Chats, January-February 1981 (61.8)

<< Issue 61 : 16 March 1981 >>

At the end of January 1981 and beginning of February another ‘week of prophylactic chats’ took place (CCE 56.8).

In January a ‘chat’ was held with L. Aptekar (CCE 52.15-1) at work about why he was sending parcels to psychiatric hospitals (the names of the addressees were mentioned).

On 29 January Ludmila Boitsova, wife of Sergei Kovalyov, was summoned to a ‘chat’ with the Party secretary of the Moscow University laboratory where she worked. An instructor from the Party district committee and a representative of the University trade-union committee took part in the ‘chat’. The main issue was Boitsova’s signing of letters in defence of Velikanova and Bakhmin. The Party secretary explained to Boitsova that these actions discredited the collective, the laboratory, the University and the Soviet State, since Western propaganda used the letters she had signed for ‘vile anti-Soviet purposes’.

On 29 January M. Utevsky (CCE 37.4) was summoned from work to the district offices of the KGB. Lt-Col. Nikolayev conducted the ‘chat’, which lasted about half an hour. The conversation concerned Utevsky’s signature of a letter in defence of Bakhmin. Utevsky was asked: ‘Why do you think these letters will help?’

On 29 January S. Grimm, the wife of Yury Grimm (trial, CCE 58.9), was summoned to Procurator V.I. Molochkov at the Moscow City Procuracy. The ‘chat’ lasted about half an hour. Molochkov threatened Grimm with arrest for ‘continuing the activities for which your husband was convicted’.

The Procurator demanded that Grimm stop going to see ‘anti-Soviet types’, said that ‘we’ll educate your son ourselves’, and reminded her that she had been warned not to go to Pushkin Square on 10 December but had gone anyway. S. Grimm reminded him that she had asked for permission to emigrate. Procurator: ‘That’s not our decision’.

On 30 January D. Leontyev was summoned to a police station, where a ‘chat’ was held with him concerning letters he had signed in defence of Vyacheslav Bakhmin and Tatyana Velikanova.

At the end of January 1981 or beginning of February Lina Borisovna TUMANOVA was summoned through the personnel section of the institute where she works, the Research Institute on Technical Aesthetics, to the Babushkino district soviet executive committee in the part of Moscow where the institute is located.

A councillor and a plain-clothes man were present in the room, as well as the deputy director and a Party organizer from Tumanova’s work-place. The councillor began to clarify her biographical data. Tumanova refused to reply and asked why she had been summoned.

Regarding your behaviour.
I’m not a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl – I don’t have to account for what I do.
I’m talking about your anti-Soviet activities.
What do you mean by ‘anti-Soviet activities’?
Was there a search at your home?
Yes. [In summer 1980 linked to the case of Mazur, CCE 57.12]
Well, prohibited literature was confiscated then.
What literature?
Moskva-Petushki [note 1] and work by F. Iskander. (Turning to Tumanova’s work-mates: ‘These materials here – pointing to the plain-clothes man’s briefcase – and a lot more besides was confiscated.’)
Like The Gulag Archipelago. As for Moskva-Petushki and the work by Fazil Iskander – that’s top-rate literature, while Solzhenitsyn describes facts known to everyone. Do we really have prohibited literature?
We certainly do!
Then there should be an index of prohibited literature. As long as that doesn’t exist, neither does prohibited literature.
Why do you keep pretending! You really know that it’s anti-Soviet literature.
No, what does that mean? By ‘anti-Soviet literature’ I understand works which call for the overthrow of the Soviet regime. But literature which describes facts isn’t anti-Soviet, it’s the facts which are anti-Soviet.
There are facts and insignificant facts.
I don’t understand the distinction.
All the same, why do you pretend not to understand?
I mean Solzhenitsyn, whom you support, doesn’t live in the Soviet Union.
Half of my library consists of authors who don’t live in the Soviet Union.
You know I’m talking about the fact that this man has been deprived of Soviet citizenship.
Plain-clothes man: ‘Where did you get this document from?’ (Displays a typewritten set of texts of an informational nature.)
Who might you be? Questions like that are for the KGB to ask and should take the form of an official interrogation.

