6 ENTRIES
[1]
BOHDAN CHUIKO
CCE 46.12 already reported that Bohdan Chuiko [1], who has been sent from Perm Camp 36 into exile in central Siberia (Bakchar village, Tomsk Region), is not receiving a pension, although he is a Group II invalid; neither can he obtain a transfer closer to his family, or release from exile.
From a statement by the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, “On the Fate of Bohdan Chuiko” (May 1977), the circumstances have become known in more detail.
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Chuiko’s disabilities are as follows: he has no toes on his feet and the fingers of his hands are crippled; he suffers from hypertonia, arteriosclerosis and a weak heart.
He has had a heart attack, he has eye pains, headaches, breathlessness, and impairment of limb mobility: all of which makes him quite unfit for work. He is not being given a pension, as he has no documents proving his labour record or showing how he received invalid status.
All his medical documents (like the papers concerning his ‘case’) were confiscated from him in Camp 36. The camp administration should have sent to court the documents releasing Chuiko from exile and categorizing him as a man who cannot support himself. In addition to its failure to do so, it made his position even worse by giving him the following character reference:
“… He considers himself innocent. Always complaining. Hostile to the existing system … Has a bad influence on younger prisoners. A stubborn nationalist. He has not admitted his crime and has not embarked on the path of reform.”
As a result, Chuiko has been put under administrative surveillance, and he assumes that it is this character reference which has caused the particularly cruel attitude towards him.
The UkrSSR Supreme Court and the Presidium of the Ukraine SSR Supreme Soviet have refused to commute his term of exile.
The local authorities refuse to provide him with aid regarding food and clothing, as “Soviet laws do not allow exile for Group II invalids who are incapable of working”. Nor can his family send him any money: his wife is a pensioner, his daughter a schoolgirl, and his son is in the army. In answer to requests from Chuiko’s wife that he be moved closer to his family, the Ministry of Internal Affairs replies that there is no area for exiles in the Tambov Region (Chuiko’s family lives in the town of Michurinsk).
The Ukrainian Helsinki Group asks, in its statement, for the release of Bohdan Chuiko from exile, an illegal punishment which is a threat to his health.
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[2-5]
At the beginning of 1973, a group of Ukrainian nationalists was arrested in Rosokhach village (Ternopol Region): Andrei Kravets (CCE 39.2-1), Mykola Slobodyan, Petro Vinnichuk (CCE 39.2-1) and Stepan Sapelyak (CCE 33.5-2, CCE 42.4-1).
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After serving 4 years in camps, Vinnichuk has started on two years of exile in central Siberia. His address: Tomsk Region, Verkhneketsky district, p/o Bely Yar, Poludenovka settlement.
Kravets was released from the camps a year before (CCE 42.4-4); he is serving two years of exile in the same place.
Slobodyan [2] is in exile at the following address: Tomsk Region, Krivosheino district, Nikolskoye village. His term of exile is due to end at the beginning of 1979.
Sapelyak [3] is still in Perm Camp 36. He will leave the camp for a three-year term of exile at the beginning of 1978.
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[6]
VASYL STUS
KOLYMA (Soviet Far East). When Vasyl STUS (CCE 45.13 [4], CCE 46.12 [1]) moved from one room to another in a hostel, he was summoned by police to the district police station — 130 kilometres away!
Police chief Major Pereverzev began yelling at him there:
“Violating the exile regulations, are you? Want to go back to the camps?! We won’t let your wife come here!”
Stus is under administrative surveillance.
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The poems confiscated from Stus in the camps (CCE 42.4-1, CCE 44.17-1) have not been returned to him.
The Kiev publishing house, to which he sent a manuscript 10 years ago, has not replied to his letter asking that it be returned. The majority of letters sent by him and to him disappear. Stus sent a telegram to Andropov, saying that KGB officials were stealing his letters.
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As a result of an accident which took place in a mine, Stus [4] landed in hospital on 20 August 1977, where he was bedridden for two months.
He was visited there by a KGB official who declared that his allegation in the telegram to Andropov was a libel: Stus would answer for it. During Stus’s stay in hospital a secret search was carried out in his room.
From a letter by Stus to another exile:
“… I was better off in Mordovia. Here I howl like a wolf in my loneliness. But we aren’t giving in … Unlike all of you, I have a great disability: I’m a Ukrainian, so I feel a zoological hatred directed against me. …”
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NOTES
- On Chuiko, see CCE 48.3, CCE 48.10, CCE 56.24 and CCE 57.22.
↩︎ - On Slobodyan, see CCE 48.10-2, CCE 49.8-1 and CCE 51.9-1.
↩︎ - On Sapelyak, see CCE 33.5-2, CCE 42.4-1, CCE 47.9-2 and Name Index.
↩︎ - On Vasyl Stus, see CCE 8.14 [10], CCE 24.3, CCE 25.10 [7] and Name Index. He was put on trial again in 1980 and died in September 1985.
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Mykola Slobodian, b. 1944
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A Chronicle of Current Events 