VYACHESLAV CHORNOVIL
By Dick Fidler
New evidence of the persecution of prosocialist critics of the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union has come to light in a couple of articles just published in the January 6 and 8 issues of the Toronto Telegran. :
The copyrighted articles are based on an eighty-page petition and a book smuggled out of the USSR. The author of both is a young Ukrainian, Vyacheslav Chornovil. The manuscript of the book has been termed by a leading North American "Sovietologist," Prof. B.R.Bociurkiw of the University of Alberta's Department of Political Science, "a remarkable document .-.of the stature of the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial transcript."
Two months ago, on November 15, the 29-year-old Chornovil was sentenced to three years in a labor camp, at a secret trial in Lvov in the western Ukraine, near the Polish border. He was convicted under the all-inclusive Article 62 of the Soviet Criminal Code, which provides for imprisonment for anywhere up to seven years for “anti-Soviet activities." In Chornovil's case, these "activities" consisted, among other things, of circulating an eighty-page document of charges against the "illegalities" being perpetrated by the courts, the KGB [secret police], and other authorities.
It all began in 1965, in the days of the Sinyavsky-Daniel affair. According to the Telegram's Peter Worthington, who was in Moscow at the time, their arrests and trial "were part of a wide 'purge' at the time." Among other victims were twenty Ukrainian writers, artists, teachers and scientists.
Worthington and the Telegram tell us little as to their specific views, except the following: "None of them are anti-Soviet so much as they are pro- Ukrainian. They base their defence on the dictums of V.I.Lenin and the pronouncements of Karl Marx. They are in no way agents of Imperialism, CIA informers, or enemies of the Soviet state. Mostly they don't attack Communism -- even Chornovil makes a point of emphasizing his belief in the teachings of Lenin."
They were tried -- six months after their arrest -- under the infamous Article 62. The trials were secret. They were found guilty of "anti-Soviet activity" and sentenced to terms of up to six years.
Vyacheslav Chornovil, a secret of the Komsomol (Communist Youth League], was assigned to cover the trials in Lvov
for Kiev television. So shocked was he
at how "socialist legality" was dis-
torted, however, that when he was called
upon to give evidence he refused on the
grounds that a closed trial was illegal.
He was subsequently charged under Arti-
cle 172 (refusal to give evidence) but
when he protested that it was illegal
to charge someone for refusing to partake
in an illegal trial, he was charged once
again under Article 62 (anti-Soviet ac-
tivities). He was sentenced to three
years.
In his Telegram articles, Worth-
ington cites extensively from Chornovil's
manuscript and petition, more than enough
to show that the young Ukrainian critic
is completely pro-Soviet and anticapital-
ist. In his petition, Chornovil "meticu-
lously details his complaints and gives
reasons for his behaviour.
"*Not to disclose my own attitude
towards that which is taking place would
mean to become a taciturn participant in
the wanton disregard of Socialist Legal-
ity,' he writes...
"He feels that the closed trials
were held to ‘intimidate' the general
public and notes: ‘After spending six
or seven months in the hands of the KGB
they will tell all...and will be given
in due count five or six "rightful"
years of hard labor.'
"He notes wryly: ‘Prosecution for
telling anecdotes...will be of assistance
in a radical solution to the housing
crisis in larger cities. In its devout
application, Article 62 of the Criminal
Code makes it possible to raise the pop-
ulation of camps to Stalin's levels, or
even to exceed them.'
"The prevailing attitude of the
Soviet hierarchy, says Chornovil, is
that ‘All oppositional tendencies and
acts within our country are considered
to be exclusively the results of the
influence of bourgeois propaganda and
intelligence services. If by a wave of
a magic wand the bourgeois world would
suddenly cease to exist, prosperity
would rule supreme. The fate of village
folk without passports [required for
domestic travel], who are condemned to
life on a collective farm, would sudden-
ly be eternal happiness.'
