The day after his arrest (CCE 62.2), 18 March, Anatoly Marchenko announced his refusal to take part in the investigation, giving as his reason that the KGB, in his opinion, was a criminal organization. Subsequently he wrote a statement about his refusal; as the CPSU controlled the KGB he considered both these organizations to be criminal.
During the investigation the chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Vladimir KGB told Marchenko that he would ‘never come out of’ camp. He was also threatened that his wife, Larissa Bogoraz, would be arrested.
*
TRIAL
From 2 to 4 September the Vladimir Regional Court, presided over by Deputy Court chairman N.N. Kolosov, heard the case of Anatoly Tikhonovich MARCHENKO (b. 1938), charged under part 2 of article 70 of the RSFSR Criminal Code. The prosecutor was Deputy Procurator of the Region S.Ya. Salnov and the defence lawyer L.D. Fradkin. (In 1980 Kolosov and Salnov tried Victor Nekipelov, CCE 57.2).
*
On the morning of 2 September in the Regional Court building, Kolosov told Larissa Bogoraz that he would not tell her where the case was to be heard: ‘You are being called as a witness. Come tomorrow and you will be taken to the right place’.
The secretary of the Court asked Bogoraz if she had brought a hearing aid for Marchenko. She replied that she did not know where the trial was to be held. The defense lawyer also did not know where it would open. Only when Kolosov had left the Regional Court was Fradkin able to tell Bogoraz where the trial was, then he went there with the judge.
The lawyer was handed a petition from relatives and friends of Marchenko requesting to be allowed into the room. However, he told Marchenko that only his wife had come to the trial. The examination took place in the Frunze Club, in a room for 25-30 people, filled with a ‘special audience’.
*
Day One
Marchenko declined to have a defence lawyer and repeated this petition more than once during the trial. He was always refused. The session lasted no more than three hours. None of Marchenko’s relatives or friends was allowed into the room at the Frunze Club that day.
*
Day Two
The session starred with the interrogation of witnesses.
I. Smolensky, commander of the army company in Chuna to which Nekipelov’s son was attached (CCE 62), testified that Marchenko had tried to influence him with anti-Soviet ideas, had recommended that he listen to foreign radio broadcasts. Moreover, Marchenko had helped S. Nekipelov to spread hostile information among the soldiers.
Khazin, a worker at the Chuna timber factory, testified that he had read From Tarusa to Chuna [note 1].
V. Sidorov, a driver at the Chuna timber factory, testified that he had borrowed The Gulag Archipelago from Marchenko. Marchenko had not tried to interest him in the book, however: he, Sidorov, had asked for it himself. (The Procurator’s speech and the judgment state: ‘Sidorov borrowed the book From Tarusa to Chuna from Marchenko’.)
S. Dyomina, a worker at the Chuna timber factory, testified that Marchenko worked well, but refused to work on days off.
*
Nazin-Rasputin, a dentist from Chuna, testified that Marchenko said that he received money from the publication of his books in the West.
(Two months after he became acquainted with Marchenko in Chuna, Nazin was arrested. During the investigation he was asked to testify against Marchenko concerning their involvement in a group rape. Nazin refused.
Then he was told to testify that Marchenko had asked him to put in gold teeth. Nazin again refused. Nazin was then given a three-year suspended sentence of ‘obligatory work’. Marchenko wrote a statement about the blackmailing of Nazin. Shortly afterwards Nazin was summoned to the KGB, told about Marchenko’s statement and told that he must testify that Marchenko had tried to recruit Nazin into an anti-Soviet organization. Nazin again refused, told Marchenko and wrote a statement about it.)
*
N.Mikhailova, a neighbour of Marchenko’s in Karabanovo, said that Marchenko ‘had a lot of money’: he had once told her that he could live without working – ‘my friends will support me’.
