A new crackdown in USSR (12/30/79)

A new crackdown in USSR

The article below appeared in the December 20 issue of The Wall Street Journal. It was translated into English by Adrian Karatnycky and was provided by the Center for Appeals for Freedom.

On November 1 disturbing news came from Moscow: further arrests. Among those arrested was one of the best known and most senior of human rights activists, the mother of three children and the grandmother of two grandsons, mathematician Tatiana Velikanova. The other victims were the founder of the Christian Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Believers, Father Gleb Yakunin, an Orthodox priest, and Antanas Terleckas, an active member of the human rights movement in Lithuania. Now we have learned that Victor Nekipelov, a Russian pharmacist and writer, and Valery Abramkin and Victor Sorokin, editors of the uncensored journal "Poiski" (Searches) have also been claimed.

That's it? Six in two months? How can one honestly speak of a new wave of arrests? There is no such wave. The arrests are, of course, barbaric, unjust and harsh; but this is not at all comparable to what occurred in 1977. Then, seven leading human rights activists had been simultaneously imprisoned. More were taken later. That was a true wave of arrests. But in the latest instance only six have been put away. You can hardly refer to that as a wave of repression.

Yet, in October of this year, Mykola Horbal, Petro Rozumny and Vasyl Striltsiv were arrested in Ukraine, and a bit before that one of the leaders of the Free Interprofessional Association of Workers (SMOT), Nikolai Nikitin, was arrested, as was the outstanding writer Igor Guberman: events which the West hardly noticed. Nor did the West notice that the new wave of repressions did not begin in Moscow, as was the case in 1977, but in Ukraine. There, the wave of repression had in fact never ceased. It had simply ebbed for a short while, and then began to swell anew.

In March of this year, the noted Ukrainian science fiction writer Oles Berdnyk, one of the founders of the Ukrainian Helsinki watch group, was also arrested. To this day he remains in a KGB prison where he is on a hunger strike; indeed, Berdnyk is on the verge of death. Death in fact has been omnipresent in Ukraine. On April 23 of this year some "persons unknown" seized the Ukrainian composer Volodymyr Ivasiuk, spiriting him away by car. It wasn't until May 18 that his body was found hanging from a tree in a forest 10 miles outside Lviv. The entire torso was covered with lacerations and bruises; the corpse's eyes had been gouged out, the fingers were broken. The autopsy revealed Ivasiuk had already been dead when hung. But authorities ruled the death a suicide.

The incident was quickly followed by the arrests of persons who had recently joined the Ukrainian Helsinki watch group: Vasyl Ovsienko, Petro and Vasyl Sichko (father and son), and Yuriy Lytvyn. And another life was claimed. After a prolonged nighttime search, during which the KGB seized 12 volumes of his scholarly research and poetry - an entire life's work - the writer Mykhailo Melnyk committed suicide. And this was not all, for ultimately there followed the arrests of Yuriy Badzio, a philologist, and those of poet Mykola Horbal, Petro Rozumny and schoolteacher Vasyl Striltsiv.

Thus, a total of 10 persons had been arrested in Ukraine, six of them Helsinki monitors, and two others had died. Twelve in all. And in Moscow, seven fell victim. Thus, the total rises to 20, if we include Antanas Terleckas of Lithuania - five more than in 1977. Also, there were countless arrests of Crimean Tatars and religious believers, particularly among the Baptists and Pentecostalists. A youth organization in Leningrag was wiped out by arrests. Throughout the USSR, there were interrogations and arrests and incarcerations in psychoprisons. A harsh, very harsh wave. Much more harsh than that of 1977.

The authorities are consistently pursuing a policy which seeks to wipe out the human rights movement. Their aim is to cut off the one remaining means that allows the West to see Soviet reality. But the West has not perceived this. Why?

The USSR has fundamentally altered its tactics. It has stretched out this wave of arrests over a period of several months in order not to draw attention to it. When the repressions began in Ukraine, the world was riveted to the exchange of five prominent Soviet political prisoners for two Soviet spies. On the eve of the latest arrests in Moscow, world public opinion focused on the trials in Prague and on news of further arrests of Czech dissidents.

Why has such a well-orchestrated masking of political repressions been necessary? The Soviet Union is very interested in maintaining the appearance of a human regime. It needs to cultivate Western good will on the eve of the 1980 Olympics and because it desires the ratification of SALT II.

It is therefore safe to say that once SALT II is ratified and the Olympic Games end, the masquerade will be over. A new wave of repression will be launched, and this one will not be veiled. The closer we are to the ratification of the SALT II Treaty, the greater the danger to Soviet human rights activists.

The West, if it desires to stem this real danger, should strive toward the immediate release if all imprisoned Helsinki watch group members and toward an immediate release of all political prisoners. The West should not wait until SALT II has been ratified, and the Games all been played.

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