A letter to MIKOYAN from Ivy LITVINOV [née Low] in defence of her grandson, Pavel, arrested after the Red Square demonstration; forwarded by Mikoyan to BREZHNEV [R: 4 September 1968]. One page.
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[page one of one]
Copy
Dear Anastas Ivanovich,
I’m writing this in distress: my grandson Pavel Litvinov is in Lefortovo prison. I don’t know on what charges, all I know is that he is a decent and honest boy who treasures his Fatherland. Maxim Maximovich [1] loved him so!
Dear Anastas Ivanovich, please see if you can help him, He is so young and I am so very old.
Respectfully and hopefully yours,
I. Litvinova
4 September 1968
[handwritten note to Brezhnev across top left-hand corner]
Leonid Ilyich,
May I request your attention.
Putting Litvinov’s grandson and others on trial at the moment […] would mean giving our enemies fresh ammunition. They have spent quite some time in jail. I believe it would be more reasonable this time to caution them and let them go,
A. Mikoyan,
13 September [1968]
[Handwritten below]
Politburo members to be familiarized with this.
(Signed) L. Brezhnev [illegible signatures]
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NOTES
Pavel Litvinov was not only arrested and prosecuted for his part in the 28 August 1968 Red Square demonstration (CCE 4.1): earlier he and Larissa Bogoraz helped to draw up an appeal (CCE 1.4) to the conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties in Budapest (see 26 February 1968, 444-A [R]).
- Maxim Litvinov (1876-1951) was USSR People’s Commissar, or Minister, for Foreign Affairs from 21 July 1930 to 3 May 1939, when he was succeeded by Vyacheslav Molotov.
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General
- 1. Notes and additions by translator and editor are bracketed, thus [ ]
- 2. Text written by hand is indicated in italic script, and
- 3. by underlined italic script when a handwritten phrase, figure or word has been inserted in a previously typed document.
Translation, George Sklyar; annotation, John Crowfoot
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