Letter to A. R. Rudenko, Prosecutor General of the USSR

[p069] LETTER T0 A. R. RUDENKO Prosecutor General of the U.S.S.R.

[p070] ON NOVEMBER 19, 1968 a search was made of my apartment from seven in the morning to seven in the evening. I am leaving aside the fact that the man nominally in charge of this operation had no idea of procedural rules or even of the elementary norms of politeness; that lack comes from the habit he has of arbitrarily disposing of people who fall into his hands. I will leave this point to those who witnessed the be- haviour and actions of Justice Councillor Berezovsky, investi- gator of extraordinary affairs for the Procurator’s Office of - the Republic of Uzbekistan. I could not endure his boor- ishness for long and as a pro- test against the illegal actions of those conducting the search I refused to take part in it after half an hour. Therefore I will only speak of those violations of the law which do not depend merely on those conducting’ the search. The search was carried out on a warrant issued by Justice Councillor Berezovsky, investi- gator of extraordinary affairs for the Procurator of the Republic of Uzbekistan. This warrant, endorsed by Malkov, Procurator of the City of Moscow, stated that it had been established during the investigation of Bariev and his associates that documents containing slanderous fabrica- tions against the Soviet social and political order could be found in PP. Grigorenko’s apartment. I affirm—and I am ready to bear all the responsibility of this affirmation—that no evi- dence whatsoever of the pos- sible existence of such docu- ments in my apartment was presented to Procurator Malkov. First, because there doesn’t exist any ‘case of Bariev and associates’ and second, because no document containing lies against the political and social order of the USSR exists or could exist, which is linked, even indirectly, to the name of Bariev and his comrades. 44 WHAT then is involved here? It is in fact ordinary police provocation of people struggl- ing against the arbitrary acts of the authorities. You know very well that on April 21, 1968, in the Chirchik Park of Culture and Rest, the Uzbek police (who are still called militia for some _ reason) attacked Crimean Tartars peacefully celebzating the anni- versary of the birth of the founder of the Soviet state and initiator of Crimean Tartar national autonomy, V. I. Lenin. Hoses blasted powerful jets of cold water on the unsuspect- ing people who were peacefully amusing themselves; young people were dancing, groups were singing national and re- volutionary songs and amateur actors were performing. These jets of water knocked people over, damaged their clothes and _ traumatically shocked them. Then the police clubs went into action. It was thought that the indignant people would take some self-defence measures which could later be used to accuse them of resist- ing the authorities. But the people showed astonishing self-control and thwarted the provocation. They staged a peaceful demon- stration as a protest against the humiliation to which they had been subjected. In answer more than 300 people were arrested. Twelve of them, most of whom - had not participated in the cele- bration and were arrested in their homes, were later tried and convicted for ‘disturbing public order’. Aider Bariev, a tractor driver, who managed to avoid arrest, flew to Moscow the same day and early on the morning of April 22 the Procurator’s Office of the USSR received a telegram from him describing the Chirchik events in detail; events in which the human rights and the norms of human ethics - were trampled underfoot with an_ unprecedented cynicism. Naturally he did ngt express himself politely, but simply called a spade a spade in the language of workers. Bariev stayed on in Moscow as the authorized representa- tive of those who had sent him, knocking in vain at the doors of the administration you head and other state organizations and institutions. Wanting to make use of all the possibilities available to him, he tried to obtain the punishment of the Chirchik hoodlums and an end to the illegal proceedings instituted against the victims of the pogrom. You did not react in any way to Bariev’s telegrams and personal letters or to the col- lective appeals of the repre- sentatives of the Crimean Tartar people in Moscow. You and é =~your assistants never received these rep- resentatives and never even attempted to examine their complaints. Moreover, you have never answered any of their letters. You have never reacted to their complaints concerning illegal police action undertaken by the Moscow police against the representatives of the Crimean Tartar people. Supreme guardian of Soviet law, you have never been moved by the fact that men were pursued like savage animals through the streets of your capital and sent like cattle to hateful places of administrative exile. You who are a jurist and a magistrate have never even been swayed by the fact that it is no longer simply a question of individ- uals, but of representatives of a people; citizens who did not have the right to leave Moscow without the agreement of those who had sent them. You passed over this just as you passed over the tragic events which followed from it. In order to be worthy