Persecution of Believers, August 1980 (57.17)

<<No 57 : 3 August 1980>>

Orthodox Christians. Pentecostalists. Adventists

1. ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS

On 13 June 1980 the hieromonk Savva (Kolchugin?) was arrested at the Arzamas railway station.

Over a year ago he was prevented from continuing his work as a priest in the church of the town //Vetluga (Gorky Region). In November 1979 Savva was forcibly interned in one of the psychiatric hospitals in Gorky, where he remained till the end of the year. Articles appeared in the newspapers Komsomolskaya Pravda and Leninskaya Smena (Gorky), in which Hieromonk Savva was attacked for saying in his sermons that a believer could not join the Komsomol.

In Diveyevo (Gorky Region) the police authorities are carrying out constant surveillance of pilgrims who visit the ditch dug — according to tradition — by Saint Serafim of Sarov. The worshippers are detained, taken to the district office of internal affairs (OVD), their passports are scrutinized and their fingerprints taken, and they are threatened with a beating and imprisonment.

VELIKORETSKOYE SPRING

For many centuries pilgrims visited the spring in the village of Velikoretskoye (Kirov Region), where according to tradition a vision of the miraculous icon of Saint Nicholas was seen.

In 1967 the church in Velikoretskoye was closed, the chapel above the spring was demolished, and the pine-tree in which the icon had appeared was chopped down.

On 3 June 1980 police from Kirov stopped worshippers on the road to Velikoretskoye and turned them back. About a thousand believers who nevertheless reached the village were met by ranks of policemen. The bank of the River Velikaya was guarded by a row of police cars and tractors, The believers were told to disperse through loudspeakers. Policemen beat up the pilgrims.

That night the police called several times at the house where worshippers usually stay. The owners had to sign a statement promising not to let visiting pilgrims into the house. The next day shops would not sell bread to believers who were visiting Velikoretskoye. The road to the village where there is a functioning church (10 km from Velikoretskoye) was blocked.

POCHAYEV MONASTERY

In spring 1979 the Spiritual Council of the Pochayev Monastery (Ternopol Region) sent appeals to the Church and State authorities, asking for the return of the monastery’s garden and guest-houses and also for permission to register novices at the monastery (CCE 51.15).

The appeals point out that the garden, which now belongs to various State bodies and private persons, is being destroyed and the necessary care is not being taken of it; a polyclinic and a museum of atheism have been set up in the guest-houses and the monastery has no right to admit and register novices, even those who have been picked for monastic service on Mount Athos (in Greece). These appeals resulted in various official commissions being sent to the monastery.

Worshippers are now not even allowed to spend the night in the church, and ten novices have been expelled from the monastery.

2. PENTECOSTALS

In June a special issue of the Pentecostal almanac The Red and the Black came out.

The issue opens with a report about the formation, on 17 May 1980, of a group to defend the rights of evangelical Pentecostal Christians in the RSFSR. It consists of seven people whose names are not given. The almanac includes a statement by the group, declaring one of its basic aims to be the exposing and publicizing of all illegal actions by the Soviet authorities with regard to Pentecostal believers. Further on, documents from the group are given: a telegram to the US President, and material on the history of Pentecostalists in Russia. Then come items of information and documents on the persecution of believers (they have been used in this section). The issue ends with photographs illustrating the material in the almanac.

The Group to Defend the Rights of Pentecostalists in the RSFSR states that recently Pentecostalists have been put under pressure to register ‘autonomously’, i.e. congregations are not allowed to have a centralized leadership and must not form links with one another.

On the eve of the 1980 Olympics an official prayer-house was opened for a registered Pentecostal congregation in Kosino (in the Moscow suburbs). It is a two-storey brick building. No rent is levied on it. The presbyter of the congregation is S. I. Marin.

MOSCOW.

On 6 June Pentecostal Anatoly Vlasov [¹] was summoned by KGB officials and warned ‘according to the Decree’ that if he went on giving foreigners information about the position of believers in the USSR, a criminal case would be instituted against him under Article 190-1 (RSFSR Criminal Code).

The warning notes that in May 1977 Vlasov gave ‘foreign emissaries’ Sareld and Engstrom slanderous material on the position of believers in the Soviet Union (CCE 47.4 [3]).

MALOYAROSLAVETS (Kaluga Region).

Varvara, the wife of Bishop Ivan P. Fedotov (CCE 56.19-2) has been dismissed from her work-place because of staff reductions.

On 23 May Presbyter V. G. Murashkin and G. Barkhatova, owner of the house where a prayer-meeting took place on 24 April (CCE 56.19-2), were summoned to the Maloyaroslavets town soviet executive committee. An administrative commission talked to them for an hour, trying to persuade them to register their congregation.