(The plain-clothes man keeps quiet and closes the document case.)

Do you now see what your anti-Soviet activities consists of?
No, I don’t.
I’ve just proved it to you.
You haven’t proved anything to me. Everything you’ve said is unsubstantiated.
Evidently, we haven’t understood each other, and I must warn you that a case will bebrought against you.
That’s not your function either, and I won’t talk to you about it.

On 2 February 1981, Zarina Dzeboyeva, the wife of Vadim Shcheglov (CCE 56.10, CCE 57.9; a member of the Christian Committee to Defend Believers’ Rights in the USSR), was summoned to an ‘ideological commission’ at the district soviet executive committee. She teaches drawing at Special School No. 402; the director of the school where she works was present at the ‘chat’.

Dzeboyeva was told that a ‘signal’ had been received from the Moscow Soviet that she, Dzeboyeva, ‘was conducting religious propaganda’ amongst her pupils. She was also warned not to engage in the ‘transmission of information to the West’. After the ‘chat’ the director of the school asked Dzeboyeva to resign, which she promptly did.

On 4 February a KGB officer, who introduced himself as assistant to B.B. Karatayev (//CCE 57), came to see Yury Gastev. He informed Gastev that Karatayev wanted to ‘chat’ to him, so Gastev should ‘drop by’. Gastev agreed but asked him to wait until he had finished his dinner.

Karatayev held a short talk with Gastev at the nearest police station. The essence of the ‘chat’ was the fact that Gastev was offered a choice: either to leave the USSR before April, in which case the KGB would give him every guarantee that his relatives would not be prevented from leaving either, or to give a signed undertaking not to engage in any ‘activities’. Gastev replied that he could not leave right away: he needed about a year to tidy up his affairs. They ‘reached an agreement’ that the KGB would ‘find’ Gastev at the end of April and they would continue the conversation [note 2].

MARCH 1981

On 2 March a plain-clothes man who introduced himself as a police officer came to see Yu. Denisov (CCE 57.6) at his work-place. In the presence of the director of the Budapest restaurant, where Denisov works, he had a ‘chat’ with Denisov about his acquaintances.

At the beginning of March Z. Gorbacheva, wife of Sergei Gorbachev (trial, CCE 58.20), was summoned to the Kalinin KGB. During the chat, which lasted two-and-a-half hours, KGB officer A.M. Antonov said he had summoned her just because he ‘wanted to get to know her better’.

Antonov briefly described his career, about five years’ service in the KGB; he spoke about the difficulties of working for the ‘organs’ in the past (in the Khrushchev era ‘liaison’ was bad – practically no ‘signals’ reached the KGB, but now, thank God, things had changed for the better); he described the ‘everyday work’ of the Kalinin KGB:

‘the other day we got a signal that a lot of people were gathering in a certain flat in Kalinin. We checked it out. Turned out it was a spiritualism seance. Well, that’s not of interest to us. We also know about a lot of people who tell political jokes. But they don’t interest us either. Let them joke.’

Antonov asked her to tell the wife of Josif Dyadkin (trial, CCE 58.20) not to accept money from the Relief Fund for Political Prisoners: ‘Let her work-mates help. But money from Solzhenitsyn – you know what our attitude is towards him. We’re concerned that Dyadkin’s son has fallen in with Lozovsky [CCE 56.13, CCE 57.9 & CCE 58.20]: he’s even worse than Dyadkin’. Antonov warned Gorbacheva not to agree to any financial assistance, otherwise it would be ‘bad, very bad’, not only for her, but for her husband as well. In conclusion Antonov gave Gorbacheva his work telephone number and asked her to ring whenever she liked: ‘The organs are always ready to help you’.

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NOTES

1. Moscow-Petushki, a novel by Venedikt Yerofeyev, was published in English as Moscow to the End of the Line (Taplinger, USA, 1981).

2. Gastev emigrated in June 1981.

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