Orlov, a gas boiler mechanic, testified that Marchenko was a good worker, but did not do extra work – he came and left on the dot. Once Marchenko had asked his fellow-shift worker to do his shift for him, and then paid him for the shift. Marchenko told Orlov that he had paid him with money he had earned when he missed the shift. Nekipelov, before coming into the room he was searched, briefly set out the contents of his statement to Pleshkov (CCE 62). Asked whether he had used Marchenko’s library, he replied that, for instance, he had read Herzen.
*
Before entering the Frunze Club room, Larisa Bogoraz had her handbag taken away; she stated that she knew nothing about the present case – she had not been told what her husband was charged with.
Asked if she had read From Tarusa to Chuna, she refused to reply, giving as her reason that she considered criminal investigations for ideological reasons dangerous to society, and that her husband was being tried for literature.
‘We don’t conduct trials about literature here. This is not a work of literature. It is libel.’
‘Quiet flows the Don [note 2] was once also considered libellous,’ Bogoraz replied.
*
Several witnesses did not show up. The Procurator proposed that their evidence given during the pre-trial investigation should be read out. The Court agreed, but their evidence was not in fact read out. There were only some references to it as the trial proceeded.
The Court resolved that ‘the following documents should be taken as read’ and that they should not be read out in court, in view of their ‘anti-Soviet contents’ (a list of Marchenko’s work written since 1975 follows):
- From Tarusa to Chuna;
- “Public reply to the newspaper Izvestiya” (a typed copy of the article received by the investigation from the editorial offices of Izvestiya);
- “There is A Third Way” (samizdat CCE 39.12; tamizdat, 3]);
- Petition to the Supreme Soviet;
- Appeal to Soviet citizens living abroad;
- Appeal to the American people and the US Congress;
- Open letter to President Ford;
- Letter to AFL-CIO president, George Meany;
- Handwritten notes in a notebook beginning with the words ‘Will Soviet tanks enter Poland?’
- Handwritten notes in a notebook on three pages beginning with the words ‘Trials, demonstrations’;
- Open letter to Academician Kapitza (CCE 56.1-2);
- a selection of documents ‘In the name of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic’ (part of the book From Tarusa to Chuna, mostly correspondence with official Soviet institutions);
- an extract from Marchenko’s work “To Live like everyone else”, published in the collection Pamyat (Memory), No. 3 [4];
- Appeal to US Russian-language radio stations.
At Marchenko’s insistence, his testimony at the trial of Yury Orlov was read out: “I am the co-author of ‘There is A Third Way’. I am not going to answer anything else, as it all has nothing to do with Orlov’s case.”
A statement by Marchenko written after his arrest was read out in part. Marchenko asked for his statement written after he studied the case file to be read out. The lawyer objected; the statement was not read.
*
The Procurator asked Marchenko several questions: ‘What country do you consider that you belong to as a writer?’
Marchenko: I am Russian and therefore a Russian writer. Russian, not Soviet.
Procurator: Which of your works have been published in Russia?
Marchenko: I submitted my book My Testimony to the journal Moskva in 1968. There it was typed out for the board of the Writers’ Union, from where it was handed over to the Procurator’s office.
Procurator: Perhaps you are a member of the Writers’ Union?
Marchenko: I would consider it a disgrace to join the organization which murdered Mandelstam, Babel and Artyom Vesyoly.
(Judge: ‘That did not happen’.)
Procurator: If you are a writer, you must be a member of the Writers’ Union.
Marchenko: Gogol was not a member of your Writers’ Union, but he was a writer.
*
Then the court-appointed defence lawyer wanted to ask some questions.
“Marchenko, stand up, I’m talking to you.”
“I’m not going to stand, as I have renounced your services.”
The lawyer asked the Court to grant Marchenko’s petition to renounce his services. The Judge refused, referring to Marchenko’s hearing aid, which he had been given before the trial. Marchenko said that as soon as he was arrested, he had demanded a lawyer because of his deafness, and had put his demand in writing. Now a lawyer was being imposed on him even though he did not want him anymore. The Procurator replied that there was no written demand to that effect in the case file.
