5 ITEMS
[1]
ALEXANDER SHATRAVKA
On his release from psychiatric hospital (CCE 53.21) Alexander Shatravka [1] went from Krivoi Rog to Tyumen Region (west Siberia), where he began work as a forester.
On 27 May, during a search at the home of Tatyana Osipova (CCE 57.2), Shatravka’s book about psychiatric hospitals was confiscated.
On 23 June the head of his work unit received a written order from a psychiatric clinic in Urai to send Shatravka for examination. Shatravka did not go. He presumed that they wanted to keep him in hospital during the Olympic Games, and decided to sit it out in the forest. At about the same time he received a letter from his mother, informing him that the Krivoi Rog division of the Dnepropetrovsk KGB had received a request from Dnepropetrovsk for information on his place of residence.
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On 22 July the foreman of his unit received notification by radio that three additional workers were being sent to his unit.
The ‘workers’ turned out to be a local police inspector, a psychiatrist and an auxiliary doctor. When they failed to find Shatravka the visitors conducted a search in his hut, from which they confiscated some scraps of discarded letters. They then asked the other workers where Shatravka might be, what he talked about, which radio programmes he listened to, and whether he was contemplating fleeing abroad again. They told the workers that Shatravka was seriously ill and should be taken to hospital. At their demand Tikhonin, a worker, wrote that Shatravka regularly listened to Western radio and compared living conditions in the West with ours.
On the following day the policeman and the psychiatrists tried to creep up on Shatravka while he was working, but he noticed them and ran away into the forest. On 26 July Shatravka returned to his hut to find that his possessions, including some bedclothes which had been given to him, were missing. He reported this to the local police.
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[2]
IVAN KAREISHA
On 30 April Ivan Kareisha (CCE 56.23) was visited by a KGB officer who asked him to submit an application to return to work on the collective farm. The visit was in response to a letter which Kareisha wrote ‘to the highest authorities’. On 5 May he gave the proposed statement to the farm administration.
On 8 May Kareisha was visited by some police officers who took him to the district OVD office. It was entered in the record that Kareisha had violated Article 204 of the Belorussian Criminal Code (‘Parasitism’). He was then taken to Vitebsk Regional Psychiatric Hospital, but since Zorka, the chief doctor, was absent, the police officers had to take him back. He was warned that he would be sent to a psychiatric hospital on 13 May, He left home.
On 22 May Felix Serebrov, a member of the Working Commission, sent a letter to Zorka:
An examination by a consultant psychiatrist on behalf of the Working Commission has ascertained that Ivan Timofeyevich Kareisha is mentally healthy and does not require treatment.
If he is placed in your hospital again for treatment the Working Commission will be forced to consider this as a case of the use of psychiatry for the purposes of criminal repression.
The Working Commission wishes to draw your attention to the Resolution of the Congress of the World Psychiatric Association, which met in Honolulu in 1977, condemning such instances of the use of psychiatry, and calls on you henceforth not to violate the Resolution.
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[3]
K. Matviyuk (CCE 48.13) is working as an engineer on a collective farm in the village of Pyrogovtsy, Khmelnitsky Region.
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[4]
The Trial of Chuiko
On 12 June the trial took place in Michurinsk of Bogdan Chuiko, who had been arrested on 24 March. The court was presided over by V. A. Karuskevich, the prosecutor was Assistant Procurator of Michurinsk Yu. A. Sakharovsky, and defence counsel was S. M. Flisher, a member of the Moscow Regional Bar.
Chuiko was found guilty of offences under Article 93, pt. 3 (as a ‘particularly dangerous recidivist’), and under Article 15 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, He was sentenced to six years in special-regime camps. (His ‘crime’ is described in CCE 56.24).
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[5]
The Trial of Khramtsov
On 3 June the trial took place in Tarusa of Yury Khramtsov (CCE 51.9-2, CCE 56.24). He was charged with “malicious violations of the rules of administrative surveillance” (Article 198-2, RSFSR Criminal Code).
The trial was to have been held in the town of Ferzikovo (Kaluga Region): the Tarusa judge refused to examine the case because he had already fined Khramtsov twice for surveillance violations. On 2 June Cherkassky, a judge at Ferzikovo district people’s court, informed Khramtsov’s friends of the date and time of his trial, but ‘forgot’ to tell them that it would take place 40 kilometres away from Ferzikovo. When Khramtsov’s friends arrived at the court building for the trial they were officially informed that Khramtsov had been taken to Tarusa, where an assizes session of the Ferzikovo court had been arranged in order to accommodate the witnesses, who were all from Tarusa.
The court sitting lasted less than an hour. The court ruled that Khramtsov should be sent to Kursk for psychiatric examination. The reason given for this was Khramtsov’s refusal to take part in the investigation or in the court proceedings. When his friends finally reached Tarusa, the sitting was already over. They looked for Cherkassky, the Judge, and found him as he was running for a bus. He refused to sign an authorization for Khramtsov to be sent a parcel.
An appeal by Nina Lisovskaya in defence of Khramtsov states in part:
“The story of the trial’s change of venue to Tarusa and the refusal to sanction a parcel, forces one to believe that the authorities in Tarusa (or elsewhere) are trying to cut Khramtsov off from the outside world, to prevent him from seeing his friends, and so arrange things that he is unaware of what is said about him or what is being done to help him.
“Healthy, bloated bureaucrats find it necessary to finish off a feeble invalid who can hardly stand on his feet, a man whose entire conscious life has been spent behind barbed wire. They have not succeeded in breaking him, but they are able to torture him. And their consciences will not be stirred when they are rewarded for such ‘work’ with prizes and promotions.“
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NOTES
- On Shatravka, see CCE 51.11, CCE 53.21, CCE 54.16 [4] and cce 65.2 [R].
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A Chronicle of Current Events 