1986: A LOOK BACK: Human rights in the USSR (12/28/86)

1986: A LOOK BACK

Human rights in the USSR

In the human-rights arena, we witnessed some interesting developments in all areas of civil, religious and national dissent. General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's new policy of encouraging "glasnost" or openness, seemed, at least for propaganda purposes, to have spread to the area concerning prisoners of conscience, mostly those well-known in the West. Western pressure helped prompt the release this year of the better-known human-rights activists and leaders of the Helsinki movement in the USSR, while several previously unknown dissidents fell subject to arrest and incarceration.

Late 1986 ushered in a new decade in the still struggling Helsinki movement in Ukraine. While members of the External Representation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group marked the group's 10th anniversary on November 9, 17 of the group's now-known 40 members continued to serve sentences in prisons, labor camps and internal exile. Mykola Horbal, Vitaliy Kalynychenko, Ivan Kandyba, Yaroslav Lesiv, Lev Lukianenko, Myroslav Marynovych, Mykola Matusevych, Mart Niklus, Vasyl Ovsienko, Viktoras Petkus, Oksana Popovych, Mykola Rudenko, Yuriy Shukhevych, Danylo Shumuk, Vasyl Striltsiv and Yosyf Zisels continued their struggle.

Thanks to the efforts of Americans for Human Rights in Ukraine (AHRU), the UHG's 10th anniversary served as the occasion for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to pass companion resolutions in October calling on the president and secretary of state to pressure the Soviets into releasing the Ukrainian and other Helsinki monitors from incarceration and allowing those who desire to emigrate to do so. AHRU also organized what turned out to be a very successful reception for the UHG's external reps as well as for members of the House and Senate, and other dignitaries on September 23 in Washington.

On October 15, five members of the Moscow and Ukrainian Helsinki groups were reunited in Washington at a luncheon and press conference at the Capitol. Yuri Orlov, Ludmilla Alexeyeva, Alexander Ginzburg, Nina Strokata and Nadia Svitlychna urged legislators and the news media to remember those Helsinki monitors and other rights activists still suffering in the USSR for their beliefs.

An informative panel and reception marking the anniversary was also held in New York at the Ukrainian Institute of America on December 16.

The Weekly joined other Ukrainian organizations in the West in commemorating the UHG's 10th birthday by devoting its November 9 issue to the group, its concerns as revealed in its memoranda, as well as its membership.

There were some encouraging signs about the Helsinki movement. Samvydav recently obtained by the UHG's external representatives revealed a new member, Vasyl Kornylo, a 66-year-old physician from the Lviv oblast, who had joined the group before his arrest and imprisonment in February 1980 for circulating Ukrainian nationalist literature. The revelation indicated that there may be more Helsinki monitors unknown to the West. Mr. Kornylo is serving a 1O-year sentence in a special-regimen labor camp to be followed by five years in internal exile.

Olha Heyko Matusevych, one of the UHG's youngest members at age 33 and a philologist, was released from a Mordovian labor camp on March 12 after she completed her latest term of three years, which she served immediately following her first term, also of three years. She was granted permission to live in Kiev with her seriously ill mother for one year.

News also reached the West that another UHG member, Vasyl Sichko, who was released from prison in the summer of 1985 was suffering from tuberculosis and was reportedly being treated in a special sanatorium in western Ukraine.

Perhaps the saddest news regarding relatives of UHG members reached the West early in the year, that is, news of the untimely death of Olena Antoniv Krasivska on February 2 in the collision of a taxi cab, truck and streetcar in Lviv. The 48-year-old physician was the wife of UHG member and longtime political prisoner Zinoviy Krasivsky, who had completed his latest term of imprisonment only a few months before her death.

There were also reports in October that the Soviets may allow 72-year-old veteran Ukrainian political prisoner and UHG member Danylo Shumuk to emigrate to Canada to join his nephew in British Columbia after his scheduled release in January 1987.

The leaders of the officially defunct Moscow Helsinki Monitoring Group found themselves thrust into the limelight this year within the context of U.S.-Soviet relations.

Anatoly Shcharansky, the 38-year-old human-rights activist and Helsinki-monitor, was released from Chistopol prison on February 12 in an elaborately planned East-West prisoner swap. He joined his wife, Avital, in Jerusalem, and was joined there by the rest of his family from Moscow in August.

Moscow Helsinki Group leader and founder Yuri Orlov, 62, was released from internal exile in Yakutia and was forced to emigrate to the United States with his wife, Irina Valitova, in connection with the Nicholas Daniloff affair.

Nobel laureate and Helsinki monitor Andrei Sakharov and his wife, Elena Bonner, a founding member, arrived home in Moscow on December 23 after they received an official pardon from General Secretary Gorbachev on December 16 and were permitted to leave their place of exile in the closed city of Gorky. Ms. Bonner had been allowed to travel earlier this year to the West, namely Italy and the United States, on a six-month visa for medical treatment for heart and eye ailments after Dr. Sakharov went on a hunger strike to demand the trip.