of the confidence placed in them, the representatives of the Crimean Tartars resorted to desperate measures such as jumping out of moving trains to escape their police escorts and con- tinue fulfilling the mandate given them by their people. As soon as- he was replaced in Moscow, Bariev returned to Chirchik where he was arrested. Justification for this arrest was based on individual and collective letters sent by rep- resentatives of the Crimean Tartar people to various Soviet institutions, including the Procurator’s Office of the USSR, social organizations and various representatives of Soviet opinion. It was also based on com- munications sent from Moscow by the people’s representatives. According to individuals like Berezovsky these documents contained slanderous lies direc- ted against the Soviet state and social order. I shall not attempt here to explain how a document con- taining a true description of an actual event can somehow be transformed into something slanderous. I shall confine myself to asking you several questions directly related to the setting up of ‘cases’ of this kind. I WOULD like to ask you as supreme guardian of Soviet law whether it is conceivable that a person be prosecuted for addressing a complaint to you when you have not found the time to examine that complaint? Would you also tell me if it is possible, even by making the most incredible fantasy into proof, to describe the Chirchik massacre as a viola- tion of public order? Wasn’t it rather brutal police provocation of the Crimean Tartars in order to create a pretext for severe reprisals against this people justly struggling for national re-birth? After obtaining a correct answer to the questions posed above, it would no longer be worth the trouble to ask whether all that followed the Chirchik events was also the result of police provocation. And if that is so, would the Uzbek ‘guarantors of the law’ present to Procurator Malkov proof of the existence of the documents described in the search warrant (that is, assum- ing that Malkov himself is not in on this provocation in a perfectly conscious way!). So much for the legal justi- fication for searching my apartment. I could stop here, but I want to tell you that I do not under- stand your role in both the Chirchik affair itself and the court trials of Crimean Tar- tars that took place following the September 5, 1967 ordin- ance of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, as well as your role in the trials that are now being prepared. The illegal and often flag- rantly provocative nature of these trials is so obvious that it is astonishing that a jurist of international reputation who is at pains to teach the Fourth International, Summer 1970

[p071] entire world how to combat crimes against humanity can- not see this! HAVING established the utter lack of connection be- tween myself and the Uzbek matters, let us attempt to determine the real reason for this search, and who deemed it pecessary. An exhaustive answer is provided by the composition of the ‘investigating’ group and the official-departmental- agency affiliation of the person who actually directed the search. - In addition to Berezovsky, seven KGB functionaries and three ‘witnesses’ —also_ state security agents—were present at the search. And so for one official of the Uzbekistan procurator’s office—take note of this—ten Muscovites were needed, not counting those who barred entry to the house from the ‘street. And all of them were from the KGB. The search was directed by a certain Vragov, Aleksei Dmitrievich. That’s all I could learn about him from Berezov- sky. Vragov himself refused to reveal his position and his place of work—the Moscow Administration or Centre—as well as the terms of the law of which he was obliged to inform me. This is how this petty official, not well-known to me, conducted the search. It was he who told Berezovsky what to do. It was incumbent upon him to settle delicate prob- lems; to confiscate or leave such and such a document. In practice he directed every move the other KGB agents made. The only thing the nominally responsible Berezov- sky did was to dictate the list of documents assembled by the KGB agents ‘to the man res- ponsible for drawing up the official report. The search was carried out by the KGB which used the ‘Bariev case’ as a pretext, as did the investigator. in charge of the case. It marked the end of another stage in my relations with the KGB. The first stage ended with my release from the most terrible prison in the USSR— the so-called special psychiat- ric hospital—-where the KGB ‘housed’ me in an attempt to get out of the impasse they found themselves in because of the unlawful nature of my arrest and my refusal to ‘confess’. The next stage started two or three months later when, without any plausible pretext, the KGB again took an interest in me. Since then, that is for three years, I have been sub- jected to constant surveillance: myself, members of my family and visitors are systematically followed. My apartment is watched by visual and other special means; my telephone is tapped, my correspondence is examined and certain letters confiscated. Twice in the last three years My apartment has_ been secretly searched. I have set this all out in a letter to