*
Day Three
In his speech the Procurator said that publishing houses and ‘centres’ abroad published emigre libels, but that it was ‘better for them’ if the writers they published lived in the Soviet Union. ‘This trial goes far beyond the framework of a criminal trial … An anti-Soviet activist is on trial here … Marchenko was well aware that he had to remain in this country to do the most harm.’
The Procurator described Marchenko’s works as ‘anti-Soviet works written with the aim of harming and undermining Soviet authority … perverting the course of our country’s historical development, calling on enemy states to intensify hostile actions against the USSR, and discrediting the Soviet way of life’. In ‘Public reply … ‘ the Procurator could discern Marchenko’s wish to engage in ‘anti-Soviet activities’; in his letter to Kapitza he saw calls to terrorism [Marchenko wrote in this letter that unless people like Kapitza supported the moral opposition, people like the Tsar’s assassin Kibalchich [note 5] would reappear, Chronicle]; in the handwritten notes — the glorification of Fascism, a call to armed battle and approval of the ‘invasion of Nazi hordes into the USSR’.
The Procurator brought in as aggravating circumstances a testimonial from school (‘studied poorly, he could organize the other pupils to disrupt the class), a testimonial from the Karlag camp complex (‘was put into the cooler nineteen times’), a testimonial written by the commandant in charge of him in exile, Korzun (CCE 43: ‘he was rude and discourteous’).
The Procurator demanded that Marchenko be ruled a particularly dangerous recidivist and that he should be sentenced to 10 years’ deprivation of freedom followed by exile for five years.
*
When the lawyer Fradkin was given the floor for the speech for the defence, Marchenko again stated that he refused to be defended. After deliberating for twenty minutes, the court asked for the opinions of the other parties. Neither the Procurator nor the defence lawyer had any objection. Marchenko stated that the lawyer was a communist and could not defend him, as Marchenko considered the CPSU to be a criminal organization. The court again deliberated for twenty minutes and refused the request.
‘Criminality’, said the lawyer, ‘comes from the remains of the past. Why is not everyone a criminal? Because the remains of the past affect everyone differently; one person can overcome them, another cannot.’
The lawyer considered that the crime did indeed come under part 2 of article 70 of the Criminal Code. He asked that it should be taken into consideration that the remains of the past had, with Marchenko, fallen on very fertile ground.
The lawyer said that Marchenko’s father had fought in the war, that the character of the accused should be taken into account – his good attitude to work (with reference to the testimonies of Dyomina and Orlov), and that a minimum sentence under this article would help him to recognize his guilt earlier and to reform, as he would appreciate a display of humanitarianism.
*
Marchenko’s final statement lasted for more than an hour. He said, among other things:
“This is the sixth time that I have been in the dock, but this time I am pleased, as it is the first time that I am being tried not on fabricated charges, but for what I have actually done. They are there on the table – the books, articles, essays which I have written … Only a communist or Fascist regime defends itself in this way – not with ideas but with brute force. It could even be considered comical that such a strong State with such a strong mass propaganda machine, a State which owns all the press, radio and television, should fight against ideas with such methods as camps and prisons. It must mean that communist ideology has no other means of persuasion.
“What is this Article 70 under which I am charged? This Article is needed for the spiritual enslavement of each and every one of us, to turn everyone into slaves. Those of us who are brought to trial and imprisoned are not in fact convicts but prisoners of war – the civil war continues. Once, captives were eaten, then they were used as slaves, and now I can look forward to ‘corrective labour‘.”
Then Marchenko went into detail about the works that incriminated him. He said that his aim was to show there was no libel in them.
During the investigation he had been asked what his intention had been in co-authoring ‘There is A Third Way’. The intention was clear in the text of the article, where it was stated that the work expressed one point of view concerning Soviet foreign policy and the position of the country in the world. In his book From Tarusa to Chuna there was no libel either:
“Was I not arrested? Did I not go hungry? Was I not transported when on hunger strike?”
Marchenko mentioned, along with the letter to Kapitza, a letter to Bondarchuk which did not appear in the charges. He expressed his surprise that these letters should be answered by a court verdict. Did this mean that Kapitza and Bondarchuk were unable to read and write? More likely, it meant they had nothing to reply, said Marchenko.
