a violation of surveillance regulations: Karavansky missed one appointment and Strokatova arrived home one evening 20 minutes after the ‘surveillance curfew’. They received a court summons for 26 November, but on the evening of 25 November the court secretary came to their house and asked them to return the summons.
On 23 November Karavansky, who had gone to Moscow on business connected with his emigration, was detained by the police and ordered to leave Moscow within 24 hours. Only on 27 November did Karavansky and Strokatova receive permission to leave Tarusa for Moscow.
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At the beginning of December V. F. Livchak (CCE 39, 48) left the USSR. In December Natalya Buzyreva, wife of ‘aeroplane man’ Yury Fedorov [previously Fyodorov] (CCE 17, 20, 53) left the USSR. On 30 December the artists Alexander and Irina Pasmur (CCE 53) left the USSR.
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On 30 December Vladimir Malinkovich from Kiev (CCE 49, 52-4) left the USSR. On 16 November he had been summoned by an investigator, who told him that citizen Gunayeva from Chernovtsy had sent a statement to the Procuracy claiming that Malinkovich had infected her with a venereal disease; this was said to have happened in Chernovtsy in May (in actual fact Malinkovich never left Kiev in May). The investigator informed Malinkovich that a criminal case had been brought against him.
On 29 November (when the Ukrainian Writers’ Union was holding an evening in memory of Kosynka, see this issue CCE 55) Malinkovich was summoned to a police station and detained all evening. A local policeman talked to Malinkovich for an hour and a half and rebuked him for ‘parasitism’ (although Malinkovich had been out of work for little more than a month). He said that he was not ‘letting Malinkovich go off to some Israel’.
On 26 December Malinkovich received permission to emigrate — he was to leave the country not later than 31 December. On the eve of his departure Malinkovich went to OVIR, where he was met by KGB officials of his acquaintance. They invited Malinkovich to come to their car and drove him to a restaurant out of town, where they advised him to behave circumspectly abroad, otherwise they would get hold of him even there.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 