BACK TO THE FUTURE (II)

• 4.1 “Without the latter’s consent …”
• 4.2 What can we do about Solzhenitsyn?
• 4.3 External costs
• 4.4 The psychiatric Gulag

• NOTES & SOURCES
• click on number [²³] to see note and source

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Judgement in Moscow

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The regime’s most ludicrous violations of the law occurred when it did not wish to imprison us or, at least, punish us “with the full force of the law”. The search for alternative forms of reprisal led to a malfunctioning of the Soviet punitive system.

Ideological expediency could not be combined with legality, and this led to extraordinary paradoxes obvious to those with no knowledge of the law. Was there anyone, for example, who did not know when we were expelled from the USSR, “exchanged” for Soviet spies, or deprived of our citizenship? No one doubted these were politically-motivated reprisals without any foundation in law.

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4.1 “Without the latter’s consent …”

Anatoly Marchenko and Ilya Gabai had been formally expelled from the country, as we have seen, when the authorities had second thoughts. No trouble was taken to revoke the edict depriving them of their Soviet citizenship. The decision was no less arbitrary in other cases. Valery Tarsis was the first person in the post-Stalin period to be deprived of his citizenship for political reasons. Having let him travel to Britain the Politburo was undecided what to do next. Then the KGB reported: it had managed to discredit Tarsis in the West (8 April 1966, Pb 238/132 [¹]):

“The KGB is continuing its measures to further compromise Tarsis as a mentally ill person. As concerns the defamatory anti-Soviet statements made by Tarsis abroad, and the positive reaction of Soviet citizens to the measures taken against him, we do not consider it expedient to permit his return to the Soviet Union, and propose that Tarsis be deprived of his Soviet citizenship and denied entry to the USSR.”

The Politburo agreed and the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet issued the appropriate edict. Yet what if Soviet citizens had expressed a “negative reaction” to these measures: would Tarsis then have retained his citizenship? And how should such reactions find expression? More fantastic still, from a legal point of view, were the “exchanges”, especially when certain Soviet citizens were exchanged for others (23 May 1979, 1012-A [²]):

“On 27 April 1979 the KGB, in accordance with Central Committee Resolution No P129/44 (16 November 1978), deported the criminals Vins, [Eduard] Kuznetsov, Dymshits, Moroz and [Alexander] Ginzburg (who have been deprived of their citizenship by the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet), to the USA in exchange for Soviet intelligence agents Comrades Chernyayev and Enger, who were convicted by the American authorities. At the same time the Jewish nationalists [³] Altman, Butman, Zalmanson, Penson and Khnokh^[41] quit the USSR, having been given permission to leave in view of the operational situation within the country as it prepares for the Olympic Games in Moscow.”

As if this were insufficiently comic, the head of the KGB added [⁴] that his organisation had received information

“… that the expulsion from the USSR of the above-mentioned persons is assessed by anti-Soviet groups abroad and anti-social elements within the country as a serious blow to their plans to “weaken socialism from within”. In commentaries made abroad it is emphasised that in Vins, Kuznetsov, Altman and other anti-Soviets the West has lost “reliable executors” of the hostile schemes of secret services and subversive centres, and sources of spiteful defamation of Soviet reality and the domestic and foreign policies of the Communist Party and the Soviet government….

The deported individuals themselves give a similar assessment. Ginzburg and Vins, for example, have declared that it would have been better for them if they had not been expelled and remained in prison so as to maintain contact with the milieu in which they were working.”

This was written at a time when tens of thousands were trying unsuccessfully to leave the Soviet Union. Many of those “expelled” were imprisoned precisely because they wanted to go to Israel. A contemporary cartoon in The New York Times showed two foreigners in fur coats and hats, chatting on Red Square: “Well, everything’s clear now,” says one to the other: “those who want to go, are not allowed out; those who don’t, are forced to leave.”

In fact, all those “expelled” were, at the moment of the exchange, being held in camps or prison. If a radical improvement to the “operational situation” was the true explanation they should have been expelled immediately, without bothering the investigators or the courts. All the other “reliable executors of hostile schemes” (and all political prisoners, why not?) could also have been added to their number. Especially since the “subversive centres” declared that this would be a “serious blow” to their work.

It’s amusing in retrospect but that, roughly speaking, was the situation. In 1970-1, before my last arrest, I recall how I helped several Jewish activists, whom the Soviet authorities would not release, to emigrate. Legends began circulating among the refuseniks about my special skills but I did not divulge my methods. They were very simple. Taking pity on one such refusenik I proposed to make him my “accomplice” and put on a little show for the KGB. He was to ring me up regularly and repeat certain mysterious phrases; or he would come and visit me, secretly, at home. Sometimes he would show up with me in company, we would talk about something with a business-like air, and then, having received his instructions, he would rapidly disappear. Usually only a month of these games were needed before my accomplice received permission to leave the USSR ahead of the queue, although he might have waited years until then. That was how the KGB and I worked to create “a healthier political situation” in the country.

Another example of the Central Committee’s legislative ingenuity (30 September 1986, 1942-Ch [⁵]) was the expulsion of Yury Orlov after perestroika had already begun:

“Orlov, Yu. F., b. 1924, former corresponding member of Armenian SSR Academy of Sciences, was sentenced in 1978 under Article 70, part 1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, to 7 years’ imprisonment and five years of exile. Presently, he is in exile in the Yakut ASSR and his sentence finishes in February 1989…. To resolve the issue of Zakharov and N. Daniloff on a mutually acceptable basis we consider it possible to expel Orlov from the country, releasing him from the remainder of his sentence and depriving him of his Soviet citizenship.”

Not the slightest effort was made to give this decision the semblance of legality. The Central Committee needed to resolve another issue that had nothing to do with Yury Orlov and he served as a makeweight in the deal, like so much loose change from a large bank note.

In my case, the reverse happened. They “forgot” to deprive me of my Soviet citizenship or annul my conviction. When they expelled me from the USSR I was given a Soviet passport valid for the next five years. My exchange was discussed by the Politburo at least three times, the final occasion being only three days before I was swapped for the Chilean Communist Corvalan. An edict was issued by the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, it seems, but not published. A proposal under the imposing title, “Measures linked to the release of Comrade L. Corvalan” was put to the Politburo by Andropov, Gromyko and Ponomarev (14 December 1976, 2816‑A [⁶]):

“The Soviet ambassador in Washington reports that the Chilean authorities have agreed to transfer Comrade L. Corvalan and his family to Geneva. The idea is that we shall hand over Bukovsky and his mother there as well.

“The Chileans propose to make the exchange on 18 December this year (telegram No 3130 from Washington). We consider it expedient to give our agreement to this date.

“It is desirable to send a representative of the Central Committee International Department to Geneva and a doctor. A special plane should be provided to transport Comrade Corvalan from Geneva to the USSR. Bukovsky will be sent to Geneva on the same plane.

“An edict concerning Bukovsky’s deportation from a penal institution to a place beyond the borders of the USSR should be adopted by the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet before he is handed over to the Chilean side. This will permit Bukovsky’s transportation in custody to Geneva without his agreement.”

And there you have it. It was to “avoid asking Bukovsky’s agreement”, and to have the pleasure of transporting me in handcuffs, that a separate edict was passed. In that case, however, they could neither annul my conviction nor withdraw my Soviet citizenship: a non-citizen, especially one no longer convicted of a crime, could not be kept in custody. Sixteen years were to pass before I set eyes on this edict. When I did, I threw up my arms in amazement and burst out laughing. When had they become so fastidious as to ask our permission before taking reprisals against us? And why had they done it? Did they imagine I would start fighting them?

All the same, the humour was distinctly limited: there is little to laugh about in such lawless and arbitrary conduct. This was how the Soviet Union “rid itself” in the 1970s and 1980s of the best, often the most gifted, and certainly the most honest, figures in the worlds of science, scholarship, art and literature. The Central Committee was informed, for example, that Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya (14 March 1978*, 459-A [⁷])

“… have been engaged in anti-social activities for the entire period of their time abroad since 1974, denigrating the Soviet State and social system and committing other acts unworthy of the title of Soviet citizen.

“By their provocative actions and defamatory statements Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya have repeatedly provided material for inciting anti-Soviet insinuations in the West, including malicious attacks on the USSR over the notorious issues of “human rights” and “creative freedom” in our country … Such behaviour by Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya creates a precedent for imitation by other politically immature representatives of the creative intelligentsia. Following their example, several musicians, directors, writers, artists and sportsmen have already submitted applications for extended visits abroad.

“In view of the above we consider it expedient to deprive M.L. Rostropovich and G.I. Vishnevskaya of their Soviet citizenship, and to publish an edict of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet in the

“News of the USSR Supreme Soviet” and a short item about this issue in “Izvestiya“.”

The same file, it is curious to relate, contained earlier Central Committee documents about its treatment of Rostropovich. There was the ban on his touring the USSR late in 1977 [⁸] with the Washington National Symphony Orchestra of which he was then conductor. There was also the following memorandum and proposal (12 May 1977*, 958-A [⁹]):

“According to information received, the Association of International Gatherings in Contemporary Art intends to hold a “Rostropovich Competition for Young Cellists” in Paris from 27 June to 3 July 1977 and has announced this as one of the events to mark his 50^th birthday. Preparations for the competition are being accompanied in the West by a raucous advertising campaign.

“In the present situation, it seems expedient to instruct the USSR Ministry of Culture to inform the cultural bodies of Bulgaria, Hungary, the GDR, Cuba, Mongolia, Poland and the Czechoslovak SSR, that it would be undesirable for representatives of the socialist countries to take part in the above-mentioned competition.”

All these documents were considered in deciding what to do about Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya. The couple had more than sufficient grounds to speak of systematic persecution, not just violations of their human rights. The Politburo organised this persecution and then, taking offence at their reaction, deprived them of their Soviet citizenship. What, one wonders, did its members expect? Gratitude?

As if driven by a self-destructive urge, the Politburo took no account of others. It did not matter how famous someone might be or what honours and awards he had earned, in the USSR or elsewhere: if he would not bend to their wishes, he was thrown out of the country. The sculptor Ernst Neizvestny, Yury Lyubimov, director of the Soviet Union’s most famous theatre, and the renowned film director Andrei Tarkovsky were all driven into exile. Tired of the Party’s supervision, others fled the country or refused to return from trips abroad. They became “traitors” and “turncoats” who could not be mentioned in the Soviet press. Their books were withdrawn from libraries and mention of their names was removed from the encyclopaedias. Suddenly scientists, chess-players, ballet dancers and writers were the main enemies of the regime. Nuclear physicists, whom Stalin preferred to leave alone, were not spared (6 November 1978):

“The Ministry of Medium Machine Engineering has put forward a proposal that S.M. Polikanov, a senior research associate of the Combined Institute for Nuclear Research, should be deprived of his Soviet medals and orders, his title as Lenin-Prize winner, his doctorate in physical-mathematical sciences and be excluded from among the corresponding members of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

“The reason for this proposal is that S.M. Polikanov has established ties with foreign correspondents and provided them with defamatory materials that are used by the Western press for anti-Soviet purposes. He has also joined a group of individuals, well-known for their anti-social activities, and takes part in their hostile acts …

“A decree of the Central Committee, dated 25 August 1978, gives permission for Polikanov and his family to leave for permanent residence in a capitalist country.”

The only person they did not summon the determination to expel was Andrei Sakharov.

Instead, he was exiled to Gorky, without a court decision, and with no recollection of the “legislation”, invented in 1968 for Yakir, Litvinov and Bogoraz. To prevent Sakharov’s “hostile activities”, “criminal contacts” with citizens from capitalist States, and the resulting damage to the “interests of the Soviet State” the Politburo decided (8 January 1980*, Pb 177/X) [¹⁰]:

“… to take no other step but to exile Sakharov, Andrei Dmitriyevich, in administrative order, from the city of Moscow to a part of the country that is closed for visits by foreigners. A residential regime is to be established for A.D. Sakharov that excludes contacts with foreigners and anti-social elements, and journeys to other parts of the country without the permission of the appropriate body within the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. Monitoring to ensure that Sakharov A.D. observes the established regime is entrusted to the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.”

Can anyone explain to me why the Soviet regime could do nothing in accordance with the laws it had itself invented?

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4.2: What can we do about Solzhenitsyn?

How the minds of the Politburo worked when resolving such issues is revealed by the minutes of the meeting on 7 January 1974, as they decided what to do about Solzhenitsyn [¹¹].

7 JANUARY 1974 (POLITBURO)

BREZHNEV. According to reports from our embassies abroad and in the foreign press, a new work by Solzhenitsyn, “The Gulag Archipelago”, is to be published in France and the USA.

