“Prava Ludiny” (human rights) monthly bulletin, 2000, #09

Respected Mr. President!
Respected peoples’ deputies!

On 16 September 2000 Georgiy Gongadze, a well-known journalist with the opposition attitude to the powers, the head of the project of the Ukrainian Internet newspaper ‘Ukrainska Pravda’, disappeared under unknown circumstances.

In spite of the fact that law-enforcing bodies do much in order to learn the circumstances and find the journalist, Georgiy’s destiny still remains unknown.

The situation with the disappearance of Georgiy makes us, journalists, feel serious unrest and worry. We are indignant that during the independence of Ukraine no resonant crime against journalists was disclosed to the end. Let us recollect the destiny of Vadim Boyko, Petr Shevchenko, Boris Derevyanko.

Every time, in answer to any questions about these crimes, we get answers: the investigation is continued, the situation is under control, the crime will be disclosed soon. The absence of results of the investigation of loud crimes concerning journalists enables us to affirm that nobody except journalists is interested in the positive results. The most unsafe feature of this situation is that the main version in these cases was professional activities of politically involved journalists.

Everybody of us feels that to execute one’s professional duties becomes more and more difficult – it is difficult to objectively inform the society about the events that happen in Ukraine. By the way, experts of respected international organizations more than once remarked the abuses of the freedom of speech in Ukraine. Almost every one of us, political journalists, happened to encounter the pressure.

Georgiy Gongadze many times encountered the restrain of the access to information, experienced directed pressure and even threats. It is confirmed by his many appeals to law-enforcing bodies, which until now have remained without response.

We point out that the pressure upon Georgiy has increased after publishing by him a number of acute materials and his speeches, in which he criticized certain actions of high state officers and so-called oligarchs.

That is why the majority of journalists, politicians and public figures thinks the most probable the political version of Georgiy Gongadze’s disappearance.

It is awful that on the tenth year of building a democratic state the political reasons are considered to be version number one.

A threatening tendency that the crime would not be disclosed makes us to demand personal responsibility of the Ministry of Interior Yu. F. Kravchenko and the General Prosecutor of Ukraine M. O. Potebenko for the disclosure of the circumstances of Georgiy Gongadze’s disappearance, as well as other crimes committed against journalists.

We demand creating normal conditions for accomplishing our professional duties. We, journalists, who signed this letter, comprehend that what happened with Georgiy yesterday may happen with everybody of us tomorrow.

We believe that Georgiy is alive and he will be found.

Kyiv, 19 September 2000

More than 80 outstanding Ukrainian journalists signed this letter. The Kharkov Group for human rights protection supports this appeal and the action ‘Find the journalist’. We print the photo of Georgiy Gongadze from the site of ‘Ukrainska Pravda’ and hope that he will be found safe and sound.

The services of news of the leading TV canals ‘1+1’, ‘Inter’, ‘Novy kanal’, ‘STB’, ‘TET’, as well as newspapers ‘Den’, ’Dzerkalo tyzhnia’, ‘Kyivski vidomosti’, ‘Fakty’, ‘Siogodnia’, ‘Silski visti’ will publish all available information about the course of investigation.

If you know anything about the destiny of Georgiy, we ask you to turn to the above-listed mass media.

Kyiv militia turns to everybody, who has any information about the circumstances of Georgiy’s disappearance or about the place where he is, with the request to communicate this information through telephones in Kyiv: (044) 290-61-18, 265-04-04, 212-99-90 or 02.

On 28-29 September the Kharkov Group for human rights protection (KhG), together with the Ukrainian Center of information and documentation of the Council of Europe and the State Committee of communication and informatization, held in Kyiv the education seminar ‘European legislation on the freedom of information and improvement of Ukrainian laws’. The seminar was oriented mainly toward lawyers working in state bodies, scholars and teachers of juridical higher schools, as well as activists of public organizations and journalists interested in this topic. The seminar was held in the framework of the program of interaction of the Council of Europe with Ukraine in the sphere of human rights protection and was financed by the Directorate of human rights at the Council of Europe.