“He continues: 'For five years I
studied faithfully Marxism-Leninism at
the university -- just recently I passed
my Master's examination in Marxist-
Leninist philosophy. Then, all of a sud-
den and quite by accident I lay my hands
on a Ukrainisn book published abroad and I'm accused of being a bourgeois nationalist..-or I read a leaflet from Peking and I become a follower of Mao Tse-tung -.-.or I listen to a speech by the Pope on the radio and I become a Jesuit...
"'Without doubt Marxism-Leninism is stronger than bourgeois ideology. Yet in our country the reading of a book published in the West makes one subject to prosecution.....'"
Chornovil points to the fact that one can purchase Soviet bocks and news~ papers in Western countries, and asks, ironically, "Is it possible that non- Marxists have absorbed the Marxist- Leninist thesis better than our leaders .--that to disallow the spreading of ideas means to increase their strength and attractiveness?"
Worthington continues his summary of Chornovil's account:
“Chornovil quotes the Constitution which stresses the inviolability of a citizen's home, his right tc privacy and to receive mail unopened by anyone. He quotes Article 130 of the Criminal Code which states that : 'Illegal searches, illegal evictions or other acts which violate the citizen's dwellings by a state official are punishable by imprisonment.'
"Then he tells of medical student M. Plakhotniuk finding his room bugged... of another discovering KGB recording devices in his attic...of 'informers' being planted in communal apartments...of an electronically equipped ‘birthday present' being given to bedridden writer Yevhen Kontsevich...of secret searches, secret arrests, secret trials -- all of which Chornovil says are contrary to the Criminal Code as well as to the Soviet Constitution.
"In short," Worthington continues, "he does not object so much to the arrest and trial of the 20 cases he documents and on whose behalf he is petitioning the highest authorities, as he does to the manner in which it was all conducted, in violation of the law."
Chornovil explains how "confessions" are occasionally extracted from the innocent victims of these frameup procedures.
"He notes: 'It is not necessary to slam doors on fingers, to stick needles under fingernails, or to beat faces in order to persuade a person to regard his deeds as terrible crimes or to force him to confess everything.
"tall that is needed is to lock a man in a stone shack with bars...to keep -66-
him in solitary for six months...to constantly hammer into him feelings of guilt -.-to morally terrorize, threaten and promise...and usually the required testimony will be squeezed out by the time of the trial.' -
"He quotes one of his 20 'criminals,' medical student Yaroslav Havrych, then 29, as apologizing to a woman whom he had born witness against: 'In 105 days one can be taught to lie.'
"For allegedly spreading anti-~ Soviet propaganda Havrych got five years, subsequently reduced to three years which he is now serving.
"Chornovil tells of indignities KGB officers inflict on women 'offenders' by blackmail, obscenities, stripping and insulting them. Says Chornovil: ‘If a prisoner's fate is decided by the KGB, why do we need the comedy of trials at all -- not to mention closed trials?'
"If such extreme measures as illegally long pre-trial custody followed by closed trials are necessary for accused ‘intellectuals' Chornovil asks: ‘What qualifications should then be given to subversion, murderers, embez~ zlers of state property? Is it possible that we are going back to Stalin's times when murderers were called ‘socially congenial' while writers and artists were considered 'people's enemies'?
"'The whole purpose seems to be to break the prisoner's will and to force him to say memorized words at the trial.'"
Chornovil describes what happened when he declared that he would not give evidence at a closed trial because he "did not wish to participate in a flagrant violation of Socialist Legality."
"The prosecutor jumped up and called me an enemy who has no right to speak of Socialist Legality. Soldiers were ordered to remove me from the court and did it so quickly that I was unable to ask the prosecutor why I, who was protesting against the revival of the wantonness of Cult-of-Personality fame, the closed tribunal, am branded an enemy while he, who in his capacity as the regional public prosecutor was sanctioning this gross violation of the letter and spirit of the law claims to be a friend of the Soviet system..."