Comrade Suslov tells me that the Secretariat has taken a decision to deploy articles in our press, exposing the writings of Solzhenitsyn and bourgeois propaganda linked to the publication of this book. No one has yet read this book but the contents are already known. It is a crude, anti-Soviet lampoon. Today we must discuss what we do next. Our laws give us every right to send Solzhenitsyn to prison because he has offended against all that is most sacred – Lenin, our Soviet system, the Soviet regime, everything that we hold dear.

In the past, we sent Yakir, Litvinov and others to prison; they were convicted and that was an end of it. [Anatoly] Kuznetsov, Alliluyeva and others moved abroad. For a time, it caused a stir, then all was forgotten. Then this delinquent element Solzhenitsyn went on the loose. He takes a swing at everything and shows no respect. What should we do with him? If we penalise him, will that be to our advantage? How will bourgeois propaganda use it against us? I am raising this issue for discussion. I just want us to exchange opinions, talk it over and reach the right decision.

KOSYGIN. We have a note from Comrade Andropov on this matter. It contains the suggestion that Solzhenitsyn be deported from the country.

BREZHNEV. I have talked with Comrade Andropov on this issue.

ANDROPOV. I consider Solzhenitsyn should be deported from the country without his consent. In an earlier period, Trotsky was deported from the country, without asking his consent.

BREZHNEV. Obviously, Solzhenitsyn himself will not agree to that.

KIRILENKO. He can be removed without his agreement.

PODGORNY. Can a country be found that will take him without his consent?

BREZHNEV. Remember that Solzhenitsyn did not go abroad even to receive the Nobel Prize [in 1972].

ANDROPOV. When it was suggested that he go abroad to receive the Nobel Prize, he asked for guarantees that he could return to the USSR.

I have been raising the problem of Solzhenitsyn since 1965, comrades. He has now reached a new level in his hostile activities. He is trying to create an organisation within the Soviet Union, made up of former prisoners. He is speaking out against Lenin, against the October Revolution, and against the socialist system. His composition “The Gulag Archipelago” is not a work of art but a political document. That is dangerous. There are tens of thousands of Vlasovites, members of OUN [¹²] and other hostile elements within the country: hundreds and thousands of people among whom Solzhenitsyn will find support. Now everyone is watching to see how we deal with Solzhenitsyn, whether we take legal measures against him or leave him in peace.

Comrade Keldysh [president of USSR Academy of Sciences] recently rang me and asked why we are not taking any measures against Sakharov. If we do nothing about Sakharov, he says, then Academicians like Kapitza, Engelgardt and others will start behaving the same way.

This is all very important, comrades, and we must resolve these issues, even though the European Conference [¹³] is now under way [CSCE] I think we must put Solzhenitsyn on trial and apply the Soviet laws to him. Many foreign correspondents and other dissatisfied people are coming to visit Solzhenitsyn. He talks to them and even holds press conferences. There might be a hostile underground organisation in the USSR that the KGB has overlooked. Solzhenitsyn, however, is acting openly and brazenly. He exploits the humane attitude of the Soviet regime and conducts his hostile work with impunity. Therefore, we must take all the measures of which I wrote to the Central Committee, and deport Solzhenitsyn. First, we shall ask our ambassadors to sound out the governments of the countries where they are serving to see if they can take him. If we do not deport him today, he will continue his hostile activities. You know that he wrote a hostile novel “August 1914”, the lampoon “Gulag Archipelago” and now he is writing “October 1917”, a new anti-Soviet composition.

Therefore, I propose that we deport Solzhenitsyn by administrative order. Let us instruct our ambassadors to make the necessary enquiries about receiving Solzhenitsyn in the countries named in my memorandum. If we do not take these measures, all our propaganda work will have no effect. If we place articles in the press and talk about him on the radio, but take no measures that will be just words. We must decide how we are going to deal with Solzhenitsyn.

BREZHNEV. What if we deported him to a socialist country?

ANDROPOV. It’s unlikely, Leonid Ilych, that socialist countries will be receptive. We would be making a gift of such an unwelcome character. Perhaps, we could ask Iraq, Switzerland or some other country? He can live comfortably abroad, he has 8 million roubles in European banks.

SUSLOV. Solzhenitsyn has grown insolent. He has insulted the Soviet system and the Communist Party, and raised his hand against the Holy of Holies, against Lenin.

It is a question of time, how we deal with Solzhenitsyn: whether we deport him, or try him according to our Soviet laws, something must be done. To implement one measure or another against Solzhenitsyn, we must prepare our people and that must be done by deploying wide propaganda. We acted correctly towards Sakharov when we carried out the necessary propaganda work. There are no more bad-tempered letters about Sakharov. Millions of Soviet people listen to the radio and hear broadcast about these new compositions [by Solzhenitsyn]. This all has an effect on the people. We must issue a series of articles and expose Solzhenitsyn. That most certainly must be done.

In accordance with the decision taken by the Secretariat, it is intended to publish one or two articles in “Pravda” and “Literaturnaya gazeta”. The people will learn about this book by Solzhenitsyn. Of course, we must not start a campaign about it but print several articles.

KIRILENKO. That will only draw attention to Solzhenitsyn.

SUSLOV. But we cannot keep quiet.

GROMYKO. Solzhenitsyn is an enemy and I shall vote for the most severe measures against him. As concerns propaganda measures, these should be on the right scale. They require careful forethought.

Neither, however, can we reject the steps proposed by Comrade Andropov. If we deport him by force, against his will, we must be aware that this could turn bourgeois propaganda against us. It would be good to expel him with his agreement, but he will not give his consent. Perhaps, we should be patient for a little while longer, whilst the European Conference is still under way? If some country did agree it would not be expedient to expel him now because this might lead to a wide propaganda campaign against us, and that will not help us when the European Conference comes to an end. I suggest waiting 3-4 months but, let me repeat, in principle I favour severe measures. Solzhenitsyn should now be cordoned off so that he is isolated for those months, and cannot receive people through whom he can wage his propaganda.

Leonid Ilych will be making a visit to Cuba in the near future. This is also not entirely favourable to us because it will be hindered by many kinds of material against the Soviet Union. We must take the necessary propaganda measures within the country to expose Solzhenitsyn.

USTINOV. I think we should begin work on the proposals made by Comrade Andropov. At the same time, we must publish propaganda materials exposing Solzhenitsyn.

PODGORNY. I would like to pose the question as follows. What administrative measure are we to take towards Solzhenitsyn: are we to convict him under Soviet law and make him serve his sentence here, or, as Comrade Andropov proposes, are we to deport him?

It is beyond doubt that Solzhenitsyn is an insolent and vehement foe, who is leading the turncoats behind him. Everything he is doing goes unpunished, and that’s also clear to all of us. Let’s see which measure will be most advantageous to us: a trial or deportation. In many countries, in China, they hold public executions; in Chile, the fascist regime shoots and tortures people; in Ireland, the English take repressive measures against the working people. Meanwhile we are faced by a vehement foe and look the other way, when everyone and everything is being smeared with filth.

I consider our law humane but, at the same time, merciless towards enemies, and we should try Solzhenitsyn according to our laws in our Soviet court and make him serve his sentence in the Soviet Union.

DEMICHEV. Of course, there will be a fuss abroad but we have already published several items about Solzhenitsyn’s new book. We must further expand our propaganda work. We cannot remain silent.

If Solzhenitsyn said in his “Feast of the Victors” that he wrote such things because he is infuriated by the Soviet regime, he is still more insolent and open in his opposition to the Soviet system and the Party in “The Gulag Archipelago”, which he wrote in 1965. Therefore, we must offer sharply-worded articles in our press. In my view, this will not affect the relaxation of international tension or the European Conference.

SUSLOV. Party organisations are waiting, and the socialist countries are also waiting, to see how we react to Solzhenitsyn’s actions. The bourgeois press is now promoting this book of Solzhenitsyn as loudly as it can. We must not remain silent.

KATUSHEV. We all share the same assessment of Solzhenitsyn’s actions. This is an enemy and we must treat him accordingly. Evidently, we cannot avoid resolving the problem of Solzhenitsyn now. However, we must find a comprehensive solution.

On the one hand, we shall use all our propaganda against Solzhenitsyn and, on the other, we must take measures in accordance with Comrade Andropov’s memorandum. Obviously, we can deport him with a decree from the Supreme Soviet and announce it in the press. He has assaulted our sovereignty, attacked our freedoms and our laws, and he must be punished for doing so. Negotiations about Solzhenitsyn’s deportation, obviously, will take 3-4 months.

However, I repeat, we must find a comprehensive solution and the sooner we deport him, the better. As concerns our press, we must issue articles.

KAPITONOV. I would like to pose this issue as follows: if we deport Solzhenitsyn, what will our people think? They may respond, of course, without any reservations, gossip and so on. What are we showing by this action: our strength or our weakness? I think that, no matter what, we shall not be demonstrating our strength. So far, we have not yet exposed him ideologically and have told the people nothing about Solzhenitsyn. Yet that must be done. We must begin our work, first and foremost, by exposing Solzhenitsyn, turning him inside out, and then any administrative measure will be understood by our people.

SOLOMENTSEV. Solzhenitsyn is a hardened enemy of the Soviet Union. If it was not for the current foreign policy operations of the Soviet Union we could solve the problem, of course, without delay. How will one decision or another reflect on our foreign policy operations? In any case, obviously, we must say everything that should be said to our people about Solzhenitsyn. We must give a critical assessment of his actions and his hostile activities. Of course, the people will ask, Why are no measures being taken against Solzhenitsyn? In the GDR, for example, they have already printed an article about Solzhenitsyn, and in Czechoslovakia as well. I say nothing about the bourgeois countries, but our press is silent. Over the radio, we hear a great deal about Solzhenitsyn and his “Gulag Archipelago”, but our radio keeps quiet and says nothing.

I believe that we should not be silent. The people expect decisive action. Critical material exposing Solzhenitsyn should be printed in our press. Obviously, we should reach agreement with the socialist countries and the communist parties of capitalist countries about propaganda measures that they might take in their countries.

I think Solzhenitsyn should be convicted according to our laws.

GRISHIN. Comrade Andropov, obviously, needs to find a country that would agree to accept Solzhenitsyn. As concerns the exposure of Solzhenitsyn, that should begin without delay.

KIRILENKO. Whenever we talk about Solzhenitsyn as an anti-Sovietist and a malicious enemy of the Soviet system this always coincides with some other important events and we defer a solution to the problem. In the past this was justified, but now we cannot postpone a decision on this issue. What has been written about Solzhenitsyn is good but, as comrades have already said here, it must be more soundly and critically expressed and argued. For instance, the Polish writer Krolikowski has written a very good exposé of Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn is becoming more and more insolent. He is not alone but is in contact with Sakharov. Abroad he has contacts with the NTS. Therefore, the moment has come to grapple seriously with Solzhenitsyn and then deport him or take other administrative measures against him.

Andrei Andreyevich [Gromyko] is concerned that this measure might rebound on us. However that may be, the problem cannot be left as it is. Enemies are hampering us and we cannot keep silent about it. Even bourgeois newspapers are now writing that Solzhenitsyn will be tried under Soviet law and has already violated the copyright convention which we have joined.

I support Comrade Andropov’s proposal.

Articles should be provided in the newspapers but very well argued and detailed.

KOSYGIN. We share a common opinion, comrades, and I fully support what has been said.

For several years, Solzhenitsyn has been trying to win over the minds of our people. For some reason, we are afraid to touch him and yet the people would welcome all our actions regarding Solzhenitsyn.

If we speak about public opinion abroad we should consider what will do least harm: to expose him, convict him and send him to prison or to wait several months and then deport him to another country.

I think that we shall face the least costs if we act decisively towards him now and convict him according to Soviet laws.

Obviously, articles about Solzhenitsyn must be provided in the press, but they must be serious. Solzhenitsyn has been bought by Western companies and agencies, and he is working for them. The book “Gulag Archipelago” is an out-and-out anti-Soviet work. I talked with Comrade Andropov about this problem. Of course, the socialist countries will not accept Solzhenitsyn. I am in favour of Comrade Andropov trying to sound out capitalist countries to see which of them might take him. On the other hand, we should not be afraid to apply the harsh measures of Soviet justice to Solzhenitsyn. Look at Britain. They are killing hundreds of people. Or Chile, it’s the same thing.

We must put Solzhenitsyn on trial and tell everyone about him, and then he can be sent to Verkhoyansk to serve his sentence. No foreign correspondent will travel there: it’s too cold. We have nothing to hide from the people. Articles must be published in the newspapers.

