On 2 July 1979 the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR examined the appeal made by Vladimir A. Shelkov, I. S. Lepshin, A. A. Spalin, Sophia P. Furlet and their lawyers. It approved the sentence passed by Tashkent City Court (CCE 53.3-1).
On 22 July 1979 Shelkov was transferred to a camp — in CCE 55.7 this was reported inaccurately — near Tabaga village, 40 kilometres from Yakutsk (Yakut ASSR, Soviet Far East).
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SICKNESS AND DEATH
Shelkov was at first placed on a diet of half a litre of milk and twenty grams of butter per day. In December 1979 this diet was changed. Then Shelkov was denied the use of the camp shop. Shelkov, who was a vegetarian, then began to live on bread and tea.
On 5 January 1980 Shelkov was taken ill. He was not admitted to hospital until 17 January, but even then he was refused treatment because there were no medicines available in the hospital. He began constantly vomiting.
Shelkov died on 27 January 1980 (CCE 56.2).
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On 28 January 1980, his wife received the following telegram:
“We inform you that your husband V. A. Shelkov died on 27 January. Telegraph time of your arrival for funeral.” (Sent by Gavrilov, head of Penal Institution YaD, postbox 40/7.)
Shelkov’s children flew out to the camp, but Gavrilov refused to give them their father’s body. He said: “You can take his body in three years and bury him where he wished to be buried.” He also refused to delay the funeral in order to give other relatives time to arrive after receiving telegrammes inviting them.
The relatives left Tashkent by plane on 31 January 1980. They only reached the camp on the evening of 4 February, when Shelkov’s body had already been buried.
On 5 February, after persistent requests, they were allowed to exhume the coffin and perform a burial according to religious rites.
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OPEN LETTER
“Open Letter No. 12” (12 May 1980) states in part:
“The villainy of the State atheist dictatorship is the reason for the death of Vladimir Andreyevich SHELKOV, Chairman of the All-Union Church of True and Free Seventh Day Adventists”.
The council of the Church expresses the suspicion that the authorities gave Shelkov something which was having a ‘mysterious effect’ on his organism. To justify this suspicion, they refer to the following evidence:
1. When Shelkov was arrested (CCE 49.14-1) Procurator G.V. Ponomaryov announced that the authorities now had the means at their disposal to make a man talk and say things contrary to his will.
2. In his last letters Shelkov complained that for some inexplicable reason he was becoming progressively weaker.
3. Semyon F. Bakholdin (b. 1929), arrested on 15 April 1978 (CCE 49.14-1) and sentenced to seven years in hard-regime camps and three years in exile (CCE 53.3-2), is dying in a camp hospital in Solikamsk from inexplicable loss of weight and weakness.
4. Rikhard A. Spalin (b. 1937), arrested in September 1978 (CCE 51.15) and sentenced to seven years in camps (CCE 54.19), has developed epilepsy.
5. N.P. Ruzhechko (b. 1927; F.), arrested on 2 December 1979 in Yurga, Kemerovo Region (west Siberia), died on 1 January 1980 during the pre-trial investigation of her case from a “stroke of the cerebral blood-vessels”.
In the opinion of people who saw her body, she had been tortured during the investigation.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 