General Grigorenko and his Friends

General Grigorenko and his Friends.

Original Source: Chronicle of Current Events (Possev-Verlag, Frankfurt, 1970), pp. 495-97.

Pyotr Grigorevich Grigorenko was born in 1907 in the village of Borisovka in Zaporozhe Province [south Ukraine], His father was one of the organizers of the collective farm there, and Pyotr Grigorevich himself was the first in his village to enroll in the Komsomol. From the age of fifteen he worked as a metalworker in Donetsk, where he also completed a course at the workers' higher education college. In 1929 Grigorenko entered the Kharkov Polytechnic Institute, but in his third year he was transferred to the Kuibyshev Military Engineering Academy by party directive. After completing his studies at the academy, he served four years in military units, then studied in the Voroshilov General Staff Academy. Grigorenko participated in the battle of Khalkhin-Gol [on the Manchurian border in 1939 against the Japanese] and in the Second World War. As a result of a hip wound Grigorenko became a second-category War Invalid.

He was awarded the Order of Lenin, two Orders of the Red Flag, the Order of the Red Star, the Order of the Patriotic War, and six medals. After the war Grigorenko spent seventeen years working in [Moscow's] Frunze Military Academy, first as Head of the Research Department, and later Head of the Cybernetics Department. In 1948 he defended his thesis and was awarded the degree of Master of Military Sciences. In 1959 he was given the rank of Major-General.

In 1961 Grigorenko spoke at a Party Conference of the Lenin District in Moscow, calling for the restoration of Leninist principles. Following this, he received a party reprimand, was suspended from his job, and six months later was demoted and sent to Ussuriisk [near Vladivostok]. The defense of his doctoral dissertation, fixed for November 1961 was cancelled.

Even in Ussuriisk, Grigorenko did not cease his open protests against the erratic policies of the party leadership then in power, and in February 1964 he was arrested by the K.G.B. To prevent him opening his mouth at a trial Grigorenko was declared insane and put in a prison psychiatric hospital in Leningrad, from which he emerged only fifteen months later. Meanwhile he had been reduced to the ranks and expelled from the party, although a sick man should not be considered legally responsible for his actions, and he should not have to bear responsibility before party and administrative organs either. The taking of these repressive measures is just one more proof that the tale of Grigorenko's 'insanity' is pure fiction.

After coming out of hospital, the war invalid Grigorenko was reduced to working as a porter to earn his keep. But despite this painful existence, and despite the threat of new internment in a hospital, General Grigorenko never ceased his struggle against arbitrary acts. He protested against the trials of Khaustov and Bukovsky, of Ginzburg and Galanskov, and of those who took part in the demonstration of August 25th, 1968. He was one of the twelve co-authors of the appeal to the Budapest meeting, and spoke out in support of Anatoly Marchenko when the latter was arrested. He protested at the arrest of Irina Belogorodskaya, and later compiled a record of her trial. He also compiled a collection of materials on the funeral of A. E. Kosterin, a very close friend, who had been carrying on the struggle with him against all manifestations of arbitrariness, especially arbitrary policies towards national minorities. Together with Ivan Yakhimovich he sharply condemned the continuing occupation of Czechoslovakia.

As time passed, Grigorenko became increasingly occupied with the fate of the Crimean Tatars, a people deprived of their homeland. His numerous actions in support of the Tatars earned him the respect of a large section of the Tatar people. Two thousand Tatars appealed to Grigorenko to act as public defense spokesman at the trial of ten activists of the Tatar movement which is shortly to take place in Tashkent. Grigorenko sent this letter, together with a declaration of his own, to the Uzbek Supreme Court, but got no reply.

Meanwhile Grigorenko was caught up in an ever-thickening web of slanderous gossip and provocations. The story was circulated at various meetings and discussions that Grigorenko had 'sold himself to the imperialists for the sake of fame'. Declarations were put out, calculated to appeal to people's baser feelings, to the effect that Grigorenko was a Jew but was registered as a Ukrainian when he joined the party. An anonymous letter was circulated, supposedly written by the Crimean Tatars, explaining to their fellow-Tatars that Grigorenko was a madman and an 'anti-Sovietist'. In April this year the K.G.B. tried to organize a provocation by arranging a meeting between Grigorenko and a complete stranger who telephoned him; they possibly hoped to catch him 'red-handed' at the moment when some material of a truly anti-Soviet nature would be handed to him. Grigorenko came to this 'meeting' accompanied by a large group of his friends; K.G.B. cars were parked all around, and the whole place was thick with K.G.B. men. But at the sight of undesirable witnesses the K.G.B. had to call off their provocation. The 'stranger' never approached the General, and only later, after Grigorenko's arrest, did he pay a visit to Grigorenko's wife and stage a crude provocation. The police watch on Grigorenko himself, and his house, went to extraordinary lengths; they followed him in their cars, making no secret of it and even trying to provoke him to an open clash. In April 1969 Grigorenko appealed to Yu. V. Andropov [the head of the K.G.B.] in a second letter,but as with the first, sent in February 1968, he received no reply.