Referring to the incriminating draft notes, Marchenko remarked that in a normal society it was considered impolite even to look at other people’s rough notes, but that here they took up a whole volume of the case. The investigator had told Marchenko that notes revealed the soul, as people wrote here exactly what they felt.
“It does happen”, said Marchenko, “that rough drafts are sometimes published. But only those of dead people.”
“So it’s possible to look at them, see the soul and quote them. Well, in one of the last volumes of Lenin’s works there is a special section called ‘preparatory material’. These notes were written at the end of Lenin’s life when he was summing up his views. And what do we find in these notes? There is an entry, ‘The Soviet regime is shit’. And on the factories in our towns, we read a slogan by the same author, ‘Socialism is the Soviet regime plus electrification of the whole country’. So in Lenin’s soul he thought ‘Socialism is shit plus electrification of the whole country’.”
(Stunned amazement in the room, but the judge did not react).
“Today, I am being tried here by people from an older generation than my own. Having defended Europe against Fascism, they returned to their homeland, covered with medals. And immediately they started to herd each other into camps. Where was their courage when the threat came from their own countrymen? Now it has been admitted that this was a mistake, but then people of that generation merely said in surprise, when they were arrested, ‘But why?’ … I am proud that I do not belong to that generation!
“In fact, I have a great advantage over those in this room – I am not hiding anything, I have said and am saying what I think.
“If this State system thinks that the only way of refuting people like me is to keep us behind bars, then I have no objections. This means that I will be behind bars until the end of my days, I’ll be your prisoner for ever …“
*
SENTENCE
The sentence was 10 years’ strict-regime camp and five years’ exile. In the judgment Marchenko’s poor health and hearing were mentioned. Because of this, the court decided not to rule Marchenko a particularly dangerous recidivist.
The ‘special public’ greeted the sentence with applause.
After the sentence was read, Marchenko cried out: “I am not going to appeal!”
His wife took a step towards him, but a plain-clothes man immediately grabbed her from behind by the elbow and pushed her back on her chair, saying: ‘Sit down, sit down, Larissa Josifovna’. Then three people held Bogoraz back, while Marchenko tried to tell her about clothes he needed.
But he was kicked and shoved out of the room.
*
After the Trial
The day after the sentence, all the papers on the case were removed from Marchenko, together with his clothes (he was given prison clothes). He was shaved and put on prison rations (with a reduced norm) as a prisoner, although the verdict had not yet legally come into force.
L. Bogoraz was given permission for the visit with her husband allowed by law, but at the prison she was not allowed the visit: ‘Quarantine’, she was told. She was not allowed to leave anything for him: ‘He’s a prisoner – he’s not allowed to receive things’. Bogoraz objected that not even the time allowed for appeal had yet expired, but they replied: ‘What does that matter! He’s still a convict’.
*
On 6 September the Moscow Helsinki Group approved Document No. 183, ‘The Trial of Anatoly Marchenko’.
*
On 8 September, T. Trusova (CCE 56) wrote a letter to Andropov:
‘The greatness of a human being does not depend on the views he holds, or on the character traits he manifests in daily life. Greatness is determined by the independence and courage of his way of thinking, by loyalty to friends, by fidelity to a chosen way of life. There are not many people who are greater than the average of their contemporaries.
‘We say of these people: he’s a real person, or a great person. The more of these people there are in the history of a nation or at a given moment, the greater the moral and humanitarian potential of a country. When I heard of the trial and the sentence, I felt that myself was placed in the same stocks in which you and the organization you direct place our country with trials like this. I am ashamed to be the citizen of a country where people are tried for thoughts and words. I am ashamed to be at liberty when thoughts and words are doomed to remain behind barbed wire. Surely you realize that it is you and your trials which give birth to dissidents?’