145 people participated in the conference, 140 citizens of Ukraine and 5 foreigners. 90 out of 140 Ukrainian participants are lawyers, including 17 higher school teachers (from the National Juridical Academy, the Advocate Institute at Kyiv University, the USS Academy, the International Institute of linguistics and law, the University of Interior and others), 60 are state officials, among them: 19 officers of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, 4 representatives of the Supreme Rada of Ukraine, 3 – from the Presidential administration, 5 – from the Ministry of Justice, 3 – from the USS, 10 – from the State Committee of the informational politics, television and broadcasting, 3 – from the Committee of communication and informatization, 2 representatives of the Ministry of Interior, of the State Committee of archives and of the staff of the ombudsperson in the Supreme Rada, 1 representative of the Council of national security and defence, 1 – of the Calculating Board and 5 representatives of regional directorates of the State Committee of the informational politics. 28 participants are NGOs activists, 14 are journalists, among them 5 representing the special juridical magazines. Two of the foreigners represented the Council of Europe (Andrzej Rzeplinski, professor of law of the Warsaw University, and Ivan Sekeli, the main counselor of the Open Society Archive), three are representatives of the American Association of Lawyers.

Each participant of the seminar was given the following information materials published by the KhG:
•  the European Convention of man’s principal rights and freedoms (the official translation of the latest version of the Convention including the 11th Protocol, in Ukrainian);
•  the bulletin ‘Security services under constitutional democracy and civil interests’, Issue 2-3 ‘Access to information in the countries of Central and Western Europe’ (in Russian);
•  the quarterly ’Freedom of expression and privacy’, Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 for 1999 and Nos. 1, 2, 3 for 2000 (in Ukrainian);
•  the book ‘Human rights and the protection of personal data’ (in Russian);
•  the information on the work of the KhG (in Ukrainian);
•  the agenda of the seminar (in Ukrainian).

Participants of the conference demonstrated the greatest interest in the discussion of the access to information by state bodies have, and of the protection of personal data.

The first report ‘Ukraine as a member of the Council of Europe: progress, prospects, problems’ was made by Aleksandr Pavlichenko, the director of the Center of information and documentation of the Council of Europe. During the discussion of this report an active debates arose about the use of the texts of international agreements in the sphere of human rights (e.g., the European Convention) as a source of law. Vadim Demchenko, the director of the International Department of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, noticed that the text of the Convention, distributed among the participants, cannot be regarded as official, since it was not published in officially acknowledged editions, such as ‘Oficiyny visnyk Ukrainy’ (‘The official bulletin of Ukraine’), ‘Vidomosti Verkhovnoy Rady Ukrainy’ (‘The bulletin of the Supreme Rada of Ukraine’) or the newspaper ‘Golos Ukrainy’ (‘The Voice of Ukraine’), and that the text published in ‘Oficiyny visnyk Ukrainy’ must be accepted as official. Yuri Zaytsev, the editor-in-chief of the quarterly ‘Practice of the European Court of human rights. Verdicts. Commentaries’, objected to this opinion and said that this old version contains many translation errors and does not takes into account the adoption of the 11^th Protocol, that in Strasbourg they use English and French versions of the Convention and do not take into consideration the peculiarities of Ukrainian situation, and, on the other hand, the text, distributed among the participants of the seminar, was sent by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Council of Europe as the text of the Constitution used in Ukraine. The chairman of the seminar Eugene Zakharov told that the problem of publishing international agreements of human rights in the editions, which are official sources of law, is not solved yet, and it concerns not only the European agreements, but also 16 out of 25 conventions indexed by UNO.