Even this very brief sketch of Grigorenko's life up to early 1969 should suffice to reveal an interesting point: if one person had to be singled out as having inspired the different groups within the Democratic Movement more than anyone else, then it would surely be he. Indeed he became, while free, in an informal way the movements leader. And not surprisingly. A prolific scholar, a champion of Dubcek socialism, a legend among the Crimean Tatars, an exposer of the 'mental hospital-, treatment of dissenters, an admirer of Anatoly Marchenko and his book My Testimony, a writer and signer of cogent petitions, the forthright leader of the crowds barred from political trials, rebuffing provocations and once even dragging a K.G.B. ruffian of to the police-station to report him - Grigorenko was all these things, and thy all grew naturally out of his large and remarkable personality. It is hard, therefore, to see the K.G.B. ever releasing him, except perhaps to die.

Grigorenko considered himself a communist, but was also-a rare combination in the Soviet Union-a humanist, As with many Czechoslovak communists in 1968, communism came to mean for him above all social and individual justice. This held true, however much it might mean sharing the party's power with other people. And it would mean a lot of this, for the Soviet system had become 'a bureaucratic machine ... moved by our hands and heads, crushing us mercilessly, destroying the best people of our society, relieving everyone of guilt, of responsibility for the crimes it commits, freeing its servants from their consciences: a terrifying, cruel and heartless machine.' As for 'the work of breaking down this machine', '"that is a long task which ... involves in the first place a revolution in people's minds, in their consciousness, all of which is unthinkable in the conditions of totalitarianism.' In going about this task Grigorenko worked harmoniously with non-communists, Christians Muslims and Yews, all of whom were his friends.

But his closest friend was Aleksei Kosterin: 'I have known Aleksei Kosterin for a very short time. Less than three years. Yet we have lived a whole life together. While Kosterin was still alive, a person extremely close to me said, "'You were made by Kosterin." And I did not object. Yes he made me: he turned a rebel into a fighter. I will be grateful to him for this to the end of my days.'

Thus spoke Grigorenko at Kosterin's funeral in November 1968. This remarkable occasion -for which Crimean Tatars, Chechens, even Volga Germans had journeyed thousands of miles, and which, prolonging an old tradition, also became a political demonstration - was recorded in a disappointingly laconic way by the Chronicle:

THE FUNERAL OF A. E. KOSTERIN

The writer Aleksei Evgrafovich Kosterin died on November 10th He had been a member of the Soviet Communist Party since 1916; he was a former prisoner of Stalin's camps and an active fighter for the rights of men and justice for small nations.

He was buried on November 14th. Between 300 and 400 people were present at his funeral. The samizdat booklet on this event consists of a preface by the chief compiler [Grigorenko]; a description of the funeral ('Yet another mockery of sacred feelings') written by P. G. Grigorenko; an obituary written by a group of Kosterin's friends and read at the morgue of the Botkin hospital by Anatoly Yakobson; speeches at the morgue by Muarrem Martynov (Crimean Tatar poet), S. P. Pisarev (member of the Communist Party from 1920) Ablamit Borseitov (school-teacher) and [Reshat] Dzhemilev (engineer); speeches at the crematorium by Professor Refik Muzafarov (Doctor of Philology) and P. G. Grigorenko (Master of Military Sciences); speeches at the subsequent memorial meeting by Pyotr Yakir (historian), Khalid Oshayev (Chechen writer), Andrei Grigorenko (technician), Zampira Asanova (doctor), Leonid Petrovsky (historian), and an unknown man to whom the compilers of this collection of documents have given the pseudonym 'a Christian'.

We can only regret that the Chronicle summarizes so briefly a booklet which, after the Chronicle itself is one of the most astonishing samizdat documents we have. Nor does the Chronicle do any better as regards the first document to give the outside world details about Kosterin. This was Grigorenko's speech at a dinner in honor of his friend's 72nd birthday, held at the Altai restaurant in Moscow on March 17th, 1968: 'This speech is about Kosterin's life, the support which he has given to the cause of the Crimean Tatars, and the tasks which confront their movement' (No. 5). One would scarcely guess from this that Grigorenko's fiery words -which urged the Tatars not to request but to demand their rights, and also to use the most militant legally permissible methods of lobbying -repeatedly roused his Tatar audience to a state of near ecstasy.

Unfortunately, however, both the speech and the booklet are too long to discuss properly here, although a few details should be added about Kosterin. He spent three years in tsarist jails, then seventeen (1938-55) both in Soviet jails and in exile. After his release a few of his stories and essays appeared often severely censored- in Novy Mir and elsewhere. He was the father of Nina Kosterina, killed in the war, whose Diary is a Soviet equivalent of The Diary of Anne Frank. Just before his death he resigned in disgust from the party, and was also surreptitiously without his or even his friends' knowledge - expelled from the Writers, Union.

This squalid episode provoked a memorable attack by Grigorenko on the Union's officials, who had been hounding Kosterin for some time: 'They have forgotten, or maybe don't even know, that neither Pushkin nor Tolstoy belonged to this organization. Thy believe so much in the power of their bureaucratic procedures that thy even tried to take away the title of writer from such an outstandingly great Poet of our county as Pasternak. Nor do they understand that without their Union Solzhenitsyn will remain a great writer and his works will live through the centuries, while their bureaucratic creation without writers like Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn -is a hollow farce of no use to anyone.'