*
On 12 September, V. Grinev (CCE 56) wrote a letter to Andropov:
‘What Marchenko said and wrote is what a lot of people think in our country. Not everyone has the courage to express it publicly enough. Any honourable person who is able to think for himself can only, in the conditions of our society, admire Marchenko and envy his fate.’
On 25 September, although the sentence had not yet legally come into force, Marchenko was dispatched on the journey to camp. He was sent to Perm Camp 35. About one month later he was sent back to Vladimir Prison.
In prison, Marchenko had a meeting with the Regional Procurator, Obraztsov, who admitted that the prison authorities had acted illegally.
*
On 7 October, Andrei Sakharov wrote a letter, ‘Save Anatoly Marchenko’:
‘Of all the cruelties and injustices which life throws at us, repeat sentences for prisoners of conscience are dreadful. The practice adopted by the Soviet judiciary of giving particularly severe sentences for repeat convictions frequently leads to bias, and even in ordinary criminal cases turns people into perpetual prisoners. The application of this system to people on trial for their beliefs, for non-violent actions, and more often than not, only for inner independence and for being true to themselves, is monstrous. In the last few years Tikhy, Lukyanenko, Stus, Petkus, Niklus, Gajauskas, Airikyan and others have been given repeat sentences. And now it’s the turn of Anatoly Marchenko, writer and worker, our friend Tolya.
‘A sixth sentence – after eleven years’ deprivation of freedom following four of the previous sentences – of ten years’ imprisonment and five years of exile. The flimsy charges against him were participation in collective human rights appeals, rough drafts from notebooks, a polemical article five years old about the problems of detente, and an autobiographical book, From Tarusa to Chuna. And also – an open letter to Academician Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitza – a bitter and just reproach to the top levels of the Soviet intelligentsia, of which Kapitza is a representative, and at the same time a call to stand up straight, to throw off pernicious and shameful passivity, to throw off trivial egoism. Kapitza did not react in any way to the letter. The KGB reacted. Maybe now, Kapitza and his colleagues will finally do something for Tolya.
‘Marchenko’s sentence is undisguised vengeance, an open reprisal for remarkable books about the contemporary Gulag (about which he was one of the first to write), for steadfastness, honesty and independence of mind and character. Particular hatred was shown when he was deprived of the meeting with close relatives, laid down by law, after the trial – with his wife and son. It Is to be feared that the administration in camp will also find pretexts for not allowing meetings.
‘The years will pass, and our country will be proud of Anatoly Marchenko. Today he is on the brink of destruction – he is being killed, spiritually and physically. He must be saved today!’
*
At the beginning of November Larissa Bogoraz was allowed a two-hour meeting with her husband – through a double pane of glass. In the middle of November Marchenko’s case came up for appeal at the RSFSR Supreme Court; the lawyer Fradkin had written an appeal at Larissa Bogoraz’s request. The sentence remained unaltered (the appeal was heard without a lawyer, as Bogoraz had not been able to engage one).
On 4 December L. Bogoraz was again allowed a two-hour meeting with her husband.
On 5 December Marchenko was taken away to travel to the camps. On 17 December he arrived again at Perm Camp No. 35 (this issue ‘Prisons and Camps’ CCE 63.16).
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NOTES
Anatoly Marchenko died in December 1986, after a lengthy hunger-strike in Chistopol Prison (see USSR News Update, 1986, 22/23-1).
*
- From Tarusa to Chuna was published in Russian by Khronika Press, New York, 1976.
↩︎ - Long an establishment writer, Mikhail Sholokhov was author of Quiet Flows the Don.
↩︎ - Marchenko’s co-authored “Third Way” was published in Kontinent, Paris (1976, No. 9) after circulating in samizdat.
↩︎ - Pamyat No. 3, YMCA Press, Paris, 1980 (580 pp.) was a collection of writings and documents on themes of Soviet history (CCE 52.17). It could not be published in the USSR because of censorship.
↩︎ - N.I. Kibalchich (1854-1881), a scientist who helped assassinate Tsar Alexander II and was consequently hanged. (A forbear, possibly, of Victor Serge.)
↩︎
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A Chronicle of Current Events 