Vsevolod Rechitskiy, the constitutional expert of the KhG, an assistant professor of National Juridical Academy, presented in his report the model project of the international Convention ‘On the protection of intellectual freedom’ (the text of the project was published in the bulletin ‘SViP’ Nos. 1-2, 2000). In the second part of the Convention, devoted to informational protection of intellectual freedom, the freedom of information is proclaimed as a guarantee of protection of intellectual freedom, and the basis of informational relations of the civil society and the state. The Convention presents the principally new structural approach to the definition of main informational flows in the modern society. It is proposed to distinguish three types of information: so called new information, which must get to the structures of civil society without state control; information, which content is known beforehand or can be predicted, that may be under restricted control of the state; and information, collection and storage of which is exclusively the state function. In the project a special regime is also considered of guaranteeing free information exchange among scientific organizations and higher schools of countries-participants. The Convention is finished with a normative subinstitute, whose theses concern the infrastructure of protecting intellectual freedom (publishing, book-sale, tele- and broadcasting, antennas, etc.).

An expert of the Council of Europe Andrzej Rzeplinski (The Helsinki Foundation of human rights, Poland) acquainted the participants with the decisions of the European Court concerning the access to information on internal and foreign politics of a state. He demonstrated that the European Court pledges a state to inform the society about the activities of state organs and told about new drafts of laws on the access to information, which are worked out both in old democratic countries (like the Great Britain) and in new independent countries; he also told about the idea of the creation of the 14^th Protocol to the European Convention, which would concern just the access to information. The great attention was attracted by the nine principles of the access to information, worked out by the international organization ‘Article19’, about which professor Rzeplinski spoke. The text of the Principles and the report of A. Rzeplinski will be translated by the KhG and published in the bulletin ‘SViP’.

The report of Yevgeniy Zakharov was devoted to the freedom of access to information in Ukraine. He told that, unfortunately, the law ‘On information’, which is generally good, was stultified by by-laws, and nowadays any manager of any executive power body, according to the Instruction adopted by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on 27 December 1998, may, at his discretion, classify a document as ‘For the service use only’. Besides, often the adopted normative acts, for example, President’s Decrees, are labeled as ‘Not for printing’, and that has no legal basis, as well as for the label ‘For the service use only’, since these terms are not defined by any law at all. This practice is a direct infringement on Article 34 of the Constitution of Ukraine, in which it is clearly said that any restrictions on the freedom of information must be provided by law.

Ivan Sekeli, an expert of the Council of Europe from Hungary, told about legal regulation of the freedom of information and the protection of personal data in Hungary, as well as about his own experience of being the Commissioner of data protection. Participants of the seminar had the occasion to compare the legal system of Hungary and the draft of Ukrainian law ‘On the protection of personal data’ presented by Valeriy Brizhko, the head of the Department of the State Committee of communication and informatization. It was noticed that the main difference is that in the Ukrainian law draft the mechanism of independent survey is absent; this mechanism was in the draft before, but was deleted from it during the editorial process. Speakers claimed that the absence of such mechanism does not satisfy the main principles of member-countries of the Council of Europe, although it was more than once told about the necessity of such concordance.

Some other reports concerned different aspects of the Ukrainian legislation and practice of the access to information, which is stored in state organizations, in particular in archives. The great interest was aroused by the report of Igor Usenko, the outstanding scientist from the Institute of State and Law of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, about the access to the archive files concerning the people repressed by the political reasons.

Participants of the seminar ordered many editions prepared by the KhG, and these editions (199 books) were sent to them by mail (free of charge) after members of the KhG have returned to Kharkov.

Ye.Zakharov

In Nikopol that enters the first ten in the list of Soviet towns having the biggest index of atmosphere pollution, the real people’s war began against the building of a gas station of the well-known Dnepropetrovsk company ‘Avias’ in the center of the town.

The building of the gas station was begun at the place where, according to the general plan, the construction of the town cultural center had to be built, in the residential zone, in 80 meters from the nearest apartment-houses.

The constructional works were suspended owing to the protests of inhabitants (more than a thousand signatures were collected) and appeals of the union ‘Citizen’s surveillance’ to the regional environment protection prosecutor’s office concerning the non-authorized cutting of the trees.