Five days later:

On November 1th there was a new series of house searches [in Moscow]. This time they were carried out 'at the request of the Tashkent K.G.B.' and nominally in connection with one of the cases involving Crimean Tatars. There was a search at the home of Ilya Gabai-the second in recent months, and the second time it has been done in his absence. P. G. Grigorenko's home was searched and practically the whole of his files were seized - that is, everything in typescript or manuscript, although the search warrant gave permission to seize only materials 'defaming the Soviet social and political system'. According to Grigorenko, the materials confiscated include: The Declaration of the Rights of Man; all the works of A. E. Kosterin; Academician Sakharov's essay ; 'The Russian Road to Socialism' by Academician Varga; 'Notes of an Intelligence Officer' by Colonel V. A. Novobranets; My Testimony by Anatoly Marchenko; Akhmatova's 'Requiem'; verse by Tsvetayeva; a poem by Korzhavin; Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls; various personal letters; materials on the Crimean Tatar and Volga German movements; translations of articles from Czechoslovak newspapers; notes for a work on military history by Grigorenko himself, and many other items.

A large part of these materials were not itemized in the record - they were simply dumped into a sack, sealed and taken away.

On the same day, in the town of Zhukovsky in the Moscow Region, there was a search at the home of Simode Asanova, the sister of Zampira Asanova. In Simferopol there was a search at the house of the doctor Esma Ulanova -all her files, including a large number of documents relating to the Crimean Tatar movement, were seized.

All this happened a few days after the funeral of A. E. Kosterin, and one may assume that the true (and illegal) purpose of these searches was to confiscate the texts of the speeches made at his funeral.

Grigorenko's reply was simply to compile his booklet again from scratch, in which task, except as regards a few items, he succeeded. But the K.G.B., too, can be persistent, and certainly death does not necessarily remove someone from its purview:

ACTIVITIES AROUND THE FAMILY OF A. E. KOSTERIN

Members of the K.G.B. have paid much 'attention' to Vera Ivanovna Kosterina, the author's widow, since her husband's death. They keep ringing her up, asking about her health, visiting her at home and inviting her to see them-at the K.G.B. Only a little is known about the details of their conversations: under pressure from her new friends, V. I. Kosterina has signed some sort of statement against her husband's friends; she is undertaking certain actions to enable the K.G.B. not to return to P. G. Grigorenko, the copies of A. E. Kosterin's works given him by the author during his life and confiscated during a search; Vera Ivanovna has come to believe the K.G.B. and now herself tells her friends that Grigorenko, sent abroad half of Kosterin's work. The most important thing with which the K.G.B. officials want to help her is the careful compilation of an archive of the late writer. It is to be feared that A. E. Kosterin's literary work, covering many years, will fall into the hands of the organization which he most hated.

Simultaneously the K.G.B. has busied itself with the 'education' of Kosterin's grandson, Aleksei Smirnov, a student at the Mining Institute. On March 31st and April 1st this year [1969], members of the K.G.B. twice interviewed Alyosha's father - a man who has never taken an interest in the upbringing of his son and who has never once seen him over the past two years. At the first interview he was told that his son was mixed up with the 'fanatical anti-Sovietist' Grigorenko, and that both of them would soon be arrested. Even if they were not arrested his son would be expelled from the Institute. The following day they changed their tactics: Grigorenko would not be arrested but would be left as a 'bait for young people'- a note would be made of all those who came to see him; and Alyosha's father, in league with the K.G.B.' could save Alyosha from this fate.

They interviewed Aleksei Smirnov himself on April 2nd this year at the Institute's personnel section. Two members of the K.G.B., calling themselves Vladimir Ivanovich Volodin and Aleksei Mikhailovich, interviewed him in what was basically an illegal interrogation: they questioned him about all his friends and acquaintances, discovered his political convictions, and gave him slanderous information about A. E. Kosterin's friends. Finally they demanded that he cease all 'contact with Grigorenko'-with whom, by the way, he is only very slightly acquainted.

THE ARREST OF GRIGORENKO

On May 2nd this year the telephone rang in Grigorenko's apartment. The caller said he was speaking on Mustafa Dzhemilev's behalf and that the Tashkent trial was beginning on May 4th. Grigorenko flew out to Tashkent at once, and there he found that the date of the trial had not yet been fixed, and that Mustafa Dzhemilev had not asked anyone to ring him. On May 7th, Grigorenko was arrested with his return ticket in his pocket, and, ill as he was, with a temperature of 38 C [IO0.5 F] they put him in the Uzbek K.G.B. prison. He is charged under article x91-4 of the Uzbek Criminal Code, which corresponds to article 190-1 of the Russian Code.

On the same day, seven Moscow flats were searched in connection with the Grigorenko affair; that of Grigorenko himself, and those of Ilya Gabai, Victor Krasin, Lyudmila Alekseyeva, Andrei Amalrik, Nadezhda Emelkina, and Zampira Asanova. The searches were conducted by investigators of the Moscow Procuracy, on the instructions of the Uzbek Procuracy. The searches were directed by L. S. Akimova, from her desk in the Procuracy. She is known as the investigator of the Irina Belogorodskaya case, and as director of the investigation into both the Pushkin Square demonstration of January 22nd, 1967, and the Red Square demonstration of August 25th, 1968. During these searches not only was all samizdat literature confiscated, with all typewriters, notebooks and scraps of paper with telephone messages and other jottings, but also all personal correspondence, photographs and valuables. From Lyudmila Alekseyeva's flat they took personal letters written by Anatoly Marchenko, letters from Yuly Daniel to his family, and photographs of Solzhenitsyn, Marchenko, Litvinov and Bogoraz. From Nadezhda Emelkina they removed two savings books belonging to her mother. Emelkina herself was subjected to a body search, and furthermore, in the absence of a woman investigator, her person was illegally examined by a woman witness of the search. Generally speaking, during these searches the witnesses did not behave like people obliged to ensure the observation of legality but like active helpers of those carrying out the search.