Barkhatova handed the chairman of the commission a declaration, in which the reasons for the congregation’s refusal to register were outlined. In the same declaration, signed by the believers, facts were given concerning the violation by the authorities of the laws on the rights of citizens to freedom of conscience and inviolability of the home. The commission promised to give an answer to the declaration later and read out a decision fining Murashkin and Barkhatova 50 roubles each. On 9 June eight of those who had signed the declaration were summoned by the commission: they were handed resolutions fining them 50 roubles each. When Murashkin asked: ‘Is this the answer to our declaration then?’, he was again fined 50 roubles. Three of those fined asked the commission to give the reason for the penalty in the resolution, or at least to mention the prayer-meeting, which was the reason for the charge against them. The secretary failed to do this. They then refused to accept the resolutions fining them. The secretary said he would impose the fines through the courts.

On 10 May the police tried to break up the wedding of N. Kuznetsov. When the believers prevented this, the police withdrew.

On 18 June a meeting held by a group of believers in the home of V. Rybakova was broken up. At the same time N. Kuznetsov was taken to the police station, where he spent the night; in the morning he was given a 15-day sentence.

During the months April to June, the Pentecostal congregation in Maloyaroslavets suffered a number of raids by police and officials during religious services.

The believers whose names were taken during these raids were summoned by the town administrative commission, which drew up charges against them of ‘illegally holding religious services’. On these charges the believers were fined 930 roubles. The presbyter was fined four times — 200 roubles altogether. In three months, 14 people in all were fined.

On 30 June, at the Maloyaroslavets railway station, police detained G. N. Ukhtomskaya, a member of the Moscow Pentecostal congregation, together with her 11-year-old son and O. Murashkina (wife of presbyter V. Murashkin), who was accompanying her and with whom Ukhtomskaya had stayed as a guest.

They were taken to the railway police station, searched and interrogated. The disappearance of some property was given as an explanation of their detention. During the search ‘A Bible-study Course for Sunday Schools’, an article, ‘Expelled for their Faith’ by V. Puzankov, and notes Murashkin had made on the article were confiscated from Ukhtomskaya. The interrogation lasted four hours. The police chief tried to find out to where and by what channels information on the position of believers in the USSR was sent.

On 11 July Alexei Semeryanov was detained and taken to a police station, where he was questioned for 24 hours. The authorities are afraid that he was in Moscow and met foreigners in order to give them information on the repression of the Maloyaroslavets congregation.

***

TERNOPOL.

On 3 April a prayer meeting at the home of Ya. A. Sokol was interrupted by the local police chief Kupchak, the vigilantes Kovalenko, Kokhan and Myasnoi, the chairman of the public commission on the care of minors and an official of the Ternopol City OVD. Lieutenant Kupchak came into the room and told those assembled there to stop the service and disperse.

The owner of the house suggested that they should wait until the end of the service. When he went up to the door to see who else was on the veranda and outside in the court-yard, Kovalenko struck the door so hard that it came off its hinges. Sokol tried to shame him. He said that he would open the other half of the door, so that people could see what the vigilantes were doing. Then Kupchak thrust him aside. A report was drawn up on the proceedings, in which it was merely stated that religious believers, among them children, had met in the house.

Later a criminal case was made out against Sokol. The indictment stated that Sokol had pushed Kupchak away, and, with the aim of compromising the police and the vigilantes, had tried to throw open the door, create an uproar and summon other people. He had then torn the door itself off its hinges and pushed Kovalenko away. After receiving a copy of the indictment, Sokol appealed to the Procurator in a declaration stating that the evidence given by the witnesses and the victim was false; this was backed up by the fact that the report of 3 April did not say a word about Sokol being guilty of anything.

Nevertheless, a court hearing took place on 25 June. The chief witness and the ‘victim’ Kovalenko were not even called by the court. Nor were the believers — 60 witnesses — questioned. Sokol was sentenced under Article 188-1 of the Ukrainian SSR Criminal Code (‘Resisting a police officer or a people’s vigilante’) to one year of imprisonment in ordinary-regime camps.

VINNITSA.

On 10 May a policeman and an official of the district soviet executive committee interrupted the wedding of L. Vorona and I. Derun.

They tried to interfere with the performance of the marriage ceremony, which was accompanied by a religious service. L. Vorona and N. Polyakov were fined 50 roubles each. A presbyter from Zhdanov [Mariupol], V. Prudnikov (CCE 47.6), who performed the ceremony, was summoned by the commissioner of the Donetsk Regional Council for Religious Affairs.

ESTONIA.

