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]

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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

[1] Maxim Litvinov was USSR People’s Commissar (Minister) for Foreign Affairs from 1930 to May 1939.

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

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