P. G. Grigorenko is still in Tashkent. The investigation of his case is headed by investigator Berezovsky, who headed the investigation of the ten Crimean Tatars in whose defense Grigorenko had wished to speak. It was Berezovsky too who conducted the search of Grigorenko's flat in November 1968. The main questions being put to witnesses are: have they received from Grigorenko documents containing 'deliberate fabrications', and have they noticed in Grigorenko any signs of mental derangement? So far only a few witnesses have been called: in Moscow, the wife, daughter and niece of A. E. Kosterin; in Tashkent, Pyotr Grigorevich's sister, also D. Ilyasov and Z. Ilyasova, at whose flat Grigorenko was arrested.

Grigorenko's arrest has aroused public indignation. At the gates of the Tashkent prison the Crimean Tatars set up pickets and demanded his release. The same demand was one of the slogans used at the [Tatar] demonstration in Moscow on June 6th this year. In one day fifty-five signatures were collected for an appeal in support of Grigorenko. And his wife, Zinaida Mikhailovna, wrote an open letter about her husband's life, his misfortunes and his latest arrest.

Other samizdat publications to appear are two significant works about P. G. Grigorenko: 'Light in the Little Window' by A. Krasnov-Levitin and 'The Arrest of General Grigorenko' by B. Tsukerman. The author of the first, a well-known church writer, quoting the New Testament parable of the Good Samaritan, writes that today he sees more of the Christian spirit not in the representatives of the Orthodox Church, but in the Samaritans, 'people from outside'. One example of a 'Good Samaritan' seems to him to be P. G. Grigorenko, who for his bold criticism first 'paid with his career, condemning himself to journeys from one prison or lunatic asylum to another, to searches and arrests, to humiliations and insults', and who recently 'came to the aid of the Crimean Tatar people, not his own kin, and paid for this with his freedom.' Reflections on P. G. Grigorenko and the fortunes of the Crimean Tatars lead Krasnov to the wider problems of the struggle for democracy and a sense of humanity in our country. The second work contains short biographical notes on P. G. Grigorenko and reveals the objective character of those problems which Grigorenko has devoted his energies to trying to resolve in recent years. Despite the restrained character of the analysis, the author is unable to conceal his feeling of admiration for P. G. Grigorenko's sincerity and moral stature, and of reverence for his moral heroism.

THE ARREST OF ILYA GABAI

When Ilya Gabai's flat was searched on May 7th this year, his archive of documents relating to the Crimean Tatars was confiscated. On May 19th Ilya Gabai was arrested and sent to Tashkent to be investigated by the same Berezovsky.

Ilya Gabai is a teacher, poet and scriptwriter, hose main work was as an editor. He was first arrested in January 1967 for participation in the demonstration on Pushkin Square. After four months in Lefortovo prison he was freed for want of a corpus delicti.

Following the appeal 'To those who work in science, culture and the arts'," which Gabai wrote with Yuly Kim and Pyotr Yakir after the trial of Galanskov and the others, he was dismissed from his job, found himself unable to get work any here, and tried to get by on casual earnings. Although Gabai was away from Moscow on August 25th, 1968, working as a laborer on a distant expedition, the investigating organs summoned him for interrogation in connection with the inquiry into the demonstration held on that day. The interrogation was to, all intents and purposes about the aforementioned appeal. From October 1968 until his arrest, Gabai's flat was searched four times. On each occasion the appeal was taken away, Together with copies of letters written by Soviet citizens addressed to governmental and judicial organs, and some poems of Gabai's. From his archive of Crimean Tatar documents they removed newspaper clippings relating to the brave exploits of the Tatars during the Great Patriotic War, copies of letters written by Tatar laborers demanding to return to their homeland, Academician Sakharov's brochure, the booklet .The Funeral of A. E. Kosterin', information bulletins of the Crimean Tatars and so on.

Tarasov, a senior investigator of the Moscow Procuracy, Arrested Gabai without production of a warrant, and had him flown immediately to Tashkent. In Tashkent, investigator Berezovsky refused to answer any of the enquiries of Gabai's friends there, and also to pass on to him in prison a message from them; he declared that he had never heard of him and there was no one by the name of Gabai in Tashkent. A parcel of food, clothing and money sent by Gabai's wife never reached him. For a whole month it lay in the Tashkent post ,Office; the remand prison administration, who should by law have collected it and given it to the prisoner, did not do so, but informed Gabai's wife that her parcels had not reached them. The post office sent the parcels and money back to her. Recently Galina Gabai traveled to Tashkent in order to hand over food, money and clothing to her husband in person.

It Ilya Gabai's friends have written a letter in his defense and 'sent it to the Procurator-General of the U.S.S.R. They have also compiled a small anthology of Gabai's verse, which has Appeared in samizdat.

THE INVESTIGATION OF THE CASES OF ILYA GABAI AND PYOTR GRIGOREVICH GRIGORENKO

-When Galina Gabai, wife of Ilya Gabai, addressed a complaint to the Procurator-General, protesting not only against the unlawful arrest of her husband, but also against his being sent to Tashkent without the slightest reason -according to the law the investigation should be held in the place where the offence was committed, yet Gabai had never been to Tashkent -she was told in reply that the case had been put under the jurisdiction of the Tashkent Procuracy since the majority of the witnesses were in Tashkent. As for Pyotr Grigorevich Grigorenko, it is clear from the information given in the last issue of the Chronicle that he was decoyed to Tashkent so that he could be arrested there.