PODGORNY. Solzhenitsyn is actively carrying out anti-Soviet work. In the past, we deported or put on trial less dangerous enemies than Solzhenitsyn yet we still cannot approach him, we keep looking for a way to do so. Solzhenitsyn’s last book gives no excuse for any concessions.

It is necessary that this measure, of course, does not harm other operations. Solzhenitsyn has quite a few followers but we cannot ignore his actions.

I believe that the people will support any action we take. Articles should be published in the newspapers, but they should be very well argued and convincing. Many know about him and about the latest book. The Voice of America, Free Europe and other radio stations are transmitting broadcasts about him. At home and abroad people are waiting to see what measures the Soviet government takes against Solzhenitsyn. He is not afraid, of course, and assumes that nothing will happen to him.

Despite the European Conference I believe we cannot back down and take no measures against him. Although the European Conference is taking place we must put Solzhenitsyn on trial and let everyone know that we are following a principled policy in this respect. We shall show our enemies no mercy.

We shall do great damage to our cause if we do not take measures against Solzhenitsyn, although there will be an outcry abroad. There will be all kinds of talk, of course, but the interests of our people, and the interests of our Soviet State and our Party come before everything else. If we do not take these decisive measures, we shall be asked why we are not doing so.

I am in favour of putting Solzhenitsyn on trial. If we deport him this will show our weakness. We must prepare for a trial, expose Solzhenitsyn in the press, bring charges against him, conduct an investigation and transfer the case, via the Procuracy, to the courts.

POLYANSKY. Can he be arrested before the trial?

ANDROPOV. He can. I consulted Rudenko.

PODGORNY. As concerns deportation to another country, that’s no good without the country’s agreement.

ANDROPOV. We shall begin working on deportation, but, at the same time, we shall open a criminal case against Solzhenitsyn and isolate him.

PODGORNY. If we deport him he will do us harm abroad.

GROMYKO. We must concentrate, obviously, on the alternative of dealing with him here.

ANDROPOV. If we drag things out with regard to Solzhenitsyn I think that will be worse.

PODGORNY. We can spin out Solzhenitsyn’s case, say, by dragging out the investigation. But let him be held in prison during that time.

SHELEPIN. When we met at Comrade Kosygin’s three months ago and discussed what measures should be taken towards Solzhenitsyn, we concluded that administrative measures should not be taken. That was right at the time.

Now a different situation has developed. Solzhenitsyn has openly turned against the Soviet regime and the Soviet State. Now, I believe, it would be advantageous if we resolved the problem of Solzhenitsyn before the end of the European Conference. This will show our consistent and principled approach. If we carry out this operation after the European Conference we shall be accused of being insincere when we reached agreement and that we are now beginning to violate those decisions, etc. We have a clear and correct policy. We do not allow anyone to break our Soviet laws. Deportation to a foreign country is not a suitable measure. In my view, we should not involve foreign States in this matter. We have judicial bodies, let them investigate and then hold a trial.

BREZHNEV. The problem regarding Solzhenitsyn, of course, is not simple but very complex.

The bourgeois press is trying to link the Solzhenitsyn case with the conduct of our major operations to reach peaceful solutions. How shall we deal with Solzhenitsyn? I consider that the best way is to proceed in accordance with our Soviet laws.

ALL. Agreed.

BREZHNEV. Our Procuracy can begin the investigation, draw up the charge sheet, and explain in detail what he is guilty of.

In the past, Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned. He served his sentence for a gross violation of Soviet legislation and was rehabilitated. Yet how was he rehabilitated? He was rehabilitated by two people, Shatunovskaya and Snegov. According to our laws he should be deprived of the opportunity to be in contact with [people] abroad, while the investigation is under way. The investigation must be conducted openly and show the people his hostile, anti-Soviet activities. The people must be shown how he has defiled our Soviet system, slandered the memory of our Great Leader, V.I. Lenin, the founder of the Party and the State, defiled the memory of the victims of the Great Patriotic War [1941-1945], justified counter-revolutionaries, and directly violated our laws.

In the past, we did not fear to confront counter-revolution in Czechoslovakia. We did not fear to let Alliluyeva leave the country. We survived all that and, I think, we will also survive this. We must provide well-argued articles, and give a strict and precise response to the writing of a journalist such as Olson, and publish articles in other newspapers.

I have talked with Comrade Gromyko about the influence our measures towards Solzhenitsyn will have on the European Conference. I do not think it will have a great influence. Obviously, it is not expedient to deport him because no one will accept him. When [Anatoly] Kuznetsov and others fled the country, that’s one thing; it’s another matter when we are deporting someone as an administrative measure.

Therefore, I consider it necessary to instruct the KGB and the USSR Procurator-General’s office to draw the procedure for bringing Solzhenitsyn to trial and, considering everything said at this Politburo meeting, to adopt the appropriate judicial measures.

PODGORNY. He should be arrested and charged.

BREZHNEV. Let Comrades Andropov and Rudenko draw up the procedure for charging him, keeping everything in accordance with our legislation. /// Comrades Andropov, Demichev and Katushev must be instructed to prepare information for the secretaries of the fraternal Communist and Workers’ Parties in the socialist countries and other leaders of fraternal Communist Parties about our measures towards Solzhenitsyn.

ALL. Agreed.

The following decree has been adopted:

On measures to halt the anti-Soviet activities of Solzhenitsyn, A.I.

“For malicious anti-Soviet activities, as expressed by the transfer to foreign publishers and information agencies of manuscripts, books, letters and interviews: that slander the Soviet system, the Soviet Union, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and their foreign and domestic policies; that defile the radiant memory of V.I. Lenin and other leaders of the CPSU and Soviet State, and the victims of the Great Patriotic War and the German-fascist occupation; that justify the actions both of internal and of foreign counter-revolutionary and elements and groups hostile to the Soviet system; and also for gross violation of the rules for publishing literary works in foreign publishing houses, laid down by the World (Geneva) Copyright Convention, Solzhenitsyn A.I. is to stand trial.

“Instruct Comrades Andropov and Rudenko to determine the order and procedure for conducting the investigation and the trial of Solzhenitsyn, in accordance with the exchange of opinion at the Politburo, and to submit their suggestions on this matter to the Central Committee.

“Instruct Comrades Andropov, Demichev and Katushev to prepare information for the first secretaries of the Central Committee s of Communist and Workers’ Parties of the socialist and certain capitalist countries about the measures we are taking with regard to Solzhenitsyn, bearing in mind the exchange of opinions at the Politburo, and present this information to the Central Committee.

“Instruct the Secretariat to determine the deadline for sending this information to the fraternal parties.”

xxx

The Soviet leaders, as we can see, were not at all concerned about legality and if they did recall the law then it was only in reference to its “harsh” implementation. They sincerely believed, one gains the impression, that whatever they decided would be lawful.

Not one of them suspected, for example, that by law only the Procuracy could instigate criminal proceedings while the “procedure for the conduct of the pre-trial investigation and the judicial process” was laid down in the RSFSR Criminal-Procedural Code. Neither the head of the KGB nor the Procurator-General could decide how interrogations and court hearings were to be conducted. Yet what did the law matter when the members of the Politburo had a defective relationship with reality? Just consider their conviction that “hundreds of workers are being killed in England”; the assertion that they “had not been afraid to let Alliluyeva leave the country”; not forgetting their quite unfounded certainty that ordinary people in the USSR supported their repressive measures.

The Western press was then full of Sovietologists’ discussions about a conflict between “doves” and “hawks” within the Politburo. Worse still, Western politicians believed these myths: detente, the most idiotic period in post-war history, was in the ascendant. Yet from the minutes quoted above it is easy to see that the only “dove” in the leadership was Andropov, and it was not the kindness of his heart that made him prefer deporting Solzhenitsyn to putting him on trial. It was all very well for the Politburo to decide what others should do. They bore no responsibility for implementing the decision: Andropov knew that the negative consequences of arresting and prosecuting Solzhenitsyn would be laid at his door. Naturally, he found a way of reversing the Politburo decision or, to be more precise, he found a country that would take Solzhenitsyn against the writer’s will.

For Andropov and for Gromyko, to some extent, the Politburo decision to prosecute Solzhenitsyn was extremely unwelcome. The other Soviet leaders did not agree with them and rejected their recommendations. Such a defeat was not a good omen: far more serious, it put all their cunning detente games at risk. What could they do but turn to their Western partners in detente? The German Social Democrats did not let them down.

We shall return to the subject in Chapter Four (“Betrayal”). Here we may simply note that within a month a solution was found. On 2 February 1974, the West German Chancellor Willy Brandt suddenly announced that Solzhenitsyn could live and work without hindrance in the Federal Republic. As Solzhenitsyn would later write in The Oak and the Calf, “he spoke and it was done”. Andropov reported immediately to the Central Committee (7 February 1974*, 350-A/OV [¹⁴]): “This declaration by Brandt gives every justification for deporting Solzhenitsyn to the FRG, after adopting the necessary edict of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet depriving him of his citizenship. This decision will also be lawful, bearing in mind the existence of materials concerning Solzhenitsyn’s criminal activities.”

To be quite sure of getting his way, Andropov did two more things. He instructed his subordinates Chebrikov and Bobkov to compose a memorandum about popular attitudes towards Solzhenitsyn, implying that the writer had more than a few followers in the USSR among manual workers who believed he was in favour of lowering prices and ending “aid to Cuba and developing countries” so as to increase the well-being of ordinary people. Then Andropov sent a personal letter to Brezhnev to accompany the memorandum (7 February 1974* [¹⁵]). The Solzhenitsyn affair, he wrote, was “no longer a criminal matter and had become a considerable problem of a definitely political character” and concluded

“Dear Leonid Ilych,

before sending this letter we at the Committee once again most thoroughly weighed up all the possible costs that could arise (to a lesser degree) from deportation and (to a greater degree) from the arrest of Solzhenitsyn. There will indeed be such costs.

Unfortunately, however, we have no alternative since letting Solzhenitsyn’s behaviour go unpunished is already causing us much greater costs within the country than those which will arise in international terms if Solzhenitsyn is deported or arrested.”

Andropov, in short, got what he wanted and, of course, he was right. The costs to the USSR of deporting the writer were far fewer. This is why that form of political reprisal became so common by the end of the 1970s.

*

This raises another question, however, about the internal costs of the “unpunished behaviour” of any one of us and, note well, no one in the Politburo disputed that these were greater than the other costs to the regime. The high value placed on the effectiveness of our activities is intriguing and explains a great deal.

The system could survive only by sustaining the Party’s monopoly of power, and the precedence of ideology over law, logic and common sense. That, evidently, was what one of the Politburo members meant when he talked, in their discussion of Solzhenitsyn, about a violation of their “sovereignty”. They had been conscious of such a “violation” since our movement began. As far back as 1968, after the Ginzburg-Galanskov trial, Andropov wrote (26 January 1968, 181-A [¹⁶]): “It has become quite obvious that Western propaganda and a group of the above-mentioned individuals, acting as an instrument in the hands of our adversaries, are trying to make it legal to carry out anti-Soviet work in our country and attain impunity for hostile actions.”

For the KGB chief our emphatically open and legal activities and our appeal to the law were far more dangerous than any underground conspiracy or terrorist act. After the Helsinki Groups emerged in May 1976, Andropov warned (15 November 1976*, 2577-A [¹⁷]): “In recent years the special services and propaganda bodies of the Adversary are trying to create the semblance in the Soviet Union of an ‘internal opposition’, and are taking measures to support those who inspire anti-social behaviour and objectively aid the consolidation between the participants of various trends in anti-Soviet activity.” Early in 1977, describing measures to obstruct the activities of prominent Helsinki Group activists, Andropov and Procurator-General Rudenko commented (20 January 1977*, 123-A [¹⁸]): “Giving priority at the present level to illegal methods of underground work in the pursuit of anti-Soviet goals, the Adversary is also trying to activate hostile actions in legal or semi-legal forms.”

Arrests and deportation were not the only way the regime reacted to these attempts, of course: it deployed the entire arsenal, from incarceration in psychiatric hospital s and smear campaigns (“compromising measures”), to threats and blackmail. In 1977, as we have already seen, the Party tried to cement its control in the new Soviet Constitution, by openly declaring, for the first time, its monopoly on power. Those were the ways they defended their “sovereignty” against our “assaults”, in part accepting the rules of the game we proposed. It cannot be said that the Soviet regime failed to demonstrate flexibility. It was prepared to bear certain costs, but it could not get by without the usual repressive measures [¹⁹]:

“At the same time, it is impossible to refrain at present from the prosecution of individuals who are opposed to the Soviet system, since this would lead to an increase in especially serious State crimes and anti-social behaviour”.

