[This is the second installment of the transcript of the January 5, 1972, trial of Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. The previous installment, in our May 22 issue, included the indictment and defense motions made by Bukovsky at the opening of the trial.
[The present installment begins Bukovsky's point-by-point reply to the charges against him.
[The translation of the trial transcript was done for Intercontinental Press by Marilyn Vogt. Footnotes and explanatory material in brackets are by the translator.]
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Defense Arguments by Bukovsky
Judge: The court will now proceed to the defense arguments. Bukovsky, rise. You now have the opportunity to speak on all the points of the indictment.
Bukovsky: I already addressed myself to the first point. It is unfounded, unsubstantiated, and vague.
The only thing referred to concretely under this point is the interview that I gave to AP correspondent Holger Jensen and CBS correspondent Bill Cole — the first recorded in writing and the second on film. In this interview I related some facts about my life and also about other people who, although perfectly sane, were placed in mental hospitals by the courts with no medical or legal justification. I also spoke about the conditions in which these people are kept at the Leningrad special psychiatric hospital.
I wish the court to know that in the spring of 1963 I was arrested by the KGB. At the time of the arrest two incomplete photocopies of M. Djilas's book The New Class were confiscated from me. As a result of an investigation I was sent to the Serbsky Institute. I was pronounced mentally irresponsible and the court sentenced me in absentia to compulsory treatment at the Leningrad special psychiatric hospital.
This hospital is like a prison, enclosed by rows of barbed wire. The hospital attendants are criminals, serving their sentences for various common crimes. Those who were sick in Section I, where I was placed, were locked in cells — two or three persons per cell. They were allowed one hour of exercise per day and one parcel per month weighing no more than five kilograms. In the cell with me there was a Ukranian nationalist who had already spent seventeen years in prison, several of which had been spent in the Vladimir Prison, where he went insane because of the severe conditions of his confinement. He screamed continuously and the hospital attendants beat him unmercifully many times in my presence, simply because they were tired of hearing him scream. In my cell there was also a person who was actually insane, having murdered his children, cut off their ears, and eaten them.
I assert that in the Leningrad special psychiatric hospital in my presence doctors systematically prescribed injections of aminazin and sulphazin as punishment at the request of the orderlies and attendants. These preparations caused body temperatures to rise to 40 degrees [104 degrees Fahrenheit], pain throughout the body, and severe emotional depression. I know that at the time of my confinement two patients, Rodichkin and Nosov, were fooling around fighting. In the course of their encounter both fell and Rodichkin hurt himself on the radiator. This was not in the first but in the tenth section, where things are easier, where you could be out of your cell for a whole day. Rodichkin had cut his forehead, he was bleeding and he was sent to the nurse for some iodine. Because of this incident they were both transferred to a section with cells. They were placed in separate cells and injection treatment was prescribed. They prescribed an ukrutka[*] for Nosov. (He describes an ukrutka.)
In general, this hospital had such medical preparations as aminazin and sulphazin as well as the ukrutka. They were used so extensively for punishment at the request of the orderlies and nurses that everyone knew what to expect: You violated the rules in any way or simply spoke rudely to the doctor or the orderlies and without fail one of the medical preparations which I mentioned above would be prescribed for you as punishment.
I testify that when I was in this hospital, a man named N. N. Samsonov was also there. An important scientist, he had been awarded the Stalin prize, third rank; was the author of over ten different works of geophysics; a man who was psychologically and absolutely sound and who was placed in a mental institution only because he sent a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU demanding that they finish the job of exposing the crimes of Stalin and others, i.e., continue the process begun at the Twentieth Party Congress [1956].
N. N. Samsonov spent seven years in the Leningrad special psychiatric hospital for merely refusing to admit that he was mentally ill and to renounce his views. It must be pointed out that that was the unavoidable precondition for being released from that hospital. A person had to declare before a commission that his views were the result of mental illness and that he was now cured.
I can testify that during my stay in the hospital, there was a Rumanian there who had lived for a long time in France and had come to the Soviet Union in order "to see the building of communism with my own eyes." His name was Nik. Gregorevich Prisakaru. (He was in the psychiatric hospital because of his involvement in a strike at a shoe factory.)