But in July the interrogation of witnesses began in Moscow first by investigators of District Procuracies, on the instructions of the Tashkent Procuracy, and then by investigator B. I. Berezovsky, who came to Moscow for the purpose.

Berezovsky is in charge of the Gabai and Grigorenko cases. So far it is not clear whether they will be treated as one case or two separate ones.

During his visit to Moscow, Berezovsky interrogated a large number of witnesses, thus proving the untruth of his statement that most of the witnesses were in Tashkent.

The witnesses are being questioned about Grigorenko's and Gabai's part in the composition of a number of documents which bear their signatures: among the documents listed are the appeal to the Budapest conference; the appeal 'To those who work in science, culture and the arts' written by Kim, Yakir and Gabai; letters supporting the demonstrators [of August 25th], and in defense of Anatoly Marchenko and Ivan Yakhimovich; a letter from citizens of Moscow which was never sent -in support of the Crimean Tatars ; the collection of materials 'In Memory of A. E. Kosterin'; and others. Questions are being asked also about the preparation and distribution of particular documents, and especially about what part in their preparation and distribution was played by the witnesses. As far as is known, not one of the witnesses has answered the questions concerning the preparation and distribution of documents, on the grounds that the documents are not libelous, and do not come under article 190-1 on which the case is based, and therefore their preparation and distribution cannot be a matter for the evidence of witnesses. Replying to Berezovsky's provocative statements that 'you keep on saying that you do everything openly', the witnesses said that the punitive organs were of a different opinion as to the criminality of the documents, and therefore the witnesses could only confirm their signatures, and not reveal information about other persons, which could be used against those persons. All, or nearly all, the witnesses declared that they regarded the West of Grigorenko and Gabai, and the investigation of their case, as unlawful actions, and some of the witnesses refused completely to testify for that reason.

Incidentally, these were all witnesses who can be described, if not as friends and like-minded people, then at least as sympathizers with the accused. It is known that Berezovsky has also summoned witnesses of another kind. One of them is a K.G.B. official, the head of the central operations squad, known as ' Oleg Ivanovich Aleksandrov'. This was the name he gave on an earlier occasion-at the trial of the demonstrators- after he had snatched a letter from a crowd of people outside the courthouse who had not managed to get inside, and the indignant crowd had led him to the police station, where he named himself. People who were at the courthouse for the trials of the demonstrators and of Galanskov and Ginzburg, remember him well, with his black beard: on both occasions it was he who directed the activities of the 'volunteer police without armbands'. And constantly with him there was a man in a black cap evidently the chief's right-hand man-he too came in useful for Berezovsky.

Another witness Berezovsky summoned was the ill-famed Aleksei Dobrovolsky, who made slanderous statements about Ginzburg and Galanskov at their trial. Since coming out of his tamp this January, Dobrovolsky has been living in Uglich [north of Moscow]. Unlike most political prisoners, who for months after their release are unable to obtain residence permits or find work anywhere, Dobrovolsky obtained a permit extremely quickly and is now the head of a technical library, even though his only higher educational qualification is half a year spent at an institute of librarianship. As a rule, political convicts with both higher education and post-graduate experience, e.g. Leonid Rendel, or even a higher degree, as in the case of Mykhaylo Osadchy, can only expect to be offered jobs of the most unskilled variety, and certainly not work with books and people. It is known that soon after his arrival Dobrovolsky was already claiming that he would soon be given a residence permit for Moscow. Perhaps his latest perjury will help him with this too.

At the present time, witnesses are still being summoned to investigators of the Moscow Procuracy in connection with the Grigorenko and Gabai case. Most of them are being seen by investigator Obraztsov.

Galina Gabai, who traveled to Tashkent in July and was received extremely rudely by Berezovsky, was later summoned as a witness in Moscow. Now she has written a short essay, 'Two Meetings with Berezovsky', which has appeared in samizdat.

The two demonstrations by foreigners in Moscow after the Galanskov Ginzburg trial now had a successor. The leaflets scattered at these demonstrations have since spread quite widely in the Soviet Union: the physicist Lev Ubozhko, for example, was arrested in the west Siberian city of Sverdlovsk in January 1970 for passing copies around.

SCANDINAVIAN STUDENTS' DEMONSTRATION IN DEFENSE OF P. G. GRIGORENKO

On October 6th, 1969, at five o'clock in the evening, Harald Bristol of Oslo and Elizabeth Lie from Uppsala staged a demonstration in defense of the arrested General P. G. Grigorenko in the largest store in Moscow, G.U.M.

The two young people chained themselves to the second floor guard-railings with handcuffs and threw their leaflets over the edge. The leaflets contained a biography of P. G. Grigorenko and the text of an appeal by the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish SMOG Committees to the Chairman of the U.S.S.R. Council of Ministers, A. N. Kosygin. Among other things, the appeal says:

We condemn equally much the use of arbitrary methods in any country. This is not interference in the affairs of another state, but the moral duty of progressive people.

Only by observing legality and human rights in all countries is it possible to prevent a revival of fascism, which starts with illegal secret police activities. Mr. Chairman of the council of Ministers! Your government speaks out in support of those who fight for human rights in Greece, Vietnam, South Africa and other countries. Why then are those who fight for these rights in the U.S.S.R. being arrested?