The state administration had to appoint the public hearing of this case on 20 August, and previously to consider variants of behavior at the sittings of public commission of strategic planning of the town development. Three sitting of this commission were held and they brought a triumphal victory of the public over the representatives of the gas company and their supporters in the local administration.

In this respect the active preparations were held to win the public hearing. All the needed documents, justifications and accommodations were completed and approved. In the newspaper of the town council the campaign was started against the ’incompetent environment protectors’, who only protect the right of inhabitants of the near blocks for the safe environment, the state of which, by the toxic-mutational indexes, reached the catastrophic state. Together with the town inhabitants we proposed the local authorities to place the gas station outside the town, but they stubbornly support the will of ‘Avias’ to build its gas station in the center.

The placement of the gas station near the blocks of flats has not only the chemical aspect. The noise pollution of the environment and the psychological effect of the gas station as ‘the object of high danger’ will appear as well.

It is known that during the storage and transportation of gas about 5% of it is lost only due to evaporation; as much is lost by leakage, including that from underground tanks. If the gas is ethylled, then, knowing the capacity of a gas station, it is possible to estimate the degree of the tetraethylplumbum pollution.

The public hearing resulted in the victory of common sense and the triumph of Nikopol dwellers.

Participants of the hearing unanimously protested against the construction of the dangerous object in the center of the town and against the local authorities making ecologically important decisions without discussing it with members of the territorial community.

Deputies of the town council presenting at the hearing assured the townspeople that their opinion would be presented at the nearest session of the town council, which would have to reconsider the previously taken decision about giving to ‘Avias’ the land for building the gas station.

The active support to the Nikopol inhabitants was given by ecological organizations of Ukraine and Russia, which responded to the message, sent to the Internet by the union ‘Citizen’s surveillance’, about construction of the gas station in the center of Nikopol. Using the information obtained from various NGOs the union ‘Citizen’s surveillance’ compiled and spread during the hearing leaflets about the influence of gas stations on the environment.

During the hearing deputies of the local council assured citizens that the will of the people is sacred for them, and that the decision taken before would be cancelled.

But all happened in the other way. The deputies did not fulfill their promises. The local newspaper ‘Reporter’ wrote that at the session of the Nikopol town council, which took place on 26 August, ‘the first question considered was the scandalous question about the construction of the gas station on the waste land near the building of the town executive committee’. And if the members of the hearings and inhabitants of the near streets, who collected thousands of signatures under the protest against the gas station, hoped that they convinced somebody, they made a mistake. The deputies did not cancel their decision about the construction of the gas station – there were not enough votes.

17 deputies voted against the gas station, 9 abstained.

Among seven deputies who voted ‘for’ were: mayor of the town Sergey Starun, secretary of the town council Vasiliy Zabegaylo, ex-deputy of the mayor Sergey Kondratov (who was a curator of this building), head of the local house committee Anatoliy Radivilov, secretary of the ecology commission of the town council Petr Pankeev and several their supporters.

It is clear that all above-listed officials have some interest in the permission of the building of the gas station.

But this history has not finished yet. Understanding the local community will actively resist such a decision (the initiative group for the distrust to the mayor was created in the town), mayor S. Starun, who voted for the construction, suspended it. The session created the temporary deputies’ commission, which has to consider the problem in details and to prepare a decision.

So, the fight for the fresh air in Nikopol continues.

On 21 September, in the framework of the world day of freedom from automobiles, the bicycle race near the building of the town executive committee will be held in Nikopol, with demands from the authorities to live according to the principle ‘town for people and bicycles, not for gas stations’.

The Donetsk ‘Memorial’ has received statistical data on the activities of Ukrainian courts for the first half of 2000. These data are represented in Table 1. The table contents also the data for the three previous years, which enables us to follow some changes (or the absence of such changes) in the penitentiary system.