That was Andropov, writing in December 1975, when the Helsinki Accords had already been signed. He thereby accepted, as the lesser of two evils, the “external costs” that violations of the agreement would inevitably entail. These costs were significant. For it was not only “bourgeois” public opinion which proved strongly opposed to the USSR – that could have been dismissed as the “intrigues of imperialism”. “Progressive” public opinion was of a similar mind. Western Communist Parties, especially those that were large and therefore more dependent on public opinion within their own countries, had to condemn such practises, though with caveats and against their will. Their words of denunciation may have been only for show. The threat of a split in the communist movement and, yet more worrying, of the USSR’s political isolation, was quite real.

*

4.3: External costs

Naturally, the Politburo was unsettled by such a turn of events. Andropov began his report (29 December 1975*, 3213-A [²⁰]) by expressing concern about what the leaders of the French and Italian Communist Parties had been saying:

“Recently bourgeois propaganda has been making active use in its subversive activities against the Soviet Union and other socialist countries of the well-known statements by the leaders of the French and Italian Communist Parties on issues concerning Soviet democracy … The problems arising from the statements by certain leaders of the French and Italian Communist Parties, apart from their ideological and theoretical aspect, also have an aspect that concerns the security of the Soviet State. …

“The thesis put forward by “Humanité” that freedom of action should be afforded under conditions of socialism to those who ‘assert their disagreement with the system devised by the majority’ objectively aids the adversaries of socialism in their attempts to create within the Soviet Union and other socialist countries a legal opposition, and to undermine the leading role of the Communist and Workers’ Parties.”

Drawing, in passing, on a long perspective that included his own involvement in suppressing the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, he continued:

“Comrades who have made such statements, even after the events in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, do not want to see that in conditions of developed socialism, despite the monolithic and political unity of society, anti-Soviet behaviour is still preserved in one form or another, to a greater or lesser degree. … The information we possess testifies that the special services and ideological centres of the Adversary are striving to unite the actions of hostile elements of all shades. … From the above we can see it could provoke the most serious negative consequences if we stopped active obstruction of the politically harmful activities of the ‘dissidents’ and other hostile elements, as the French and Italian comrades wish …

“It would be desirable at a suitable moment to hold relevant high-level discussions with French and Italian comrades during which we shall explain to them that the struggle against the so-called ‘dissidents’ is not an abstract issue concerning democracy, but vitally important for preserving the security of the Soviet State.”

On several occasions the Politburo sent long messages to the leaders of “fraternal parties “. The first letter to the French Communist Party (18 December 1975, Pb 198/93 [²¹]) adopted a cautious and diplomatic tone:

“Comrades! We understand very well that the PCF is waging a stubborn struggle for democracy in France against the attempts of reaction to assail the rights of working people. This is a lawful struggle and it has our full understanding and support. However, you cannot defend freedom in France and, at the same time, permit frequent attacks on the Soviet Union that harm relations between our parties …

“Of course, in our country, as in others, there are criminal elements whom the Soviet regime is obliged to isolate in places of confinement and re-education through labour. This has nothing in common with the violations of democratic liberties of Soviet people. We can honestly tell you that a numerically insignificant number of individuals among the 250-million strong population of our country are being convicted by the Soviet courts in full conformity with the Constitution, and observing the norms of the judicial democratic process, and only when they are waging hostile activities against the socialist system and the Soviet State.”

A much longer letter to 22 “fraternal parties” (including the PCF) was despatched a month later (14 January 1976, Pb 201/44 [²²]) and contained an extended rebuttal of the “fabrications of anti-Soviet propaganda”. After three weeks, this message was sent to a further 13 Communist parties, not excluding the smallest and those that were operating underground [²³].

Later that year diplomacy gave way to irritation and concern. The International Department informed the Central Committee of reports from Soviet ambassadors about a revival of the campaign in support of the dissidents. More worrying were the attempts by the organisers to “involve progressive organisations” in their protests and link them to statements in defence of “the victims of lawless treatment in capitalist countries” (25 October 1976*, 25‑S‑2025 [²⁴]):

“In Paris on 21 October a rally was held in support of Bukovsky and, at the same time, of the Uruguayan communist Masser and several other individuals. Representatives of the French Communist Party took part in the rally and, as a result, the Central Committee sent a letter to the PCF leadership (decree No 030/43 of 18 October this year).

“We consider it would be expedient to send guidance on these issues to Soviet ambassadors in those capitalist countries where such attempts may be made (Italy, Great Britain, USA, Japan, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway). The text of this telegram to Soviet ambassadors is attached.”

That was not the end of the matter, naturally, and in spring 1977 the Politburo again sent a long message to the PCF, which was much sharper in tone than its predecessors. This time it was not just a letter but a substantial theoretical work, intended to explain to the errant French comrades the class nature of both democracy and human rights. The text took more than a month to compose. It was discussed by the Politburo on several occasions, and underwent further revision before being sent to the PCF in mid-March (15 March 1977*, Pb 49/XV [²⁵]); subsequently it went to all the communist parties in the world, but only in late March, early April. They did not neglect us in this letter as the cause of these theoretical disagreements but in place of the usual derogatory comments we were given a more substantial “class-based” definition [²⁶]:

“The appearance of an insignificant little group of counter-revolutionaries, who have detached themselves from the very foundations of our system and started struggling against that system and who as a rule are linked with imperialist circles, does not in any way represent a logical result of the Soviet Union’s internal development. In the past, as we know, there were groups of individuals and political parties in our country that openly opposed the Soviet system. They frequently moved from words to deeds, even attempting to kill V.I. Lenin and other leaders of the Communist Party and the Soviet government. Then these groups and parties drew support from the exploitative classes which had not yet been eliminated.

“Today there are no such classes in our country and consequently there is no social base for anti-Soviet groups. However, there are individual protests of an anti-Soviet character. This is not surprising. The development of political awareness among the many millions of the popular masses, their upbringing in the spirit of socialist ideology and morality, the transcendence of private-property-owning ideology and spirit, and the elimination of survivals of capitalism in the minds of the people – all these ideological processes, as is well known, proceed far more slowly than the restructuring of society’s material foundations. Moreover, they are proceeding today against a background of sustained, daily, anti-Soviet propaganda and the direct subversive actions of imperialist “centres” which, in recent times, have sharply intensified their level of hostile activity against the countries of socialism. The survivals of capitalism in the minds of certain people are systematically stirred and encouraged from without by imperialist propaganda centres …

“Our class adversaries, in their striving to create the impression that there are many opponents of socialism in the USSR, resort to the most varied tricks. One of the most common is to declare as “dissidents” everyone who on a certain issue has a viewpoint differing from that generally accepted in our country, including writers and actors, for example, who have professional differences of opinion within their creative organisation. The total falsity of this tactic is understood …

“… The close link between the activities of the “dissidents” and the development of the international class struggle can also be seen from the following. The first of the people who spoke out as active opponents of the Soviet system made their appearance in the mid-1960s, i.e. at a period when detente was beginning, and imperialism put forward the slogan that socialism “had mellowed”. The accusations they then made against the Soviet Union and other countries of socialism, which they continue to make today, are the same as were and are used by bourgeois propagandists. Their demands were also similar to Western demands concerning the “mellowing” of socialism. Numerous facts show that this is no coincidence and that in a great many cases the so-called champions of an improved socialism receive materials containing defamatory statements from abroad, from bourgeois intelligence agencies. Whenever any of the “dissidents” find themselves in the West, they quickly discard the false mask of “champions of the improvement of socialism” and turn out to be frankly reactionary, a monarchist (like Solzhenitsyn) or an admirer of Strauss and Thatcher (like Bukovsky), and urge Western leaders to engage in a more active struggle against the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. Many fraternal parties have already taken note of this, including communists in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Greece, Finland and several other countries. Their newspapers write on the subject. It is strange that certain leaders of the PCF remain quiet about it. Moreover, they call on us to give such people “unlimited freedom to express their opinions” and to hold “discussions” with them!”

In the main, however, this message was not about us but about the French Communist Party and the position it had adopted. The opening pages of the letter almost took the form of an ultimatum, and came near to declaring a complete breakdown in relations:

“The latest statements in a number of interviews, and in anti-Soviet broadcasts on French television, show that some of the PCF leadership have passed from criticism of individual aspects of socialist democracy in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries to attempts to raise doubts about whether the political system in the USSR and other socialist countries reflects the interests of the people. It is openly and publicly suggested that we either reconsider or, in essence, reject the entire system of Soviet democracy in order to give unlimited “freedoms” to all opponents of socialism …”

This was not open for discussion. Anyone who persisted was an enemy of the USSR.

xxx

The tense relations with the Italian Communist Party were less noticeable and less public. They were no less dangerous, however, and they were also getting worse.

In August 1976, responding to a letter to Brezhnev about my case from Enrico Berlinguer, the PCI general secretary, the Politburo displayed the utmost respect and diplomacy (29 August 1976, Pb 24/25 [²⁷]): “From your letter we may conclude that Italian comrades, apparently, do not have enough information about the anti-Soviet activities of Bukovsky.” After listing the usual “evidence”, the leadership wrote:” … As you see, Comrade Berlinguer, it is not a question of a way of thinking, but of specific anti-Soviet acts by a citizen who bears full responsibility for what he does. He is not in prison for his convictions and opinions. He was convicted not for ideas, but for acts that he has committed, and these have been punished by a court.”

Over time the tone of the exchanges began to change. The PCI continued to participate in various human rights campaigns and the response grew sharper. In September the next year, Boris Ponomarev and Vasily Kuznetsov reported to the Central Committee [²⁸] that

“a new wave in the anti-Soviet and anti-socialist campaign is building up in Italy, with the main emphasis on the so-called “dissidents“. Active preparations are under way for the so-called “Sakharov Hearings” in Rome (25-27 November), a “discussion about dissidents” in Florence, and an international exhibition of art in Venice (the Biennale) to promote the activities of the dissidents (15 November to 17 December).

“These demonstrations, organised by imperialist propaganda services, are timed to follow immediately after our main events marking the 60^th anniversary of the October Revolution and are aimed at discrediting real socialism. Preparation for these events has the full approval of the Italian authorities, which clearly contradicts the spirit of the Helsinki Agreements. In several instances representatives of the Italian Communist Party are letting themselves be led by the organisers of the said events, joining in certain of them, and the Party press of the PCI includes various materials about “dissidents”, thereby objectively helping to intensify interest in them on the part of Italian society.”

The proposed plan of “informational and propaganda events to counteract anti-Soviet operations in Italy” included a wide range of measures. There would be official protests by the Soviet embassy; publications in the Soviet press; talks and presentations by Soviet journalists, writers and cultural figures on Italian TV; a week of Soviet films in Italy; and a delegation of Soviet writers would visit Italy and speak in public.

Subsequent events did not help to improve relations.

The trials of the Helsinki Group activists, the invasion of Afghanistan, the exiling of Sakharov to Gorky and the introduction of martial law in Poland, provided new reasons to disagree. By 1980 Moscow was already looking towards a split within the PCI and giving support to a group within the Italian Party “that has adopted positions friendly towards us and is critical of the erroneous actions of the PCI leadership” [²⁹].

This was only part of the costs the regime had to bear, due to its repressive policies, and it indicated how successful our campaign had been in the West. Communist Parties in Western Europe were not keen to sign up, but they could not afford to discredit themselves by standing on the side-lines. The public reaction was too strong for any politician to ignore. Not surprisingly, the campaign very soon became a factor in international relations, as was shown by the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the US Trade Act, and the addition of the “third basket” to the Helsinki Agreement. By the time Jimmy Carter became US President in 1977, human rights had become almost the key issue in relations between East and West.

Such a development was most undesirable for the USSR and threatened the country with political isolation. The Politburo sent instructions to the Soviet ambassador in Washington (18 February 1977, Pb 46/10 [³⁰]):

“Meet with Vance and tell him that you have been instructed to inform President Carter and the Secretary of State of the following. Such interference in our internal affairs may be made on the pretext of concern about “human rights”, but that does not change the essence of the matter.

“Naturally, everyone is entitled to his own view of things, including the state of freedom and human rights in one country or another. We have our own understanding of these issues and their current state in the USA. It is quite another matter, however, to introduce those views in relations between States, thereby complicating them…. It is not hard to imagine what would happen if, drawing on our own moral values, we began to link the development of relations with the USA and other capitalist countries with the real problems that exist in those countries, such as the unemployment of millions, the infringement of the rights of ethnic minorities, racial discrimination, the unequal position of women, the violation of citizens’ rights by State bodies, the persecution of individuals with progressive views, and so on.”