At the end of the leaflet Harald Bristol and Elizabeth Lie appeal to Soviet citizens:

We have come to your country to serve the cause of legality and human rights. We are handing you our appeal to A. N. Kosygin concerning the case of Major-General Grigorenko, who has fallen victim to the arbitrary methods of the K.G.B. In support of our appeal we refuse to leave the scene of our demonstration, and we declare a hunger-strike. We will fast until MAJOR-GENERAL GRIGORENKO IS RELEASED OR UNTIL PRIME MINISTER KOSYGIN GIVES US A GUARANTEE THAT MAJOR-GENERAL GRIGORENKO WILL WITHOUT DELAY BE GIVEN AN OPEN AND LEGAL TRIAL.

The leaflets contain portraits of P. G. Grigorenko and A. N. Kosygin.

A large crowd of people gathered below round a fountain, (,reading the leaflets attentively and passing them around to !each other with no comments but with unconcealed interest. 'Many of them went up to the second floor to get a closer look at the young people. Meanwhile two policemen had appeared on the scene. Seeing the chain of the handcuffs, one of them 'fan off to get reinforcements. Two workers were sent, and they sawed through the chain. By this time K.G.B. officials had already appeared at the scene of the demonstration. The young people were taken to the nearest police station, followed by most of the crowd which had gathered, but none of the crowd 'Was allowed into the station.

11 On October 8th, Elizabeth Lie and Harald Bristol were 'deported from the Soviet Union.

To resume the story:

At the end of October P. G. Grigorenko was transferred from Tashkent to Moscow, where he has been put in the Institute of Forensic Psychiatry for an in-patient examination.

On December 3rd the investigation into the case of P. G. Grigorenko was completed in Tashkent. In August a forensic-psychiatric examination by Tashkent doctors had judged Grigorenko to be of sound mind. The experts also pointed out that, in any case, to confine Grigorenko in a psychiatric hospital at his age and in his poor condition would be wrong. Among the experts were Detengof, Chief Psychiatrist of Tashkent, and Kogan, Chief Psychiatrist to the Turkestan Military District. Dissatisfied with the experts' findings, the investigation organs sent Grigorenko to Moscow in October for a second medical examination. The 62-year-old Grigorenko was transported there in an unheated railway carriage and, dressed as he was in a light summer suit, he was so affected by the cold that he was delivered to Lefortovo prison in a state of semi-consciousness.

The second examination took place in the Serbsky Institute, where Grigorenko was held in a cell. On October 22nd, he was adjudged of unsound mind. The examination was carried out by Professor D. R. Lunts and doctors G. Morozov and V. Morozov.

The immediate sequel in Grigorenko's case was intensely dramatic, but also tragic. It can only be briefly summarized here. Somehow or other Grigorenko managed to write a diary for the period May-December, also two analyses of his case, and then to smuggle the 9,000-word manuscript Out of the K.G.B. prison in Tashkent. On March 3rd, 1970, his wife Zinaida wrote a desperate appeal and, with her husband's manuscript attached, circulated it. It ended: 'People! Pyotr Grigorevich Grigorenko is threatened by death! I appeal to all democratic organizations which defend human rights, and to all the freedom-loving citizens of the world! Help me save my husband! The freedom of each is the freedom of all!

The manuscript had revealed cruel physical beatings of Grigorenko, but, still worse, his total isolation from the outside world: he had not been allowed to receive a single visit, a single letter, a single parcel, a single telephone call. After honest psychiatrists had pronounced him sane, K.G.B. ones had labeled him insane. In this way his trial could take place - on February 26th-27th - in his absence" and he could be consigned indefinitely to the company of degenerates and genuine madmen. He was eventually dispatched to the prison psychiatric hospital in Chernyakhovsk near the Polish border. Grigorenko's manuscript -written with a remarkable detachment and humor in the most fearful circumstances -will be an enduring example of man's capacity for courage.

Meanwhile No. 10 had reported:

The investigation into the case of Ilya Gabai has been completed. Gabai has been charged with compiling various documents, including the appeal by himself, Kim and Yakir, 'To those who work in science, culture and the arts in the U.S.S.R.', the appeal of Moscow citizens in support of the Crimean Tatars, and others. The lawyer D. I. Kaminskaya submitted a request that the case against Gabai be quashed. The petition was rejected.

In January 197o Gabai duly got his three years in the camps for anti-Soviet 'libel'. He pleaded not guilty at his trial in Tashkent and put up a characteristically spirited self-defense.

3: Ever since his arrest his equally spirited wife Galina had defended kim with determination in his ordeal, despite the harassment she had also suffered in her professional life. On this the Chronicle wrote:

Galina Gabai, the wife of Ilya Gabai, is a speech therapist and teacher of literature at the Moscow interregional high school for the deaf and hard of hearing. The party committee of the Sverdlov District of Moscow asked the school administration 'deprive Mrs. Gabai of her teaching post at the school. The school director Usachev submitted a report to the pedagogical council in which he said, among other things, that G. B. Gabai committed political errors in her comments on pupils' essays: ,she called Stalin a criminal, and said nothing about his services to the revolution. Moreover, claimed the director, G. B. Gabai appealed in her comments to bourgeois individualism: he was referring to a comment which Mrs. Gabai had written-in Amwer to a pupil's argument that society alone should bear the responsibility for the fate of Chekhov's Ionych - about the personal responsibility of every man for his actions. The Director also expressed his dissatisfaction with a speech Mrs. Gabai had made at a meeting of the pedagogical council. She had said that teachers ought to write their comments in literary language, and not descend to the speech level of their deaf-mute pupils. They should teach them to speak in literate, not 'deaf-mute' language. The Director added that Mrs. Gabai was an erudite teacher, that her comments were abstruse, and that the pupils had great difficulty in understanding them; therefore (?) she should be transferred to junior teaching. A number of teachers at the meeting of the pedagogical council spoke against these proposals, and the resolution was not carried. The local trade-union committee also opposed the transfer of Mrs. Gabai to junior teaching. But the party organization and the school administration, obedient to a phone-call from the district party committee, passed a resolution transferring Mrs. Gabai to teaching the 6th class, which has only six pupils, and the 7th class, which in practice is non-existent. She was not allowed to take the top class, No. 1 1 through to the end of the school year, and so as to comply with the administration's decision another teacher lost her duties with the 6th and 7th classes and became partially redundant; this person is due to retire in a year's time, and a full teaching-load is very important to her as regards her pension.

