Ivan Alexeyevich Vernik
On 19 January 1972 the Zaporozhe Regional Court tried Ivan Alexeyevich Vernik (b. 1942, an electrician, with secondary school education) on charges of ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda’.
The presiding judge at the trial was G. I. Melaninova. The State prosecutor was procurator A. Ya, Kovalenko. The prosecutor representing society was N, S. Golovan. The defence was conducted by the lawyer N. L. Kravtsova.
Vernik was accused of ‘having systematically listened, with the aid of his VEF-12 transistor radio, to anti-Soviet radio transmissions from the foreign radio stations ‘Voice of Ameria’, ‘Radio Liberty’, and others. Succumbing to the influence of bourgeois propaganda, Vernik systematically carried out anti-Soviet propaganda among the employees in special department 205 at the ‘Zaporozhe Metallurgy Assembly’ works and among other persons, by spreading slanderous fabrications defaming the Soviet social and political system.’ (From the verdict: the verdict will be published in full in the Archive of the Chronicle.)
For example, the indictment states that ‘in March 1971, while working in a group in the polishing workshop, Vernik repeatedly talked to other workers using language which sought to defame the political position of the working class in our country and slandering the material living conditions of the workers, while praising the way of life in capitalist countries’.
During the trial many of those who had seen Vernik’s ‘listeners’ appeared as witnesses for the prosecution and confirmed the charges.
The court sentenced Vernik to four years in strict-regime camps (he had been arrested on 15 November 1971). The VEF-12 radio mentioned above was confiscated by the court ‘for use by the State’.
(CCE 33.6-3 [136] gave I. A. Vernik’s age and place of residence incorrectly in the list of prisoners in Camp 36 of the Perm complex.)
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