My meeting with President Carter took place exactly ten days after this demarche and, evidently, threw the Politburo into a panic. The Soviet leadership did not know how to react or what to tell the people. Finally, TASS produced the draft statement the Politburo had instructed it to prepare (1 March 1977, St 46/15 [³¹])

“Reception at the White House

“Washington, 1 March (TASS). Today US President J. Carter received Bukovsky, a criminal expelled from the Soviet Union, who is also known as an active opponent of the development of Soviet-American relations.

“A spokesman for the White House announced that the conversation lasted for an hour and was conducted in a friendly atmosphere (this phrase to be corrected in accordance with the report from the White House, which will be made after 11 pm Moscow Time).”

That was how the announcement was printed in Soviet newspapers.

The uproar did not last long. By May of that year the entire Soviet machinery of “ideological warfare” was up and running. All the Friends and fellow-travellers went into action; every kind of blackmail, threat, promise and bribe was put to use. The regime was fighting to the death for its “sovereign right” to send us to prison and psychiatric hospital or, as the mood took the Soviet leadership, to exile us within the country or deport us to another. Instructions about the “hullabaloo in the West over human rights” were sent by the Politburo to every Soviet ambassador and consul, signalling the start of the offensive (19 May 1977*, Pb 56/68 [³²]):

“Recently a wide and coordinated campaign has unfolded in the West concerning the phoney ‘violations of human rights’ in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.

“Those behind this outcry, which has a frankly provocative and demagogic character, are, as often in the past, first and foremost the reactionary, anti-communist and anti-Soviet forces in the USA and certain West European States. It is to be noted that in this instance official circles in Washington have zealously joined in the campaign, including the highest political echelons of the new American administration.

“Soviet embassies and other diplomatic missions must work in a determined and systematic fashion to decisively counteract this hostile campaign, actively exposing its demagogic and defamatory nature, which is a dangerous political trend for the cause of peace, denoting the interference in the internal affairs of other States…. This work must be carried out as an offensive, in close coordination with the embassies of fraternal countries, considering, naturally, the distinctive conditions of the country where you are serving, the position of its government and the political outlook of a certain audience or individual.”

There followed 20 pages of instructions, counter-arguments, specific measures and hidden threats. Those who represented the Soviet Union around the world were to

“Emphasise, above all, that such campaigns, naturally, are not capable of shaking to the slightest degree the stability of the socialist system, but can have a negative effect on the relaxation of tension [détente], obstructing the positive processes that have been taking place in international relations over the last few years …

“Refute assertions that the campaign about “human rights” which is hostile to the socialist countries and, in particular, public statements on this subject by certain highly-placed official figures in the West, are not interference in the internal affairs of other States but a form of ideological struggle, that the socialist countries themselves supposedly recognise….

“Emphasise that we indeed recognise the ideological struggle and the struggle between socio-political worldviews, and that this struggle does not cease in a period of international relaxation. Such a struggle, however, has nothing in common with the methods and tactics of ideological sabotage, and the creation of illegal organisations in other countries….

“Bearing in mind that the propaganda campaign inspired by Washington arouses a negative reaction in the ruling circles of several Western countries stress should be laid in all conversations about human rights on exposing what happens within the USA itself. Arguments should be skilfully used to discredit the attempts of the United States to present itself as a model of democratic rights and the supreme world arbiter….

“All the active staff of our embassies and diplomatic missions and our correspondents should be prepared for discussions about human rights, so that they will convey the facts to as many people as possible who have an influence on State policy and the public mood in the country where you are stationed….

“You must work systematically to uncover the weak areas in the policy and practice of Western countries in the field of human rights, paying particular attention to the corresponding legislation and judicial and penal practices of those countries and pass to the Centre suggestions as to how we can strengthen our propaganda counter-attack against Western countries that try to exert political pressure on us using the pretext of ‘defending human rights’.”

Western politicians could not long withstand such a concerted assault, especially when human rights, contrary to Soviet assertions, were merely a fashion in the West and not a long-term strategy.

Some in the West feared a return of the Cold War; others strove to preserve detente; President Carter dearly needed an agreement on a reduction in strategic weapons. If the Western campaign for human rights had not come to a halt by the end of that year it had certainly lost momentum. At the Belgrade Conference, summoned in November 1977 to monitor observation of the Helsinki Accords by the party-signatories, only those who spoke for NGOs were not afraid to criticise the USSR. Governments restricted themselves to generalised and vague formulas.

Why this happened we shall discuss later. For its part, the Soviet regime was ready to face enormous costs abroad to block the emergence of a peaceful and law-abiding opposition at home. It knew it could not endure even a symbolic opposition. There were attempts, naturally, to minimise these external costs. Repressive measures were used only in extreme situations, and reliance was placed on more covert forms of harassment and persecution (the abuse of psychiatry, “compromising measures”, deportation, and so on). Andropov formulated such a policy (29 December 1975*, 3213-A [³³]), soon after the signing of the Helsinki Accords:

“All the above confirms that our Party is pursuing the correct policy in its decisive struggle ‘to shield Soviet society from the actions of hostile elements’. Accordingly, State Security bodies will continue firmly to obstruct any anti-Soviet activities within our country …

“The KGB will be watching closely to make sure the so-called dissidents cannot create an organised anti-Soviet underground and carry out anti-Soviet activities, including those pursued from ‘legal positions’ … It is expedient to pursue the proven policy of a sensible combination of prophylactic and other KGB measures with criminal prosecution in those cases where this is essential.”

*

4.4: The psychiatric Gulag

As I searched through the Soviet archives I most wanted to lay hands on documents about the abuse of psychiatry. They were proving the hardest to find. Was my search being sabotaged – or did such evidence not exist?

Time passed and the deadline for my appearance before the Constitutional Court was approaching. I began quietly to panic. This should be my “star turn” and concerned one of the most malevolent crimes of the post-Stalin era, the “Soviet version of the gas chamber”, in Solzhenitsyn’s apt expression.

*

The subject was especially important to me. I had served my last sentence and been expelled from the USSR for exposing the Soviet abuse of psychiatry; it was a cause for which I continued to fight in the West and, at last, won a victory. I had no thought of ascribing success to myself alone. On the contrary, it was one of our achievements that a vast number of psychiatrists, legal experts, and public figures from all over the world joined the campaign against punitive psychiatry.

Whatever the political climate, the campaign continued to grow, reaching its peak in 1977 when the World Congress of Psychiatrists, meeting in Honolulu, condemned Soviet abuses. It did not then fade away as happened with other campaigns, but continued to exert a constant influence on world public opinion. In 1983, the Soviet delegation was expelled from the Congress: or, rather, those representing psychiatry in the USSR left because they realised that expulsion was inevitable.

It was the most convincing victory of our glasnost. I started the campaign and risked my life for it, but I did not know whether my hunches were correct. In 1970, I sent material to the West about six political prisoners held in psychiatric hospitals: there was no doubt they were sane. Yet I did not and could not know whether our treatment was coincidence, a local initiative by the authorities or the KGB, or a deliberate policy of the Soviet regime. All we had was guesswork and indirect evidence. We knew, for instance, that a first wave of “psychiatric” repression took place under Khrushchev, soon after 1959 when he declared that there were no political prisoners in the USSR, only mentally ill people. The confirmation was purely empirical: I was confined to the madhouse in 1963 and saw it functioning for myself. After Khrushchev was removed the wave retreated for a while, only to return in late 1968, early 1969. At least, a fair number of our friends were sent to psychiatric hospitals at that time.

It was easy to guess why these waves came and went. A growth in popular dissatisfaction and protest met with a reluctance by the Soviet authorities to increase visible levels of repression (and external “costs”) during periods of detente. This made sense and fitted the evidence, but remained no more than speculation. The suggestion that the Politburo had no understanding of psychiatry and simply “trusted the doctors” could not be rejected.

What would I do if no documents appeared? Perhaps they did not exist, just as documents directly concerning the “Final Solution of the Jewish problem” were not found in the archives of the Third Reich. In the end, what I found exceeded my expectations.

xxx

The response to our Pushkin Square protest on 22 January 1967, for instance, was not entirely straightforward. The day after we were picked up KGB Chairman Semichastny and Procurator-General Rudenko reported to the Politburo (27 January 1967*, Pb 32/5 [³⁴]):

“Since 1965 there have been repeated attempts to organise various gatherings and provocative protests in Moscow, in support of Sinyavsky and Daniel, in ‘memory of the victims of Stalinism’, or making demagogic demands for laws to be reconsidered. …

“A group of 35-40 people has emerged which is carrying out its politically harmful activities by preparing and distributing anti-Soviet literature and organising various types of demonstration and gathering. The group’s participants transmit an appeal to the Western press, which publishes the materials they prepare, trying to distribute them across the Soviet Union.”

After providing a detailed account of our actions, and a list of our surnames and of those who, in their opinion, had encouraged us to demonstrate, they wrote, as if in passing:

“It should be noted that several of these people are mentally ill. The hostile activities of former Major-General Grigorenko, P.G. (b. 1907) and Volpin, A.S. (b. 1924), who were earlier charged with criminal offences and released in connection with their mental illnesses, have also been documented.”

They then listed the usual propaganda and prophylactic measures:

“Since we believe that bringing criminal charges against the said individuals will provoke a definite reaction within the country and abroad, we suggest it would be expedient to instruct the Central Committee Propaganda Department and the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU to carry out the necessary educational work at industrial enterprises, offices and, especially, among students, including speeches by Party officials, authoritative propagandists, leading officials from the Procuracy and State Security.

“The KGB and the USSR Procuracy intend to carry out prophylactic measures at the places of work and study of those individuals who have displayed anti-social behaviour by reason of their political immaturity and lack of sufficient experience of life.

“Simultaneously, it would be expedient to prepare an extended report in “Izvestiya”, explaining the measures being taken and instruct the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the KGB and the Procuracy to inform our correspondents abroad.”

Most of all, it seems, the KGB and the Procurator-General’s Office feared a repetition of the outcry only a year before when Sinyavsky and Daniel were convicted.

Their inclination was to apply the “psychiatric method”, at least to “certain individuals who are suffering from mental illness”. The Politburo, however, did not agree. An excerpt from the minutes of its 9 February 1967 meeting [³⁵] reads

“(1) This matter is not to be included for discussion.

“(2) Instruct Comrades Suslov, Pelshe and Semichastny to consider these issues in the light of the exchange of opinions at the Politburo and, if necessary, to make suggestions to the Central Committee (including responsibility of authors for passing their manuscripts for publication abroad, etc.)“

No new Politburo decisions were taken on the subject, and in June Semichastny was retired and replaced as head of the KGB by Andropov, who had attended the Politburo meeting in February. A few months later we were tried and found guilty. Not one of us was declared insane.

*

We can only guess what really took place at the Politburo meeting.

Why did the Party leaders disagree with their legal authorities? The only explanation that comes to my mind is that the proposals seemed too soft. It is easy to imagine Suslov saying: “What does this mean, comrades? That we have taken fright at bourgeois propaganda? That they won the Sinyavsky-Daniel case and we are nervous about using the full force of the law to punish those who follow in their footsteps, publishing their libels abroad?”

It also seems likely that Suslov had long wanted to install his own protégé Andropov and replace Semichastny, who had held his post since the Khrushchev years. Whatever the reason (and we shall not learn it now) “psychiatric measures” did not gain their approval. After Khrushchev was removed they seemed too soft a punishment, perhaps, and too great a concession to the West.

A couple of years later the situation changed considerably. In late 1969 and early 1970 several people were declared insane – Pyotr Grigorenko, Natalya Gorbanevskaya and Victor Fainberg among others. Semichastny was right that our trials would provoke a considerable reaction. Detente with the West was beginning and there was an urgent need to deal with a growing number of protesters in ways that would not attract world public opinion.

By 1970 the Politburo was already holding serious discussions about the “psychiatric method” as a powerful means of mass repression. The documents were most intriguing, not least because they were awarded a level of secrecy (cf. Chapter One) I had hitherto not encountered in the archives.

They were marked Top Secret (Special File) and along the margin of this excerpt from the Politburo’s discussion ran the following warning (22 January 1970*, Pb 151/XIII [³⁶]):

“NOTE:

“A comrade who receives conspiratorial documents may not pass them to another or acquaint anyone else with their contents unless the Central Committee has specifically given permission.

“It is strictly forbidden to copy these documents or make notes from them.

“A note and date on which they were read is to be made personally on each document by the comrade to whom they are addressed, signed with his own name.”

The main text of this “conspiratorial” document was as follows:

“Instruct the USSR Ministry of Health, the KGB and the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, with the participation of the USSR State Planning Commission and the Council of Ministers of Union Republics, to present proposals to the Central Committee for the 1^st half of 1970 about the detection, registration and organisation of treatment and, in certain cases, the isolation, of the mentally ill within the country.”