GRIGORENKO'S FRIEND IVAN TAKHIMOVICH

Let us turn now to a specially close friend of Grigorenko, of whom the Chronicle wrote in April 1969:

Ivan Yakhimovich is thirty-eight. He was born into a family of Polish workers and graduated in the faculty of history and philology of the Latvian State University. After university he worked as a teacher and as an inspector of a District Department of Public Education. In 196o he went to work as the chairman of the 'Jauna Gvarde' collective farm in Kraslava District. Whilst working on the farm he enrolled as an external student at the Latvian agricultural academy. A few years ago the paper Komsomolskaya pravda wrote about Ivan Yakhimovich in ecstatic terms.

In January 1968 Yakhimovich wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the party, addressing it to M. A. Suslov, and here he protested at the trial of Yury Galanskov, Alexander Ginzburg and the others. In March 1968 Yakhimovich was expelled from the party" and in May 1968 dismissed from his post as chairman of the farm. In violation of the statute on agricultural cooperatives he was dismissed by higher organs without a collective farm meeting being held. Recently he has worked as a stoker in the 'Belorussia' sanatorium in Jurmale.

We have already met Yakhimovich in Chapters 3 and 4, but before continuing let Grigorenko shed more light on his personality. In a long statement just after Yakhimovich's arrest his friend wrote about him:

One had to see how he spoke with people, how they behaved towards him, what a moving friendship he had with his wife, how his three daughters loved their father ... to understand what a pure, honest, warm-hearted person he is. I got to know Yakhimovich in March 1968. He had come to Moscow to seek out Pavel Litvinov and Larissa Bogoraz. He had heard their appeal 'To World Public Opinion' on the foreign radio. This had made an impression on him and he had written, as one communist to another, a comradely letter to Suslov ... The latter, as is normal in relations between high party functionaries and ordinary communists, did not answer. However the letter aroused great interest in samizdat circles, began to be passed around quickly, and soon found its way abroad. After it had been broadcast on the foreign radio Yakhimovich was called to the K.G.B. In the course of a long conversation it was stated to him among other things that Litvinov and Bogoraz had not signed any appeal, that the appeal was a fabrication, an invention of the B.B.C. To find out who was right - the K.G.B. or the B.B.C. -was why he had come to MOSCOW.

In his letter Yakhimovich had condemned the sentencing of 'the most energetic brave and high principled members of our young generation ...

Too bad for us if we are not capable of reaching an understanding with these young people. They will create, inevitably they will create, a new party Ideas cannot be murdered with bullets, prisons and exile.' Moreover, he continued, I live in the provinces, where for every house with electricity there are ten without, where in winter the buses cant get through and the mail takes weeks to arrive. If information [on the trials] has reached us on the largest scale you can well imagine what you have done, what sort of seeds you have sown throughout the country. Have the courage to correct the mistakes that have been made before the workers and peasants take a hand in the affair.

The first sign that Yakhimovich was in serious trouble came in an item entitled:

A 'NEW METHOD' OF CONDUCTING SEARCHES

On September 27th, 1968, Ivan Yakhimovich's apartment was searched [ ... ] He is at present living with his wife and their three children in the Latvian town of Jurmale. He has been illegally deprived of his residence permit -the police simply crossed out the permit stamp in his passport - and so he is, naturally, unable to find work.

The warrant for the search, signed by the Assistant Procurator of Jurmale, Kviesonis, authorized a search on suspicion of Yakhimovich's involvement in the theft of 19,654 roubles from the Jurmale branch of the State Bank. Of course, the searchers found no money but they did remove a few samizdat materials, also Yakhimovich's letter protesting about the arrest of the demonstrators on August 25th, the rough draft of his unfinished essay on the post-January developments in Czechoslovakia, his wife's personal diary, and so on.

After discussing similar searches by the ordinary police concerning rug Gendler and Andrei Amalrik the Chronicle then continues :

These are the three examples of the way in which the organs of state security are conducting searches through intermediaries, using false criminal allegations which are later conveniently forgotten. It was also the ordinary police who conducted the searches of both the demonstrators and several other people in the case of the Red Square demonstration of August 25th. The products of the searches, with a few exceptions, were not used at the trial. As was learnt after the trial, the Moscow City Procuracy, which had conducted the investigations into the case, handed over these products of the searches to, once again, the K.G.B.