P. A. Melnichuk, a resident of the town of Kiviili, in Kohtla-Jarve district, received a warning on 11 July from the Kohtla-Jarve town soviet executive committee about violating the ‘statutes on Religious Associations’ in that he organized meetings of unregistered religious congregations. In particular the warning stated:

“You are also warned not to organize trips to the Moscow Olympic Games, either personally or with members of your religious group, and not to carry out religious propaganda among visitors to the Olympics.”

3. ADVENTISTS

The Council of the All-Union Church of True and Free Seventh Day Adventists (TFSDAs) reports that, according to the evidence available up to July, over 200 searches have been carried out in the last two years in Adventist homes, with confiscation of religious and human rights literature, and that 39 people have been imprisoned.

CENTRAL ASIA

‘Open Letter’ No. 12 (CCE 57.27) reports arrests and searches in Frunze (1979 pop. 535,450) and Kattakurgan (Uzbekistan).

On the night of 13-14 February, a search took place at the home of A. L. Lysenko in Frunze (Kirgiz SSR). The owner had been arrested the day before. His young wife was at home. She had her arms twisted, the light was switched off and she was ordered to take her child out on the street.

On 28 February In Kattakurgan (Uzbek SSR) a search was carried out at the home of T. A. Razdymakha, who had been arrested before the search. During the search, floors were taken up and people searched for something in the yard and the plot of ground next to the garden. A Bible and other religious literature, a tape-recorder and a savings book were confiscated. No search record was left.

A. N. Sporykhin (also an Adventist), a Group II invalid, who was driving on a motorcycle past Razdymakha’s house, together with his son, was seized and dragged into the house, in the course of which action his clothes were torn.

Investigator Khalikulov, a participant in the search, kicked Sporykhin on his injured leg, brought him to the ground and, placing his foot on his chest, ordered him to keep quiet. Sporykhin’s son tried to call for help to the neighbours — but his mouth was covered.

On the same day KGB officials carried out more searches in Kattakurgan.

In one of them the searchers broke into a house which N. I. Voropayeva and E. S. Kireyeva were visiting. Voropayeva tried to protest against the search being carried out in the absence of the owner. Akhmedov, who was in charge of the search, hit her on the face and began to beat her head against the wall. The 73-year-old Kireyeva was taken ill at this point. Akhmedov would not allow her to take any medicine.

***

On 1 July 1980 Rostislav Nikolayevich GALETSKY (CCE 48.2, CCE 49.14-1), leader of the Group of the All-Union Church of True and Free SDAs for Legal Struggle and Investigation of the Facts of Persecution of Believers in the USSR, was arrested in Moscow on the day of his arrival there.

RIGA

On 7 June 1980 a group of Adventists in Riga (30 adults and three children) met together in the house of V. Darguziene to hold a Sabbath morning service.

At 11 o’clock a minibus drove up to the house. Two men in police uniform and 15 in civilian clothes got out of it. Jumping over the fence, they began to knock at the door. Then they broke it down and forced their way into the house.

A KGB official known to them from previous searches asked those who had assembled to give their names and show their identity documents. The believers insisted that the invaders should first show their documents. One of them then named himself as MVD Captain Vorobyov. A search record prepared in advance was read out; the mistress of the house was asked to sign it. After receiving a refusal, on the grounds that the men who had broken into the house had not given proof of their identities, Vorobyov called out an operations unit of 25 police cadets.

They arrested nine men and took them out to the bus. While this ‘operation’ was being carried out, the house was surrounded by the men in plain clothes and the flow of traffic on the street was brought to a halt. During the raid, when the mistress of the house began to have a heart-attack, an ambulance was called, although the raiders had expressly forbidden it. Those arrested were taken to the Riga UVD and attempts made to force them to sign statements prepared in advance by KGB officials, which read:

“I (name) admit that I am guilty of attending an illegal assembly of unregistered believers which took place at 59 Sejas Street and where minors were also present, and I promise not to do so again.”

The believers refused to sign such a text and offered to write their own statements. This was refused. Seven believers, who had filled out forms giving personal details, were released but G. E. Nikolayev and A. S. Dembitsky were detained and taken to a special detention centre. There they were forced to give their fingerprints. They refused to do so.

Nikolayev was put in a cell with criminal prisoners. The next day they were taken to the People’s Court of the Lenin district in Riga. Nikolayev’s wife, who had appealed to the head of the special centre for news of her husband’s fate, was told to come back the next day. When she arrived at the appointed time, she was informed that her husband and Dembitsky had already been sentenced to 15 days’ imprisonment each. Evidence in court was given only by Captain Vorobyov.

Nikolayev and Dembitsky were accused of singing anti-Soviet hymns — they had sung religious hymns — and shouting anti-Soviet slogans: they had quoted Lenin’s Decrees, the Constitution and the international covenants.

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