The initiative, naturally, came from Andropov, who had circulated a report (dated 15 December 1969) from the KGB in the Krasnodar Region to illustrate what was going on across the country, drawing his Politburo colleagues’ attention to “… the presence within the region of a considerable number of mentally ill individuals, who are nurturing terrorist and other socially dangerous intentions.”

This unique document (22 January 1970*, Pb 151/XIII [³⁷]) deserves to be quoted in full:

“The KGB for the Krasnodar Region is in possession of materials showing that a considerable number of mentally ill individuals in the Region are: engaged in socially dangerous and hostile behaviour; nurturing criminal, politically harmful intentions; and introducing demoralising factors into the life of the Soviet people. Over the past two years more than 180 such people have come to the attention of the KGB in the region. Some of them issue terrorist threats, voice an intention to kill Party activists or commit other crimes. G.A. Bychkov and G.B. Mikov made malicious anti-Soviet statements and threats against certain leaders of the Party and the Soviet government. A.P. Vorona also made terrorist threats, drew up a list of Party activists “due for extermination” in the Krymsk district, and tried to set up an anti-Soviet group. S.A. Soin has voiced malicious, crazy intentions to visit Lenin’s mausoleum, bring him back to life with the help of a cinema camera, and then return him to the dead again. G.V. Vatishchev visited the Mausoleum where he committed a brazen and cynical act. O.V. Dmitriev attacked a sergeant in the government’s security force and wounded him. In September 1969, V.M. Pikalov voiced threats of physical reprisals against one of the leading officials of the Anapa city committee of the CPSU, he also prepared, copied and distributed defamatory documents.

“A number of mentally ill individuals have committed dangerous crimes on the State frontier, trying to gain access to ships travelling abroad, with the purpose of leaving the country. In 1969 of the 50 persons trying to illegally cross the State border, or gain access to ships travelling abroad on the area covered by border guard No 32, nineteen were mentally subnormal. The most dangerous crimes were committed by: P.A. Skrylyov who seized an AN-2 airplane, flew towards Turkey and was shot down over neutral waters by anti-aircraft battery; N.A. Korotenko who escaped from the conscription centre in the town of Kropotkin to Novorossiysk and tried to board an Italian ship; V.I. Pavlov who prepared to betray the Motherland in a boat with an outboard engine near Sochi in 1968, and had already been detained for similar attempts in Batumi; and V.A. Grekalov who persistently sought for ways to flee abroad.

“Certain sick individuals travel to Moscow and try, with a fanatical persistence, to meet with foreigners, gain access to the embassies of capitalist countries with crazy intentions or with requests to be granted political asylum. In November this year, P.L. Rybka visited the French embassy; A.I. Cherep tried several times in 1969 to visit the US embassy; S.V. Rezak tried to gain access to the US embassy; N.I. Leibovsky met with English people at the Inprodmash exhibition, asked them for political asylum, and tried to pass them certain documents.

“Many people suffering from mental illnesses try to create new ‘parties’, various organisations and councils, and they draw up and distribute draft statutes, programmes and laws. N.S. Shevnin nurtured and forced on others the crazy idea of creating “councils to oversee the activities of the CPSU Politburo and local Party bodies” and for this purpose sought to find and persuade fellow-thinkers; he made trips to Moscow to meet with figures from Communist and workers’ parties to “discuss” this issue; and he blackmailed individuals who did not wish to support him and issued threats in a letter to the secretary of the Novocherkassk city committee of the CPSU in the Rostov Region, linked to the well-known events in 1962 [³⁸] ^[56]. V.A. Pak has systematically prepared and distributed documents of a politically harmful content, and demanded the creation of a so-called world government.

“Many mentally ill individuals write masses of letters containing defamatory, anti-Soviet fabrications and threats to various regional and central organisations. Among them D.I. Mikhalchuk, who was trying to emigrate, wrote to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet in 5 April 1969: ‘Do you want my actions to be just like those near the Borovitsky Gates?’ … In a conversation with the chairman of the Belorechensk city executive committee Mikhalchuk said he could not vouch for himself and might commit a crime.

“Among the mentally ill quite a few are inclined to commit assault, rape and murder and several have successfully attempted to commit such audacious crimes. For example, during an aggravated period of illness L.G. Buznitsky cut off the head of his ten-year-old son, B.N. Onelyan killed her husband and A.M. Ponomarenko murdered his sister.

“According to the information of the mental health clinics in the Krasnodar Region there are many aggressive and malicious individuals among the 55,800 mentally ill, and 700 of them are a danger to society. The largest numbers live in Krasnodar, Sochi, Novorossiysk, Maikop, Gelendjik, and in the Eisk and Krymsk districts.

“To prevent dangerous consequences on the part of the named category of individual the State security bodies in the Region are obliged to take the necessary measures, which requires a great deal of effort and funds.

“At present, according to the regional health department, 11-12,000 individuals required hospital treatment but the in-patient facilities of the necessary type have beds for only 3,785.

“To prevent dangerous behaviour by individuals suffering from mental illnesses, it is our view (and this view is shared by those in charge of the Region’s health services) that further improvement is required in the measures used to identify, register, hospitalise and treat these individuals, and to oversee their behaviour outside treatment centres.

“The Regional Party Committee and the Regional executive committee have been given general information about the issue.”

*

This is an extraordinary document.

There can be no doubt that it was inspired by Andropov. The head of a regional KGB directorate had no reason to write his boss such an extensive memorandum, neither was it the practice to do so. The officer concerned, Major-General Smorodinsky, had certainly informed Andropov about each incident as it occurred. It is inconceivable that the downing of an aircraft “in neutral waters by Soviet anti-aircraft defence” was not promptly reported to Moscow. KGB headquarters were certainly informed about visits by inhabitants of the region to foreign embassies, as and when they occurred, and to the Lenin Mausoleum, especially the “brazen and cynical act” that one of them committed there.

It is also clear that the episodes were deliberately selected to stress the danger of terrorist acts by mentally ill individuals. This was, let us recall, the year which began with the famous attempt on 22 January 1969 to assassinate Brezhnev as he drove into the Kremlin, “the incident at the Borovitsky Gates”. His attacker, Ilyn, was immediately declared insane and locked up for life in the Kazan Special Psychiatric Hospital (he emerged only in the late 1980s, when he was found to display no signs of mental illness). The man behind the report and his readers knew exactly how to interpret “psychiatric illness” and “a danger to the public”: people driven to desperation, for whom the “prophylactic measures” of the KGB were no longer effective. And this explains why the Krasnodar Region on the Black Sea was selected. There were many government resorts in the Region and it was also close to the border with Turkey, a capitalist country. The number of desperate acts was greater there than the average for the USSR as a whole. Andropov was not telling the truth, of course, when he said in his preliminary remarks that a “similar situation may be found in other parts of the country”. This could not be true of the inland regions, far from any border. No one would attempt to seize an airplane in the Ryazan Region because you could not fly to a capitalist country from there. No “ships bound for foreign ports” were to be found there, or other installations that might provoke Soviet people into action. The statistics of “psychiatric illness” would be incomparably lower there.

Finally, let us examine the figures cited in the report. The total number of mentally ill people in the Region was 55,800, of whom 11-12,000 needed to be kept in hospital and of those 700 were “a danger to society”. If the situation was similar everywhere, and the USSR was made up of about one hundred comparable regions, the Politburo members could easily appreciate the scale of the problem. This meant there were approximately 70,000 dangerous patients and 1.2 million who needed to be permanently treated in hospital. What was proposed was the creation of a psychiatric Gulag, no less. The Politburo agreed to its creation, moreover, and urgently. The question must be solved within six months!

It is easy to understand why Andropov decided to take extra precautions and forwarded the “report” of his subordinate to the Politburo, something he never made a habit of doing before or after this document. Only three years earlier his predecessor Semichastny had been fired, perhaps, because his proposal to use psychiatric hospitals was seen as being soft on the enemy. Where was the guarantee that the Politburo would not shy away from the suggestion a second time? Andropov was now proposing its universal application, moreover, and a shift in the regime’s punitive policies. So, he tried scaring the Soviet leaders with talk of the outrages perpetrated by the insane in the Krasnodar Region.

xxx

When I was freed from the camps in January 1970 I had not the faintest idea, naturally, that the Politburo had just taken a decision that would result in my return to prison. Not one of us could have imagined anything of the kind. We simply noticed that the numbers declared insane in our cases had grown noticeably. It was also obvious that Soviet psychiatrists were hard at work on a diagnostic approach that could be conveniently and widely applied to political opponents and anyone dissatisfied with the regime. Dubious terms appeared, such as “reformist delirium” or the “sluggish schizophrenia” of Professor Snezhnevsky, until then a disputed diagnosis. Clearly, psychiatric measures were being prepared for use against us but we had no idea how extensive these preparations were.

Our campaign could not have been more timely. Six months had not passed, and the Politburo had yet to reach a final decision, when my first interviews with the Western press took place, followed that summer by a TV broadcast about the issue of punitive psychiatry. We caught the Soviet leadership at the scene of the crime, so to speak, and we did so quite by chance. It was like a stray shell during a war that hits an arms depot and wrecks a planned offensive. The regime was forced to defend itself in any way it could, and the decision to create a psychiatric Gulag was deferred, at least for the next two years. When the Soviet leaders returned to their discussion in January 1972, soon after my trial (was this a coincidence or not? I was convicted for libelling Soviet psychiatry), the situation was far too heated. There had been too much talk about the abuse of psychiatry for them to return to the original plan without provoking a still greater campaign. What kind of “conspiracy” could there be if all the media in the West were reporting on the repressive use of psychiatry in the Soviet Union?

This time the Politburo discussion was restricted to an analysis of the state of psychiatry in the USSR. A special government inquiry, the “Rakovsky Commission”, was set up to study the matter. Two years later it reported that, apart from any political concerns, the condition of Soviet psychiatry left much to be desired (22 February 1972*, St-31/19 [³⁹]):

“According to the information of the USSR Ministry of Health a growth in mental illness has been noted within the country. If at the beginning of 1966 2,114,000 were registered at out-patient mental health institutions, by the beginning of 1971 this figure was 3,700,000 and 280,000 were being treated as in-patients.

“The number of beds for psychiatric treatment of the country’s population is less than half what is needed. The material conditions in the overwhelming majority of in-patient facilities for psychiatric patients are unsatisfactory. A considerable number of these facilities are in premises that have not been adapted for the purpose, and are unsuitable for the normal accommodation of patients. In many hospitals there is less than 2.0 to 2.5 cubic metres per patient, when the norm is 7 cubic metres. Not infrequently patients are accommodated two to a bed or on the floor. In a number of hospitals two-storey bunk beds have been constructed… Difficulties with placing mentally ill patients in hospitals and their premature release from an in-patient facility leads to the presence of seriously ill and often socially dangerous individuals among the population.

“According to the data of the USSR Ministry for Internal Affairs there has recently been an increase in the number of killings, assaults, robberies, thefts and other grave crimes committed by individuals suffering from mental illnesses. In 1970 they committed 6,493 crimes, including 937 murders. Moreover, individual crimes were committed with particular brutality, and were accompanied by large numbers of victims …

“The 5 July 1968 decree (No 517) of the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers “On measures to further improve healthcare and the development of medical science in the country” envisaged the building and opening for use before 1975 of no less than 125 psychiatric hospital s, each with 500 or more beds. The 1971-1975 plan for the economy envisages the building and opening for use of 114 psychiatric hospitals with 43,800 beds.

“In 1971, the USSR Ministry of Health, together with the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and the KGB presented a draft decree to the USSR Council of Ministers for measures to further improve the medical care of the mentally ill….”

Nothing more happened for a long while. The subject became one of purely professional concern and lost its political edge.