In December 1968, the Procuracy of the Latvian Republic sanctioned the conduct of an investigation into material removed during a search at the flat of Ivan Yakhimovich ... Yakhimovich is accused under article 183-1 of the Latvian Criminal Code, which corresponds to article 190-1 of the Russian Code, but the concrete substance of the charge is not clear. The investigation is being conducted by a Procuracy investigator of the Lenin district of Riga, Kakitis, although Yakhimovich lives and is registered not in Riga, but in Jurmale. The first, and so far the only, interrogation of Yakhimovich took place on February 5th, 1969. The investigator was mainly interested in the way in which various documents had been distributed: how had Yakhimovich got hold of P. G. Grigorenko's article on Nekrich's book? To whom had Yakhimovich oven his letter addressed to Suslov and the Central Committee of the Communist Party? Why had Yakhimovich been distributing the appeal of Larissa Bogoraz and Pavel Litvinov 'To World Public Opinion'? And so on. The investigator specifically asked Yakhimovich about an unsent letter to Pavel Litvinov that had been written after the demonstration of August 25th, 1968, and removed during the search: 'In your letter you wrote, "I feel pride and admiration and, if I had teen in Moscow, I should have been in Red Square with you." Do you still think this?' 'Yes,' Yakhimovich replied.

It is well known that during the search Yakhimovich's Unfinished study of post-January events in Czechoslovakia was removed. At the end of the interrogation the investigator warned that next time Yakhimovich should give a theoretical 'Analysis of his views on the events in Czechoslovakia. This warning ignores the fact that Yakhimovich, as the accused, is A no way obliged to do anything: to provide an explanation is simply his right; ignoring this, the Riga investigator apparently forgot that neither views nor their theoretical foundation are a Matter for criminal prosecution.

THE ARREST OF IVAN YAKHIMOVICH

Ivan Yakhimovich was arrested on March 24th in the town of Jurmale in the Latvian Republic ... Three times, on February 5th, March 19th and March 24th, Yakhimovich 'Was called for questioning by investigator of the Riga Procuracy

E. Kakitis, and after the third time he was arrested. Before his arrest Ivan Yakhimovich wrote an open letter, 'Instead of a final speech', in which he spoke about himself and about the investigation, which was based on negative character reports and false evidence. Then he appealed to a number of his friends, to certain public figures, to the workers and peasants, to Latvians and Poles, and to communists from all countries, not to reconcile themselves to injustice.

The end of the investigation in the Yakhimovich case is expected in the middle of May.

The family of Ivan Yakhimovich consists of his wife Irina, who graduated from the faculty of history and philology, for a long time worked as a school teacher, and is now forced to work as a nanny in a kindergarten; and three daughters of five, six and seven years. People recount how during the search, before Yakhimovich's arrest, his three daughters stood in the garden below the window and sang the 'Internationale'.

A group of Yakhimovich's friends have written a protest letter about his illegal persecution. Together with the letters written either by Ivan Yakhimovich himself or in collaboration with likeminded friends, this protest letter is included in a collection of materials relating to him now circulating in samizdat.

At the end of August 1969 the Latvian Supreme Court examined the case of Ivan Yakhimovich. Yakhimovich's activities had been classified under article 183-1 of the Latvian Criminal Code, equivalent to article 190-1 of the Russian Code. The substance of his activities was as follows: spreading Bogoraz's and Litvinov's letter 'To World Public Opinion', preparing and distributing a letter to the Central Committee of the party, writing a letter in defense of the demonstration of August 25th the only copy of which had not been circulated and was taken away during a search -and also uttering statements against the sending of troops into Czechoslovakia.

Ivan Yakhimovich had never been on a psychiatrist's register before. The first conclusion that he was of unsound mind was made by an out-patient commission of experts, who diagnosed , schizophrenia'. The diagnosis of the in-patient commission was completely different: 'paranoid development of a psychopathic personality, amounting to mental illness'-and they also pronounced him insane. Both commissions recommended that Yakhimovich should be sent to a psychiatric hospital of special type.

The court granted the requests submitted by the defense lawyer S. V. Kallistratova: that additional witnesses be summoned, that additional documents be added to the case, and that Ivan Yakhimovich be called to appear in court. The defense also submitted a request that Yakhimovich be sent to another commission of experts since the conclusion of the second commission was not supported by the evidence it had examined. The woman specialist doctor in court said that she could not argue with the conclusions of the in-patient commission, but that since, during the interrogation of witnesses closely acquainted with Yakhimovich and during the interrogation of Yakhimovich himself, new data had been collected which could help to define his psychological state, she considered it necessary that Yakhimovich be sent Jo a repeat commission. The Prosecutor supported the lawyer's request for a repeat commission. The court resolved to have Ivan Yakhimovich sent to a repeat commission of forensic psychiatry experts at the Serbsky Institute. judge Lotko, who presided over the trial, conducted the whole of the two-day hearing with a full observance of procedural norms, and with respect for the accused's right to a defense. According to eyewitnesses, Ivan Yakhimovich aroused the sympathy of all present, not excluding ,the Prosecutor and the escort soldiers.

This rare example of a fair trial in a political case had, however, a more Predictable sequel. No. 11 reported that Takhimovich 'entered the Serbsky Institute in December, and No. 13 that in April 1970 the Institute's recommendation of compulsory treatment in a mental hospital of ordinary (but not prison) type had been adopted by the Riga court. So now Grigorenko and his closest friends were all either dead or safely in confinement. However, the seeds they had sown were already Proving their fertility.

Source: Peter Reddaway, comp., Uncensored Russia: protest and dissent in the Soviet Union (New York: American Heritage Press, 1972), pp. 127-149.