It follows from the data of Table 1 (for 1997 – data of the state penitentiary department, for 1998 and later – of the Ministry of Justice) that the current year has not brought substantial changes. Incarceration remains the main kind of criminal punishment and its proportion during the past decade remains very large (in 1998 – 32%, in 1992 – 33.7% of the total number of the condemned). The new Criminal Code, that enables the judges to apply other kinds of punishment, still wonders in the Supreme Rada. Still there are suspicions that adopting this code will not affect the actual work of courts. And the reason for these suspicions is the fact that punishments others than incarceration do exist in the current Criminal Code, but they are very seldom applied. Alas, Ukrainian courts do not hurry to use even these restrained opportunities.

Table 1
* -- since 2000 to the incarceration for life

With alarm one must state that the crime is becoming younger. The proportion of the condemned minors continues to grow. Almost 25 hundred of minors got behind the bars during the first half of the current year. This is a very serious symptom: who knows how many of them after the release will be corrected?

The number of the condemned women continues to be enormous – more than 15 thousand during the half-year.

Perhaps, there is one more very troublesome number – the number of verdicts up to three years of incarceration, i.e. for petty crimes. Lately this number has almost not changed – about 59%. This year more than 25 thousand people were punishment with ‘short’ incarceration. Compare, this year, in August, on the consecutive amnesty (it is celebrated once a year as birthday), 13 thousand people must leave the penitentiaries. The overwhelming majority of them belong to the above-mentioned 59% of the punished as petty criminals. As Aleksandr Ptashinskiy, the first deputy of the head of the Penitentiary Department, remarked, only 35 persons out of 19 thousand amnestied in 1999 committed crimes again. And a similar picture is observed every year. Alas, this petty criminals being little dangerous for the society, are directed behind the bars by scores of thousands – they are directed to the places where there are no medicine, no work, very scarce food and information hunger.

No one counted what great damage is caused to our beggarly people by such punishments. As a rule, the damage brought by such people is many times smaller than the expenditures for their upkeep in the colony during 2 – 3 years.

At the same time the number of fines is steadily diminishing.

The number of non-guilty verdicts remains unnaturally low – 375 for half a year. As a rule, it is less than one thousand for a full year. If someone got under a suspicion and became an accused, then some verdict would be given; the suspect would be found guilty.

Another indicator is interesting. That is a number of verdicts for life, now a kind of equivalent of the death penalty. Opponents of the abolishment of this wild punishment frightened the public that only the death penalty kept in check potential killers, and that its cancellation will start massive murders. The ratification of Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention of human rights did not result in the growth of murders. This fact is actively used in the discussions by the opponents of the death penalty. Moreover, the number of verdicts, which replaced the death penalty, did decrease! For the first time in the recent years the number of the sternest verdicts may appear less than one hundred in the end of the year.

We have got some data of oblast directorates of justice for the first half of the year. These data enable us to compare the work of judges in various regions of Ukraine. We have chosen two indicators: the proportion of the incarcerated to the total number of the condemned (column ‘incarcerated’) and the same indicator, but for minors (column ‘incarcerated minors’). These data are presented in Table 2.

Table 2
As always, judges in the South and East Ukraine give out sterner verdicts. Usually Kyiv is singled out, although in the adjoined Zhytomir oblast (and, according tot he data of 1999, the Chernigiv oblast too) the indicators are noticeably lower than on the average in Ukraine. The judges of the Central and Western oblasts of Ukraine are more reticent in the application of incarceration.

It should be noted that the requests of the Donetsk ‘Memorial’ for the statistical data are always accurately satisfied by the Ministry of Justice, as well, as by a number of oblast directorates of justice. On the contrary, some other oblast directorates ignore our requests, thus violating the law ‘On information’. But sometimes we get responses in a very interesting from. For example, B. M. Guk, the deputy head of the department of justice of the Cherkassy oblast, wrote ‘The Cherkassy oblast department of justice regularly sends you not the statistical information, but the explanation that the requested information may give only the Ministry of Justice. We have never given you the information and we do not intend to do it in future because of the reasons quoted above, so we ask you not to make us waste state money for mail’. Possibly, this is the way in which the Cherkassy oblast department of justice tries to find the finances for reforming the justice in the country.