By the end of the 1970s the number of psychiatric hospitals in the country had grown steadily, as planned, but the number of political prisoners incarcerated in them did not keep pace with this expansion. This is not surprising, given the campaign around the world against the abuse of psychiatry (10 September 1976* [⁴⁰]). As Andropov reported to the Central Committee:

“In several Western countries an anti-Soviet campaign is being stirred up, using crude fabrications about the supposed use of psychiatry in the USSR as an instrument in the political struggle against ‘dissenters’. The ideological centres and special services of the Adversary are widely drawing the mass media into this, using scientific forums as a tribune, and inspiring anti-Soviet ‘demonstrations’ and ‘protests’ …

“The latest data show that this campaign is a thoroughly planned anti-Soviet operation. The organisers of such defamatory activities are evidently trying to prepare public opinion for an open condemnation of “the abuse of psychiatry in the USSR” at the coming 6^th World Congress of Psychiatry (Honolulu, USA) in August 1977, and intend to provoke a negative political reaction on the eve of the celebrations to mark the 60^th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution …”

This was written, we may note, without a shade of irony, as though it was not Andropov who, only a few years earlier, had sent the Central Committee his materials and suggestions about the psychiatric Gulag. For its part the USSR Ministry of Health was working (22 October 1976, No 2750 [⁴¹])

“to identify progressive-minded, major psychiatrists in the USA, Britain, France and other capitalist countries and to invite them to the USSR to participate in scientific conferences and symposia, and acquaint them with the achievements of psychiatric care in our country. The idea is to use their positive comments in propaganda work abroad …

“The USSR Ministry of Health and the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs have organised inspections of special hospitals where the forced treatment of individuals with mental illnesses is taking place so as to improve the medical care in this category of hospital. Where necessary, it is intended to show certain hospitals of this kind to foreigners.”

Naturally, “progressive” Western colleagues would not be shown the ordinary psychiatric hospitals where there were not enough beds and the patients were either doubled up in a single bed or had to lie on the floor. Some of the visitors, incidentally, were so “progressive” that this would not have worried them (16 November 1976 [⁴²]). Yury Zhukov, a deputy of the USSR Supreme Soviet reported to the Central Committee:

“During the last day of the Portuguese parliamentary delegation’s visit to the USSR, which I was instructed to accompany, a leading specialist in neuropathology and psychiatry and parliamentary deputy of the Socialist Party, A. Fernandes da Fonseca, confidentially told me the following.

“According to his information, anti-Soviet American figures are preparing to use the coming World Congress of Psychiatry in 1977 in Honolulu to organise a fierce anti-Soviet campaign linked to the defamatory opinions that have been spread in the West about our supposed imprisonment of “dissenters” in psychiatric hospitals …

“In this connection A. Fernandes da Fonseca requested that he be sent the relevant data to prepare his speech at the Congress. In his words, these data would be used to acquaint leading psychiatrists from other countries where people speak Portuguese …

“Fernandes da Fonseca emphasised that general statements of a political character proving the absurdity of the American accusations were not needed now, but specific scientific material – diagnoses and evidence about the treatment of such people as Plyushch, Bukovsky and others who are being presented as “innocent victims” …. ?

I would have liked to meet this A. Fernandes da Fonseca, preferably in the presence of journalists or on television. He would not have had the nerve to face me, however, like all our other opponents of the Cold War era. If he was brought there by force he would still not repent.

He would assert, probably, that he “did not know”, that he had “believed” what he was told – and that the Americans were to blame for everything. In any case, neither Leonid Plyushch nor I received any apologies from him.

xxx

It hardly needs saying how pleased the USSR’s “plainclothes psychiatrists” were to find such a volunteer who would allow them “in future to use his ability to spread the information we wanted” (13 December 1976, No 3193 [⁴³]). They had altogether too much work to do.

Almost every year a “Plan of Measures for the Exposure of the anti-Soviet defamatory campaign concerning ‘political abuses’ in psychiatry” was put together and approved by the Central Committee. This impressive document contains a detailed presentation of an international counter-campaign which brought all contacts and assets into play: press and television, Soviet diplomacy and KGB operations. Before Soviet psychiatry was condemned in Honolulu, however, the measures were mainly defensive and of a propagandistic character. Thereafter they were a desperate battle for survival.

Condemnation in Honolulu was a cruel defeat for the Soviet regime, with repercussions far beyond the limits of psychiatry. This was, first and foremost, because the most desperate efforts by the Soviet foreign policy machine could not avert it [⁴⁴]. The men in charge of Soviet psychiatry, justifying their actions before the Central Committee, gave a detailed account of the measures they had taken (21 November 1977, No 3042 [⁴⁵]):

“In preparation for the Congress the USSR Ministry of Health analysed the main anti-Soviet publications and prepared well-founded counter-arguments; a number of symposia were held with the participation of foreign specialists; and Soviet participation in the programmes of the World Health Organisation was increased. Immediately before the Congress Soviet psychiatrists travelled to Bulgaria, Hungary, the GDR and Czechoslovakia to agree the positions of the socialist countries.

“An authoritative Soviet delegation prepared for participation in the Congress and on arrival in Honolulu it immediately established active contacts with delegations from socialist and other countries (Mexico, Venezuela, Senegal, Nigeria, India, and so on). These contacts, and the further course of the Congress, confirmed that although the Congress was officially being run by the World Psychiatric Association, the entire practical preparation of the scientific and organisational programme was entirely in the hands of the American Psychiatric Association. …

“The premises where the sessions of the Congress took place were overflowing with anti-Soviet rubbish, leaflets with filthy attacks on Soviet psychiatry and some of its representatives. In the corridors scurried “former Soviet psychiatrists” who had been transported to the Congress …”

From the very first day the Soviet delegation consistently issued sharp protests.

However, the main clash with the anti-Soviets took place during the two sessions of the WPA General Assembly where the Congress organisers presented for discussion the “Hawaii Declaration” about the general ethical principles of modern psychiatry (to which the Soviet delegation subscribed) and a provocative Anglo-Australian resolution “condemning the abuse of psychiatry in the USSR” and an American proposal to set up a “Committee to Investigate Cases of Psychiatric Abuse”.

The Soviet representative at the Assembly (E.A. Babayan) protested against the inclusion of these proposals in the agenda as clearly defamatory and contrary to the Statutes of the WPA. He also spoke against the proposed procedure for discussing the day’s agenda, because it excluded any serious examination. Categorical protests were also raised against the system of voting, which was based on the number of votes (ranging from 30 to 1-2 votes) allocated in accordance with the funds contributed to the WPA budget by the national associations. No action was taken over these protests, however, due to the open pressure exerted by WPA president H. Romme [⁴⁶] and references to the WPA statutes…. After this the WPA president grossly violated the procedure for conducting the session and forced a vote with infringements of the elementary demands of procedure….

As was widely noted in the corridors of the Congress and in the press, despite the formal “adoption of the defamatory Anglo-Australian resolution, the moral victory at the Congress went to Soviet psychiatry”.

Such a “victory”, naturally, did not suit the Central Committee and they set to work immediately after the World Congress in Honolulu [⁴⁷]:

“Soviet psychiatrists (A.V. Snezhnevsky, G.V. Morozov, E.A. Babayan, N.M. Zharikov, M.E. Vartanyan, V.E. Rozhnov and others) travelled to scientific meetings about psychiatry in the FRG, Switzerland, the GDR and the Hungarian People’s Republic, where they met with foreign scientists and informed them in detail about the real nature of events at the past Congress. In Geneva, a press conference was held (E.A. Babayan) about the results of the Congress which received objective coverage in certain Swiss newspapers.”

The plan for the 1978-1979 campaign, as approved by the Central Committee, included a vast number of propaganda measures, use of scientific contacts, publications and tactical approaches such as the following: “To work for a democratisation of the WPA statutes and the procedural rules for its supreme body, the General Assembly …”

Sometimes odd proposals were included. Before and after Honolulu one important measure was (13 April 1978, No 1763 [⁴⁸]) ^[64]

“Gathering information about the fate of mentally ill persons, former Soviet citizens, who have left the USSR, in order to use these data in an acceptable form (bearing in mind the demands of medical ethics) to expose the defamatory character of the accusations made against Soviet psychiatry.

“Those in charge: USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, KGB, the USSR Ministry of Health.”

They wanted to find out which of us former inmates of Soviet psychiatric hospitals had subsequently received psychiatric treatment abroad.

Such cases could not be found and so they had to be invented. The KGB did not need asking twice. Soon in many Western, left-wing publications reports appeared that one or another of our friends had supposedly been sent to psychiatric hospitals when they were already living in the West. Such reports were published about Alexander Volpin who by then was living in the USA. With little hesitation, he brought a case of libel against these publications.

In a panic, Andropov, Kuznetsov, Zamyatin and Tolkunov reported to the Central Committee (26 January 1977*, St 42/18):

“For clearly provocative and anti-Soviet purposes, reactionary Zionist circles in the USA have prompted the renegade Yesenin-Volpin to go to the American courts. He has brought a claim for defamation via publication against TASS, APN and the American newspaper “The Daily World” (an organ of the US Communist Party).

“The formal pretext is the use by “Izvestiya” and “Sovetskaya Rossiya” newspapers of material from the Italian left-wing magazine “Ragione” (May 1976), which exposes the defamatory and reactionary propaganda about the supposed incarceration of healthy people in psychiatric hospital s in the Soviet Union for political reasons. This article refers to Yesenin-Volpin as ‘that person whom the Western press made such efforts to defend, had barely arrived in Italy before he was again taken to a mental hospital; he is presently being treated by American psychiatrists’.“

TASS placed this item in Soviet newspapers, APN placed it in one of its publications in the FRG and “The Daily World” printed its own material based on this item.

“The American court has issued summonses to the New York offices of TASS and APN to appear in court. If they fail to appear before 2 February this year TASS and APN will automatically be recognised as guilty and will each have to pay Yesenin-Volpin 200,000 dollars.

“The lawsuit itself has been compiled in an anti-Soviet, provocative spirit about the so-called persecution of dissenters in the USSR, their imprisonment in psychiatric hospitals and similar nonsense. This is all intended to fan the latest campaign by US mass media in America against the Soviet Union.

“With the purpose of halting this trial the Soviet Ambassador in the USA talked to a deputy of the US Secretary of State, drawing his attention to unacceptable and groundless actions taken by the American court. The US Secretary of State did not give a direct response, claiming that ‘it was not such a simple case from the legal point of view’.

“So that representatives of TASS and APN do not appear in court and will not become deeply entangled in this provocative hearing, the Soviet ambassador has been permitted to employ an American lawyer. Using American legislation, the ambassador will work through the lawyer to end the hearing and have the lawsuit annulled.

“The ambassador has also been instructed to continue insisting to the State Department that urgent measures must be taken to end the case raised by Yesenin-Volpin’s lawsuit, since it is without foundation and clearly pursuing political aims hostile to the Soviet Union, as follows from the lawsuit itself. Furthermore, the Soviet ambassador was instructed to let the American side know that we would otherwise take retaliatory measures against American publications and their correspondents in Moscow, who not infrequently publish truly defamatory reports about the Soviet Union and its citizens.

“Depending on the response from the American side and the subsequent course of the case we consider it expedient to prepare, through the Committee for State Security, the necessary retaliatory measures. We also consider it expedient to continue the policy we have outlined towards the State Department.

“To not get deeply involved in these hearings, as is the intention of the Zionist circles which devised Yesenin-Volpin’s lawsuit, we consider that TASS and APN correspondents should not appear in court either now or in the future. It seems expedient to coordinate our actions with the Friends in the analogous lawsuit against “The Daily World”.

We request authorisation for the indicated course of action.”

The Central Committee, naturally, approved this course of action, shielding the unfortunate KGB which had been taken in by such obvious falsehood.

Everything that served the cause of socialism could be justified. The State Department, frightened by the threat of confrontation, also lost its nerve. I do not know how they could intervene in a court case – under American law such interference is a criminal act – but the case was never heard in court.

And that’s a pity. If the West had only shown the courage to not break its own laws and procedures to please the Soviet authorities, Communism would have ended much earlier and caused less suffering. The exemplary behaviour of psychiatrists in most Western countries was the best proof. As a consequence, the Soviet leaders were unable to create a psychiatric Gulag. Their grandiose plan was shelved and until 1989 they were forced to reassure the entire world and carry out endless “inspections”. Until the end, Moscow was unable to remove this taint.

Our glasnost proved so effective in this respect that by the late 1970s the KGB was concerned lest a famous dissident be sent to a psychiatric hospital accidentally, without their knowledge. Thanks to this fear, for example, they preferred not to arrest Alexander Zinoviev but deport him to the West. Andropov reported to the Central Committee (28 June 1978, 1311-A ⁴⁹) in 1978:

“Materials in the possession of the KGB confirm that all the activities of Zinoviev are unlawful and there are legal grounds for charging him with criminal offences. However, it is not expedient at present, in our view, to apply this measure in halting Zinoviev’s anti-Soviet activities because certain people who know him well say that he was treated earlier for alcoholism and mental instability and suffers from megalomania.

“If criminal charges were brought against Zinoviev these circumstances might lead the court to declare him mentally ill and send him for enforced treatment. Considering the campaign that has been unleashed in the West about psychiatry in the USSR, this measure of restraint does not seem expedient.”