Also in the hospital when I was there was a Latvian named Pintam, who had emigrated to Australia and later returned to his native land. He was placed in the Leningrad special psychiatric hospital because he wanted to return to Australia. He was not allowed to go, under the pretext that his passport had been issued by the Latvian bourgeois regime and, consequently, according to Soviet law, he was now a citizen of Soviet Latvia. He was also an absolutely sane person. The doctors repeatedly prescribed injections for him because he kept objecting to the illegality of his confinement in a mental institution.
I can tell the court many facts about the inhuman treatment of prisoners at the Leningrad special psychiatric hospital. For instance, I know for a fact that a prisoner named Anatoly Belyaev (incidentally, he was placed in the mental hospital because he told anecdotes about Khrushchev) was brutally beaten by an attendant named Viktor Valerianovich (I don't know his surname because they didn't tell the prisoners the surnames of doctors and other medical personnel) and by the orderlies only because he read lying in bed after lights out. On the next day, after a complaint by the surgeon about the allegedly excited state of the patient, injections of sulphazin were prescribed for Belyaev. I can cite still other examples that prove the truth of my assertions.
A large number of persons, for example, had been placed in the hospital because of attempts to seek refuge in foreign embassies. They were charged with attempting to cross the border. But later, because there is no law that says that seeking sanctuary in a foreign embassy is equivalent to crossing the border, these people were declared not accountable for their actions and confined in the Leningrad special psychiatric hospital.
Judge: Defendant Bukovsky, it is not necessary to speak in such detail about all these examples. Why these details?
Bukovsky: But I am charged with slander. I want to show that the things I stated in my interview were not slander.
Judge: You went into too many details about it. Back to the affair at hand. Tell us about yourself.
Bukovsky: That's fine. I'll talk about myself. For there, too, are enough facts to prove that I am telling the truth.
After being discharged from the Leningrad psychiatric hospital in February 1965, I was arrested in the street in December of that year by agents of the KGB and placed in regional psychiatric hospital number 13 without charges and without any sort of medical evidence. The clinic with which I was registered and which had observed me since my discharge from the Leningrad hospital stated, in response to an inquiry, that I had not displayed any sort of psychiatric abnormalities. The doctors at hospital number 13 came to the same conclusion and discharged me.
But the KGB authorities issued an order to transfer me to another hospital at Stolbovaya Junction, with the hope that the local doctors would turn out to be more obedient and find me not in possession of my senses. When this did not happen and the doctors in this psychiatric hospital detected nothing abnormal about my condition, the KGB transferred me to the Serbsky Institute. In response to inquiries by my mother addressed to Funtov, the "procurator" for supervising police activities, they answered that "in their opinion" I had been discharged from the Leningrad special psychiatric hospital prematurely and that I should be treated further.
Doesn't this show who really is responsible for the commitment of people like me to psychiatric hospitals? Doesn't it show who is putting pressure on the psychiatric commissions that conduct examinations in cases analogous to mine, where there is nothing in the law for which someone can be put on trial?
As a result, this time I spent eight and a half months, in all, in various psychiatric hospitals without any sort of charges against me and despite the opinion of doctors. I was released only thanks to public protest in the West and thanks to the pressure of public opinion at home.
Judge: Is that all you have to say about the first episode in the charges?
Bukovsky: No. The charges state: "He kept in his apartment various anti-Soviet materials of a slanderous nature defaming the Soviet state and social system." I do not know what documents this refers to. The charges do not say. During the search, a great quantity of various kinds of documents were confiscated, including clippings from Pravda. Is that what they would call an anti-Soviet document?
Judge: Does anyone wish to question the defendant about section one of the charges?
Prosecutor: You stated that a precondition for being discharged from the special psychiatric hospital was repudiation by the patient of his or her views. Did you also repudiate your views at the time of your discharge?
Bukovsky: Yes. I had to, to be discharged.
Prosecutor: You admit that you were interviewed by AP correspondent Holger Jensen?
Bukovsky: Yes, I admit that.