To sum up we may remark that slight differences in the work of the judges in various regions of the country do not change the total picture. This system in Ukraine continues to remain too cruel. Such a system can hardly cause a real decrease of the crime level and, maybe, it favors further growth of the crime. This system, in fact, weakly protects the rights of the victims of the crimes. At the same time, this system encourages the violation of human rights of those who gets to penitentiaries, since the convicted have no rights for protecting their health, have no rights for education, for the free access to information. For many of them the right to be protected from torture, from degrading treatment or punishment is also violated. These are the rights they loose, though by the verdict of the court they are only deprived of the right for freedom.

The system of criminal justice in Ukraine continues to be a callous mechanism of revenge, instead of being a system whose main function is the provision of safety of other citizens.

According to the project ‘Cooperation of human rights protecting NGOs in the legal aid to citizens whose rights were abused’, in Kharkov, Kyiv and Sevastopol bureaus of free legal aid have been organized. In Kharkov this bureau works in the framework of Kharkov Group for human rights protection, in Kyiv – on the basis of the Ukrainian section of the International Union of human rights, in Sevastopol – on the basis of the Sevastopol human rights protection group. The goal of the project is granting free legal defense of citizens and the perfection of the work of human rights protection networks. The legal aid is given by high-skilled advocates. From 1 January 2000 to 30 June 2000 with written requests of legal aid turned the following number of citizens:



Some data about these requests are presented in Tables 1- 4.

Character and source of the violation

Table 1



Social structure of citizens who turned to bureaus

Table 2

* Complaints from the repressed and members of their families were considered by the Commission of restoration of rights of the repressed at the Kharkov city executive committee, in which members of the KhG I. Rapp, S. Karasik and E. Zakharov work, thus these appeals are not regarded in this table.

** Complaints from journalists to the KhG are considered in the framework of another project, thus these appeals are not regarded in this table.


Activities in the interests of complainers

Table 3
* In some cases several kinds of activities in the interests of complainers were done

Till 1 June 2000 cases completed: Kharkov – 148, Kyiv – 96, Sevastopol – 61.



Results

Table 4

* All cases are input to our database in the unique format

Exchange of information and mutual consultations are kept all the time. Publications to ‘Prava ludyny’ and other mass media are compiled on the basis of the requests to the bureaus. Joint actions of various bureaus are especially fruitful. For example, V. I. Buriak, whose two sons stay in Kharkov preliminary prison for longer than three years, turned to the Kharkov bureau. Their case was twice returned for the auxiliary investigation, but their guilt was not proved. The Kharkov and Kyiv bureaus dealt with this case. As the result, the Supreme Court changed for the brothers Buriak the incarceration for a signature of not leaving their town. Other examples of well-coordinated joint actions were the cases of Tarasov, Kyshchyk and Syrykh. The complaints of servicemen Chebakov, Tytsia and Tonkoshkur were also workt upon by the Kharkov and Kyiv bureaus. This form of cooperation yields more effective results and raises the authority of human rights protection organizations.

If to speak about the complaints in general, the overwhelming majority of them is directed against the actions of investigation and court bodies. At a first glance, this seems to be normal, since the peculiarity of these organs always causes displeasure of certain social layers. Yet, it should not be forgotten that the qualitative state of things, in contrast to the quantitative one, deserves the most attention in this case, since it is aimed at analyzing and examining the most painful problems and defects of the national court system and investigation bodies. ‘I absolutely disagree with the court verdict’, this phrase is used, on the average, in every third letter. The majority of complainers, who write these complaints, already stay in the penitentiaries. In this case it is rather difficult to help the complainers in any way. Yet, on the base of the complaint compiled in the Sevastopol bureau, the Supreme Court directed the case of G. for a new investigation.