According to Mr. Orlov, the release of the Nobel-prize-winning physicist and human-rights advocate was probably due to Soviet embarrassment over the tragic death of another Moscow Helsinki Group founding member, Anatoly Marchenko, on December 8 in a Chistopol prison hospital. Mr. Marchenko, 48, had been on a hunger strike demanding the release of all Soviet prisoners of conscience, among other things, since August 4 when he penned a letter to the delegates at the Vienna Helsinki review conference, vowing to maintain his fast until the meeting's conclusion. There had been reports that Mr. Marchenko was on the verge of being released early from a 15-year sentence for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.

Another well-known Soviet dissident, Anatoly Koryagin, an activist in the Helsinki-related Working Commission to Investigate the Abuse of Psychiatry for Political Purposes, was reportedly rearrested in Chistopol prison in October 1985, according to reports we received in March of this year. Mr. Koryagin, who is serving a 12-year sentence, was nominated twice this year for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Two members of the renewed Georgian Helsinki Group, Tenghiz Gudava and Emmanuel Tvaladze, were tried and sentenced in early June for "anti-Soviet agit-prop." Both Mr. Gudava, who received a 10-year sentence, and Mr. Tvaladze, who was sentenced to eight years' incarceration, were members of the Phantom musical group.

Iryna Ratushynska, the renowned Soviet poet and human-rights advocate from Kiev, was prematurely released from prison in October on the eve of the Iceland summit and was permitted to travel for medical treatment to Great Britain, with her Ukrainian husband, Ihor Herashchenko. Ms. Ratushynska, who was serving the fourth year of a 12-year sentence, was transferred from a Mordovian labor camp for women to a KGB detention center in Kiev in Auaust, where she was held until her release. She and Mr. Herashchenko arrived in London on December 18 and announced their intention to stay.

Persecution of the leaders of the Ukrainian Catholic (Uniate) Church reportedly continued. News of Yosyp Terelia's incarceration in Camp No. 36 - which has come to be known as a "death camp" - near Kuchino in the Perm region of Russia, reached The Weekly in January, six months after the leader of the Initiative Group for the Defense of the Rights of Believers and the Church in Ukraine was given a 12-year sentence for "anti-Soviet agit-prop."

We also obtained details in March from the trial of Ukrainian sculptor Petro Ruban, who was tried in Pryluky, Chernihiv region, in December 1985 and was sentenced to nine years' strict-regimen labor camp and five years' exile.

A new incident of religious persecution was reported in July. Pavel Protsenko, a young Orthodox church activist and librarian from Kiev, was arrested on June 4 at the home of a nun, Sister Serafima. He was tried and sentenced in Kiev on November 18-19 to three years in a labor camp for writing a manuscript detailing the persecution of members of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was found on his person upon his arrest.

Ukrainian peace activist and a founding member of the "unofficial" yet well-known Moscow Group for Establishment of Trust Between the East and the West, also called the Moscow Trust Group, Alexandr Shatravka, was released on June 23 from a Siberian labor camp where he spent the last five years for "anti-Soviet activity" and was exiled to the United States.

Ukrainian dissident, writer and author of a manuscript called "The Right to Live," Yuriy Badzio, began his five-year term of exile in Yakutia on May 18 after serving seven years of detention in Mordovian labor camps. He was arrested in April 1979 for the book, a detailed analysis of the cultural, economic and political situation in Ukraine.

Kateryna Zarytska Soroka, a longtime member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) who spent some 30 years in Polish and Soviet prisons and camps, died on August 29 in western Ukraine after a prolonged illness. The wife of another veteran political prisoner and OUN activist Mykhailo Soroka, who had died in a labor camp in 1971, Ms. Zarytska headed the Ukrainian Red Cross in Lviv during World War II, providing aid to members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). She died at age 72 and was buried in Lviv's Lychakivsky cemetery.

Another veteran Ukrainian political prisoner and UPA member, Vasyl Pidhorodetsky, was arrested and sentenced in late 1985 to one year of imprisonment, according to reports that reached The Weekly in March. Mr. Pidhorodetsky has served some 34 years in camps and prisons for his involvement in the security service of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and OUN.

Three-year-old Estonian Kaisa Randpere was finally permitted in November to join her defector parents in Sweden after two years of Soviet refusals to grant her an exit visa.

Finally, Mr. Gorbachev's "glasnost" affected the field of literature and it was learned that Oles Honchar's controversial novel "Sobor" (Cathedral), which deals with the destruction of Ukrainian culture, was to be reissued in the Soviet Union in the Russian and Ukrainian languages.

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