I. Andropov, chief of the KGB, but as is usually the case in our country, the letter is still unanswered. The only result was that the surveillance be- came more discreet. The search was a general inspection of my ‘archives’, a desire to examine what has not been seen up to now. It is however probable that new provocations are being planned for me. I have no intention of waiting for them passively. I AM a communist and as such I hate with all my soul organs of oppression and despotism based on caste. The organization created by Stalin, and today called the KGB on the advice of ministers of the USSR, is such an organization. I do not conceal my hatred of this organization, which I consider hostile to the people, from anyone and I will fight by all possible means for its early liquidation. That is why I refuse to have any contact whatsoever with it and I do not recognise its right to interfere in my private life or my public activity. This parasitic organization which devours enormous sums of money and does inestimable wrong, must disappear from our society. The sooner the better. I have known for a long time that in practice the courts and the organs of the procur- acy are subordinate to the KGB. If proof of this is still needed, the search just made of my apartment is very characteristic. Documents from the Soviet Opposition On this occasion the repre- sentatives of the procuracy were just errand boys. They can continue to play this role, but not in relation to what concerns me. By my life, by my participa- tion in the defence of my country, by the blood I have spilt for it, and by my com- munist convictions I have won the right to consider myself a co-master of my country and an equal member in the family of Soviet peoples. I have the right to move without surveillance and un- hindered on my native soil, freely to defend my convic- tions and to enjoy all the rights given me as a Citizen of the USSR by the Soviet Con- Stitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No one, and least of all an organization like the KGB, may deprive me of these rights. As for the organs of the procuracy, they should help citizens struggling for their legal rights and not organize to take them away. After all I have just gone through, the only thing left is for us to determine the aim of the visit of the representa- tives of this disreputable organization, what they were looking for in my apartment, what they are fighting now and, it seems, prepared to fight in the future. Let us try to find the answer by looking at what they confis- cated. IN FACT, they confiscated material that had nothing to do with the ‘slanderous fabri- cations’. They took nothing that was described in the search warrant. They took all my _ typed documents and manuscripts as well as my personal letters and notes. There was nothing slander- ous and certainly nothing anti- Soviet in any of them. Among them -were anti-Stalinist docu- ments and open statements of protest against violations of Soviet law by the authorities, against judicial tyranny, and against continuing acts of dis- crimination and genocide directed at the Crimean Tar- tars, the Volga Germans, and certain other smal] national groups. This cated: is what was confis- Individual and collective let- ters sent to me by Crimean Tartars embodying the cri de coeur of a martyred people, as well as documents pertaining to the popular movement of the Volga Germans struggling for the re-establishment of their national equality. Copies of my letters to the Politburo of the Central Com- mittee denouncing both the ar- bitrary acts committed against me (illegal expulsion from the Party, demotion from general to private, loss of my pension), and the judicial tyranny and. falsification of history to the benefit of renascent Stalinism. A manuscript of the bro- chure by Academician Sak- harov and my thoughts about it. The complete works of the tireless fighter against Stalin- ism, the writer-Bolshevik, par- ticipant in the revolutionary movement since 1912 and member of the Bolshevik Party since 1916, who spent three years in Tsarist prisons and 17 years in Stalinist torture cham- bers and Kolyma death camps: Alexis Kosterin. . A manuscript assembling. and analysing a list of all the facts that had come to my knowledge proving that the October 1964 plenum of the Central Committee took the decision discreetly but firmly to implement a rebirth of Stalinism. Notes of public trials (crim- inal in form, political in sub- stance) of Crimean Tartars who participated in the move- ment for national equality, and of free-thinking people in Mos- cow (the trials of Daniel, Siny- avsky, Khaustov, Bukovsky, Galanskov, Ginzburg and others). Biographical notes on persons convicted for their participa- tion in a Red Square demon- stration against the intervention of the Soviet armies in Czecho- slovakia and against the blood spilled by Soviet soldiers and Czechoslovak citizens. A manuscript of a work by Academician Varga_ entitled ‘The Russian Road to Social- ism’, re A copy of a letter by a group of Soviet intellectuals (Artsimovich, Kapitsa, Kataev, Leontovich, Plisetskaya, Sak- harov, Chukovsky and others) expressing their alarm at trends towards ‘a rebirth of Stalinism. ‘ A copy of a letter by 23 children of communists 45