Citizen B. S. Zaporozhets turned to the Kyiv bureau, who complained that his son O. B. Zaporozhets had already been kept in the preliminary prison for five years. O. B. Zaporozhets is accused by the investigation bodies of Kherson by Article 93, items a and a, and by Article222, part 1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The claimant writes that this case was completely faked, since the accusation is fully based on groundless conclusions and fantasies, not on real proves. 27 witnesses, 80% of them being law-enforcing bodies officers. That is the reason of the offhand attitude to this case, the claimant reckons. In the response the Kyiv bureau sent the appeal to the General Prosecutor’s office of Ukraine.

Professor A. N. Rubalko turned to the Kharkov Group as early as in 1993. His rights were brutally abused, his case of taking bribes was faked, and he was kept in a preliminary prison. This illegal criminal case was terminated in 1996, and in 1997 A. N. Rubalko handed in his claim about recompensing the moral and material damage caused by the illegal arrest. On 1 October 1999 the court finally satisfied his suit and decided to charge the prosecutor’s office of Crimea for recompensing the moral and material damage. Yet, after the decision came into force, the prosecutor’s office protested against this decision. In 200 in the framework of the Kharkov bureau activity juridical aid was granted about preparing the complaint to the European Court of human rights.

There are many complaints about the work of court executors. So, a group of workers of the Kharkov plant KhEMZ turned to the Kharkov bureau: the court decision to pay them their wages has not been executed for three years. After several appeals to the state court executive service, to the oblast department of justice, to the mass media, the court executive service of the Moskovskiy district of Kharkov informed that certain ways are used against the enterprise in debt. In particular, the service found 32 (!) of settlement accounts, which the enterprise concealed from the executive service. Yet, we do not consider this case closed. Now we help to the claimants to compile the complaint on the actions of the court executors to the court.

Those who turn to the bureaus are citizens of Ukraine, apatrides, citizens of other countries. So, relatives of Turkish citizens Ch. and Ya. turned to the Sevastopol bureau. Ch. and Ya. Were compulsorily kept on board of the arrested fishing schooner. The were accused of poaching in the territorial waters of Ukraine. During the arrest one fishing schooner was sunk, one person was killed on the spot and one was wounded. The schooner on which Ch. and Ya. were kept, was not suitable for long staying, so the detained lived without elementary communal services (gas, electricity, water supply, etc.). Besides, Ch. and Ya. were kept, actually, as hostages, since they were relatives of the ship owner, and the decision about the detainment was taken not by any court, but by frontier guards. The Sevastopol human rights protection group prepared the information about this incident for ‘Radio Liberty’. The State Directorate of frontier guards insisted to deny this information, yet the investigation initiated by ‘Radio Liberty’ confirmed the information. Only after this the fishermen were released.

There are certainly problems about the upkeep of the incarcerated in penitentiaries. So, M. G. Rulenko from the town of Snizhne of the Donetsk oblast sent a complaint to the Kyiv bureau. He rendered the content of the note from his son, who stay in a penitentiary of the Donetsk oblast. In this note he warned, that prison guards wanted to kill him, and listed their names. After the appeal to the Penitentiary Directorate the son was transferred to another colony, and an internal investigation was started.

Many complaints come from pensioners, handicapped, persons who had suffered from the Chernobyl catastrophe. Most of them complain at the social problems.

Unfortunately, the small budget of the project did not afford to widen qualified aid, especially by lawyers during investigations and trials. The practice has shown that the demand here is very great. Advocate aid costs too much for a wide layer of the population, and some categories of the population (pensioners, invalids, jobless) have no money at all for any juridical aid. The project did not contain expenditures for missions, and that diminished the help to those who live in the country. Here we practiced the aid by correspondence only. We sent our documents to state structures by mail, and we were unable to check what was really done. Some state structures did not respond to our requests and we had to turn to prosecutor’s offices in order to make them react. All this resulted in slowing the aid and making it less efficient.

The KhG thinks it necessary to extend its experience to other regions of Ukraine. We propose to describe these abuses in the standard format, which is very convenient for the analysis and during the transfers of cases from one organization to another.