Only in 1989, however, at the height of the Gorbachov-Yakovlev “glasnost”, when it became profitable for the Soviet regime to admit its past crimes, did the Politburo finally adopt a decree “On improvements to legislation about the conditions and procedures for providing psychiatric care” (15 November 1989, Pb 171/21). It introduced legal guarantees against the abuse of psychiatry. This measure, it is true, was also in part forced on the Soviet leadership, a response to Western pressure.

xxx

After the Soviet Union came to an end independent groups of psychiatrists in Russia and Ukraine began monitoring their profession to ensure that the political abuse of psychiatry did not revive. They investigated suspect cases, studied complaints, visited psychiatric hospitals and, if necessary, petitioned the authorities to reconsider doubtful decisions. Such instances, however, were no more frequent now than in other countries.

Unlike many other aspects of Soviet life, the changes in psychiatry were striking.

Our epoch was indeed history. At the Leningrad Special Psychiatric Hospital where, once upon a time, I first became acquainted with General Pyotr Grigorenko, they showed visitors our “medical history”, just as tourists at the Peter and Paul Fortress were shown the cell where Bakunin was imprisoned. As I prepared to address the Constitutional Court I went with a Russian TV crew to the “Central Institute of Forensic Psychiatry”, more commonly known as the Serbsky Institute.

At the entrance, we were greeted by its new director, a pleasant-looking young woman called Tatyana Dmitrieva. “I read your book,” she said, “and have long wanted to tell you that everything you wrote about our institute and the Special Psychiatric Hospitals is true.” I knew Dmitrieva was not playing a part. She had already said as much to the press.

It was thirty years since I first entered that malevolent institution. Of those who knew me as a patient, only two remained. One was the elderly care assistant Shura. The other was our Doctor Mengele, “Academician” Morozov, who preferred not to visit the Institute these days, it was said. Yet how final were the changes? No one had revoked our diagnoses, no one had yet apologised for the defamation to which we were subjected all those years, by the Soviet press and behind the scenes, in whispers and through “personal contacts”. Not one of those “Academicians” had been charged with crimes against humanity or deprived of their professorial title for violating the Hippocratic oath. On the contrary, many remained in charge of Russian psychiatry, like Vartanyan and Babayan, and continued to represent it abroad.

The present regime had no need of the “psychiatric method” of repression, but it might be required by the next. Would it be so difficult to restore? Fire that pleasant-looking young woman and send the handful of psychiatrists in the independent monitoring groups to the camps: that was all they had to do. Then psychiatry might again be put at the service of a future repressive regime in Russia, and whether its ideology was national socialism or international socialism would be of quite secondary importance.

Chapter 5: “What ‘They’ Believed” …

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NOTES & SOURCES

Chapter Four: “DEPORTATION OR THE MADHOUSE”

An asterisk (*) and bold type indicate that a file from the Bukovsky Archive has been fully or partially translated into English.

The archival description of the various sources mentioned in the text and in these notes has been added, indicating their size and contents and providing access to the original Russian text.

To return to the text, click on the arrow beneath the note.

JC, December 2024

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4.1: “WITHOUT THE LATTER’S CONSENT …”

1. 8 April 1966, Pb 238/132 — POLITBURO. Anti-Soviet publications in British press relating to Valery TARSIS [R: 8 April 1966, Pb 238-132]. 7 pp.
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2. 23 May 1979, 1012-A p. 8 in 24 April 1979, Pb 150/129: POLITBURO. Deprivation of citizenship for Eduard KUZNETSOV, Mark DYMSHITS, Valentyn MOROZ, Georgy VINS and Alexander GINZBURG, and their exchange for two US spies [R: 24 April 1979, Pb 150-129]. 10 pp. (Cf. CCE 53.1).
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3. Participants, with Eduard Kuznetsov, in the 1970 hijackers trial at which he and Dymshits initially received the death sentence. See Chronicle of Current Events (CCE 17.6-1): “The Leningrad Trial of the ‘Hijackers’” (31 December 1970).
   ↩︎
4. 24 April 1979, Pb 150/129, pp. 8-10. See note 2.
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5. 30 September 1986, 1942-Ch – KGB REPORT (Chebrikov). Deprivation of citizenship and expulsion of Yury ORLOV from the USSR [R: 30 Sep 86, 3 pp – 1942-Ch]. 3 pp.
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6. 14 December 1976, 2816‑A, p. 6 in 15 December 1976*, Pb 38/46 – POLITBURO. On exchange of CORVALAN for BUKOVSKY – conditions, arrangements, etc. [R: 15 December 1976, Pb 38-46] 6 pp.
   ↩︎
7. 14 March 1978*, 459-A – POLITBURO. Stripping Mstislav ROSTROPOVICH and his wife Galina VISHNEVSKAYA of their Soviet citizenship [R: 14 March 1978, Pb 97-54]. 5 pp.
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8. 19 October 1977 (P78/57). POLITBURO. Deny permission for the Washington National Symphony (conductor, Mstislav ROSTROPOVICH) to give concerts in Moscow [R: 19 October 1977, 237-A]. 3 pp.
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9. 12 May 1977*, 958-A – KGB to POLITBURO. Proposal that the Soviet bloc boycott the International Rostropovich competition in Paris. Draft CPSU decree attached [R: 12 May 1977, 958-A]. 2 pp.
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10. 8 January 1980*, Pb 177/X –POLITBURO. Internal exile for SAKHAROV and deprive him of all State awards [R: 8 January 1980, Pb 177/X]. 3 pp.
    
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    4.2: WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT SOLZHENITSYN?
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11. 7 January 1974 Politburo minutes published in the Russkaya mysl weekly (Paris), 30 September & 10 October 1993.
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12. “Vlasovite”: a term used to refer to Soviet POWs who agreed to work as unarmed auxiliaries for the German forces from 1942 to 1945. The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was a controversial body engaged in wartime and post-war resistance to the Soviet regime.
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13. A reference to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which ran from September 1973 to July 1975, and culminated in the signing of the Helsinki Accords.
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14. 7 February 1974*, 350-A/OV – KGB memorandum to Brezhnev. After Willy BRANDT’s declarations in defence of SOLZHENITSYN, use West German leader to help in the writer’s deportation from the USSR to FRG [R: 7 February 1974, 350-A-ov]. 2 pp.
    ↩︎
15. 7 February 1974* – Letter from ANDROPOV to BREZHNEV about SOLZHENITSYN, suggesting he be deported from USSR to FRG [R: 7 February 1974 (no number)]. 3 pp.
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16. 26 January 1968, 181-A – KGB to Secretariat. Results of the GINZBURG and GALANSKOV trial [R: 26 Jan 68, 4 pp – 181-A]. 4 pp.
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17. 15 November 1976*, 2577-A – KGB REPORT (Andropov). The anti-Soviet activities of the “Helsinki Groups” in USSR, and measures to counter them [R: 15 November 1976, 2577-A]. 3 pp.
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18. 20 January 1977*, 123-A – KGB REPORT (Andropov). Measures to halt the anti-Soviet activities of the “Helsinki Watch Committee in the USSR“: Yury ORLOV, Alexander GINSBURG, Mykola RUDENKO and Tomas VENCLOVA [R: 20 January 1977, St 1-15]. 6 pp.
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19. 29 December 1975* (3213-A), p. 4. KGB REPORT (Andropov). The attitude of the “French and Italian Communist Parties” toward human rights issues. Includes information on conviction of dissenters since 1958 [R: 29 December 1975, 3213-A]. 5 pp.
    
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    4.3: EXTERNAL COSTS
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20. 29 December 1975*, 3213-A. See note 19.
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21. 18 December 1975, Pb 198/93 — POLITBURO to “French Communist Party” (PCF). About dissidents, human rights and the criminal investigation of Leonid PLYUSHCH [R: 18 December 1975, Pb 198-93]. 9 pp. (Cf. CCE 38.9.)
    ↩︎
22. 14 January 1976, Pb 201/44 — POLITBURO. Information to Communist Party leaders about Western anti-Soviet propaganda. List of recipients [R: 14 January 1976, Pb 201-44]. 23 pp.
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23. 5 February 1976 (Pb 203/104) – POLITBURO. Further list of Communist Parties to be sent information (see 14 January 1976 document, note 22) about Western anti-Soviet propaganda concerning “human rights violations” [R: 5 February 1976, Pb 203-104]. 2 pp.
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24. 25 October 1976*, No 25-S-2025 – International Department to Central Committee, with text for Soviet ambassadors about Western campaign about dissidents and involvement of French Communist Party [R: 25 October 1976, No 25-S-2025]. 3 pp.
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25. 15 March 1977*, Pb 49/XV – POLITBURO. Final version of the letter to leaders of the French Communist Party [R: 15 March 1977, Pb 49-XV]. 23 pp.
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26. 15 March 1977*, Pb 49/XV, pp. 6-10. See note 25.
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27. 29 August 1976, Pb 24/25 – POLITBURO. Letter to PCI leader ENRICO BERLINGUER from Central Committee about BUKOVSKY [R: 29 August 1976, St 22-15]. 4 pp.
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28. 27 September 1977 (St 74/6), p. 12. – Secretariat. Measures to stop anti-Soviet campaign in Italy [R: 27 September 1977, 14 pp – St 4407]. 13 pp.
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29. Cf. Zagladin note, 2 September 1980 (St 226/3) – Secretariat. Actions to improve influence over Italian Communist Party [R: 2 September 1980, St 226/3]. 12 pp.
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30. 18 February 1977*, Pb 46/X – POLITBURO. Instructions to Anatoly DOBRYNIN, the Soviet ambassador to the USA, for discussion with US Secretary of State Cyrus VANCE about human rights [R: 18 February 1977, Pb 46-X]. 7 pp.
    ↩︎
31. 01 March 1977*, St 46/15 – Secretariat. Proposal for Soviet press release concerning BUKOVSKY’s meeting with US President Jimmy CARTER [R: 1 March 1977, St 46-15]. 7 pp.
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32. 19 May 1977*, Pb 56/68 – POLITBURO. Instructions to Soviet ambassadors on human rights issues [R: 19 May 1977, Pb 56-68]. 21 pp.
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33. 29 December 1975*, 3213-A. See note 19.
    
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    4.4: THE PSYCHIATRIC GULAG
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34. 27 January 1967*, No. 162 – KGB REPORT. Measures taken against people defending SINYAVSKY and DANIEL [R: 27 January 1967, No 162]. 5 pp.
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35. 27 January 1967* (Pb 32/5), p. 1. See note 34.
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36. 22 January 1970*, Pb 151-XIII – POLITBURO. KGB proposals, based on Krasnodar Region experience, to greatly expand use of psychiatric treatment [R: 22 January 1970, Pb 151-XIII]. 5 pp.
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37. 22 January 1970*, Pb 151-XIII. See note 36.
    ↩︎
38. A protest by hundreds of workers over price rises and food shortages in Novocherkassk in early June 1962 was dispersed by soldiers firing into the crowd, wounding dozens and killing 24 (the official death toll). Cf. CCE 51.3.
    ↩︎
39. 22 February 1972*, St 31/19 – Central Committee. The state of psychiatric care in the USSR [R: 22 February 1972, St 31-19]. 7 pp.
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40. 10 September 1976*, 2066-A – KGB and Ministry of Health to Central Committee about Western anti-Soviet propaganda against “abuse of psychiatry for political purposes” [R: 10 September 1976, 2066-A]. 18 pp.
    ↩︎
41. 10 September 1976* (No 2066-A), pp. 6-7. See note 39.
    ↩︎
42. 10 September 1976* (No 2066-A), pp. 12-13. See note 39.
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43. 10 September 1976* (No 2066-A), p. 17. See note 39.
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44. Sidney Bloch and Peter Reddaway’s Russia’s political hospitals (Victor Gollancz: London, 1977) formed part of this international campaign. (See Bukovsky’s preface, “Punitive Psychiatry“.)
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45. 21 November 1977*, No 3042 pp. 2-5. – Report by the USSR Ministry of Health about results of World Psychiatric Congress in Hawaii [R: 21 November 1977, No 3042]. 9 pp.
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46. Harold Romme, also President of the US Psychiatric Association.
    ↩︎
47. 21 November 1977 (No 3042), p. 7. See note 45.
    ↩︎
48. 14 April 1978, No 1644, p. 4. Action plan to discredit anti-Soviet propaganda about the “illegal use of psychiatry for political purposes” [R: 14 April 1978, No 1644]. 12 pp.
    ↩︎
49. 28 June 1978, 1311-A – KGB report. Measures to halt Alexander ZINOVIEV’s anti-Soviet activities. Recommendation that he be permitted to leave Soviet Union without the right to return [R: 28 June 1978, 1311-A]. 5 pp.
    ↩︎

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Judgement in Moscow

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