When the twenty accused were convicted and sentenced, Chornovil relates, two women poets among the carefully chosen witnesses in the packed courtroom threw flowers to the prisoners. They were immediately seized and interrogated. In the streets outside the courtroom, demonstrators throwing more flowers and shout~
ing encouragement, "bravo...glory," were finally dispersed with fire hoses.
Perhaps the most impressive indication of the difficulties under which Soviet oppositionists labor, is contained in a follow-up story by Worthington in the Telegram which describes the case of Svyatoslave Karavansky. Karavansky's experiences are outlined by Chornovil, but part of Worthington's information also comes from one John Kolasky, a Toronto member of the Communist party of Canada.
Apparently, Karavansky, while still in his early twenties in Odessa during the war, joined an underground organization dedicated to Ukrainian nationalism. In 1944, he was sentenced to twenty-five years. The Telegram story continues:
"Today Karavansky explains that he was 'driven' to his 'mistake' of joining the organization by the ‘ugliness... the repugnant personality cult of Stalin... that demoralizing influence upon the hearts and souls of those Soviet citizens who recognized it as inhibiting development.'
"He feels that the official discrediting of Stalin's policies vindicates his earlier ‘errors.'
"After serving 16 years and five months, Karavansky was released in 1960 when the maximum prison sentence in the USSR was reduced from 25 to 15 years.
"He returned to Odessa where he married, went to university and worked as a poet-translator. During his time in the camps he had compiled a massive dictionary of Ukrainian rhymes which Soviet scholars praised as an ‘astonishing achievement' which normally would have required the collective effort of a university.
"Karavansky says the KGB advised him not to talk of the past, and for five years in Odessa he wrote, worked and made up for the years that had been stolen from his life.
"In February, 1965, he made his mistake. He sent a detailed documented petition to the State Prosecutor complaining that the minister of education for the Ukraine was condoning and encouraging discrimination against Ukrainian students in violation of the principles of Lenin, and of the Soviet constitution and of Soviet law." .
When a copy of this petition was
found in the possession of Kolasky, a
member of the Canadian Communist party,
who was studying at the Higher Party
School of the Central Committee in Kiev,
Karavansky was accused (the Telegram
says) of being "eager for the rotten
lure of unscrupulous foreigners." Kola-
sky, a member of the CP for thirty years,
who says he was collecting material on
how the Soviets were trying to destroy
the Ukrainian culture and replace it
with Russian, says that "in essence Kara-
vansky's observations are true." Kolasky
says that the KGB held him two weeks for
questioning, and confiscated all his pa-
pers.
In November, 1965, Karavansky was
seized and, without trial or explanation,
thrown into a labor camp to serve the re-
maining eight years and seven months of
his 25-year sentence. Since then, Kara-
vansky, still unbroken, has been fighting
back in the only way open to him -- by
petitions to higher authorities, such as
the Supreme Court and the Union of Jour-
nalists.
In his petitions, he also appeals
against injustices which have been com-
mitted against others. In a petition to
the People's Court of Odessa which Worth-
ington cites, Karavansky urges "that the
dictums of Leninism and socialist legal-
ity be followed, and that Stalinism not
be repeated or resurrected."
That the treatment suffered by
these opponents of the privileged layers
runs counter to all the fine-sounding
phrases about "building Communism," is
eloquently stated by Vyacheslav Chorno-
vil himself:
"The highest material saturation
without free thought and free will does
not constitute Communism. Rather it con-
stitutes a great prison in which the food
ration for prisoners has simpl* heen in-
creased...
"It has been declared that in our
country today, Communism is becoming a
reality; that today's generation of
Soviet people will live in Communisn...
Perhaps our generation will live during
declared Communism, the same as we are
presently living in a declared sovereign
republic, have declared freedoms and a
declared Socialist law.
"But more than once history has
refuted the principle that the ends jus-
tify the means. The most equitable society
cannot be built by means of terror, by
the suppression of civic impulses in peo-
ple...Improper methods only distort the
end...