Prosecutor: How did this occur?
Bukovsky: We left the city, for an excursion. There were several of us — Russians and foreigners — around thirty people. There was talk about me, about how I had spent the past few years, and I related what was contained in the interview and Holger wrote it down. At the same time Bill Cole, CBS correspondent, shot the film.
Prosecutor: Had you prepared for this interview?
Bukovsky: No, I didn't prepare, but I knew that such questions arise, and I was always ready to answer them.
Prosecutor: You knew that your account would be publicized in the West and that the film would be televised there?
Bukovsky: Yes I knew that.
Prosecutor: And you didn't object?
Bukovsky: No, I didn't object. I asked them to do it.
Prosecutor: For what reason did you do this?
Bukovsky: I wanted the facts that I recounted to become widely known to the public.
Prosecutor: Why did you have to do this? What was your purpose?
Bukovsky: I stated my purpose in the interview itself. There I said: "Our purpose is the struggle against fear, which has paralyzed the people since the time of Stalin and thanks to which the system continues to exist. We are speaking of the dictatorship, the repression, the coercion. In this struggle the personal example that we give the people is of great importance."
Prosecutor: Did you study medicine?
Bukovsky: No, I don't have any special medical training. I studied psychiatry in the Leningrad special psychiatric hospital when I worked in the bookbinding shop there. I read many books on psychiatry.
Judge: Does the defense have any questions?
Defense lawyer: Tell me, when you granted the interview to the Western correspondents, was your purpose to injure and weaken Soviet power or the political structure?
Bukovsky: Of course not. I was thinking of those people, my friends, and others who had suffered a fate such as I have described and who, quite possibly, could be saved.
Prosecutor: Tell us why you kept clippings from the Washington Post and other newspapers in your apartment and how you got them.
Bukovsky: I had two clippings: Nikitinsky brought me the one from the Washington Post that included a photograph of me. I kept it because it was the text of my interview and also because it had my picture. I read it through to see if there were any mistakes. I kept it in my desk, but I didn't have any special reason for this.
Prosecutor: Why did you keep photocopies of the criminal proceedings against (she gives the name) in your apartment?
Bukovsky: The case interested me. I secured a partial transcript of this case with great difficulty. I wanted to familiarize myself with the case but I never had the chance.
Prosecutor: Why did you have in your apartment a document called "Open Letter to the Twenty-fourth Congress" and who was its author?
Bukovsky: The name of the author is at the end of the document — P. Yakir. One of my acquaintances had it at my place and forgot to take it with him.
Prosecutor: How did a rough copy of a document called "An Open Letter to the Congress" come to be in your place and who is its author?
Bukovsky: The author of this letter is not known and I don't know how it got there. . . .
Prosecutor: How did you get a document called "Appeal by Political Prisoners Ruled Not Accountable for Their Actions" and who is its author?
Bukovsky: The authors' names are also at the end of this document — V. Fainberg and V. Borisov. It came to me in the mail.
Prosecutor: Do you know that after your first arrest in 1963, your mother authorized a psychiatric examination of you?
Bukovsky: That authorization was signed before my arrest. As part of the medical examination for the draft I was to be examined by psychiatrists. The KGB, knowing about this, sent me for an expert psychiatric commission examination.
Prosecutor: I have a motion for the court.
She submits a motion that the court examine the clippings from foreign newspapers, which are commentaries on Bukovsky's statements in the interview with Holger [Jensen] and the commentary of the foreign press on the television interview that Bukovsky had with correspondent Cole.
The judge finds the relevant documents among the case records and states that the court has examined them.
Prosecutor: I ask to show the film that was shown on American television June 28, 1970, by the CBS network.
The film is shown. On the screen the entire time Bukovsky is shown in a forest. The audio portion of the film is an English translation of the interview.
After the screening:
Prosecutor: Defendant Bukovsky, do you admit that you are shown in this film at the time when you granted the interview?
Bukovsky: Yes.
[To be continued.]
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Notes
[*] The ukrutka treatment involves wrapping the patient in a piece of wet canvas, which shrinks as it dries, causing severe pain and suffocation.