The interview of the correspondent of the magazine ‘Ukrainska kultura’ (‘Ukrainian culture’). Maliuta with the executive director of the Kharkov Group for human rights protection Eugene Zakharov and a human rights protector, former political convict Vasyl Ovsienko.

Ivan Maluta. Gentlemen, our reader would like to know what kind of an organization is the Kharkov Group for human rights protection and what is the international biographic dictionary of dissidents of the central and East Europe and the former USSR, over which you are working.

Eugene Zakharov. The Kharkov Group for human rights protection exists since 1988 as a branch of ‘Memorial’, and since 1992 as a separate juridical person. Now we have about 50 members, 25 working full-time. We publish the bulletin ‘Prava ludyny’, carry out educational activities to make citizens juridically competent; we organize seminars and competitions of students, publish much juridical literature, attempt to assist people in concrete cases of abusing their rights by state organs, analyze the observance of some key rights, such as the freedom of expression, protection from torture and cruel treatment by law-enforcing bodies and so on.

I. M. Are you a former political prisoner?

E. Z. Thank God, no! But I was close to it. I distributed samizdat, in the 80s I represented Kharkov in the fund of assistance to political prisoners that was organized by A. Solzhenitsyn, corresponded with friends who were political convicts in concentration camps. All these were dangerous activities.

That is why the project you mentioned is only one from our topics. We realize it jointly with our colleagues in other countries of the Central and East Europe and the former USSR. The project is named ‘East Europe is our common land’, and our work is sponsored in the framework of this project. This is definitely a public, not a government, work. It is based on the active citizens’ position of some people, on the enthusiasm. We are supported by foreign charity funds. No Ukrainian organization has given a grant to us yet.

The center of the project is in Warsaw. One if the results of the project will become a dictionary of dissidents. 180 articles are given to Poland, 210 -- to the former USSR with the exception of national movements; 120 articles are given to Ukraine, other countries will get less. The Dictionary will be published in English, Polish and Russian. Besides, every national partner – and the are practically in all countries of this region – have the right to publish the Dictionary in their language with additional articles. We, Ukrainians, will certainly use this opportunity. We shall introduce several hundred of names. Today we are on the brink of finishing our part. We have prepared 120 biographies with an average of the average size of 5 KB. We have prepared the introductory essay and the short chronicle of national democratic movement, as well as literature references and photographs of each personage. In order to complete such work it was necessary to collect the information in the from of documents, photos, books, memoirs and manuscripts about the latest period of the Ukrainian history related with the moral resistance to the totalitarian regime and political repressions. We gather materials on the history of human rights protection movement in Ukraine from after-Stalin times to the perestroyka. We have made archives, we intend to build the museum to be used by future historians. The time has come for accumulating sources. Most participants of those events are still alive, they must be interviewed, and their interviews must be recorded. These records is a priceless, and sometimes the only source of events, because the materials of court cases never reflect he truth: courts have their own truth, and the accused had their own unsimilar truth, which they often tried to conceal. Now the former accused may speak without fear. We find such people, we take their audio and video interviews, and on the basis of the scripts we write more realistic biographic essays. We try to work on the scientific level, but we understand that such a level may be guaranteed when we shall have no obstacles in the access to information. The access to such cases is still closed.

Now many organizations make their own archives. I have recently learned that some Kyivans donated their materials to Moscow ‘Memorial’. This is a loss of national wealth. This wealth must be concentrated in Ukraine. No Ukrainian organization would pay money for such materials, so, I think, that let such materials be collected by anybody. The main thing is to preserve them from loss and destruction.

Soon the Kharkov Group will publish a list or a catalog of the people, who were repressed from political reasons from the mid-fifties to mid-eighties. I mean condemned or repressed in the illegal way (for example, directing people to psychiatric hospitals). In our list there are more than a two thousand of such people.

Vasyl Ovsienko. Ukrainian researchers Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytskiy, Georgiy Kasyanov and Anatoliy Rusnachenko write that during that period attracted attention of the power and were convicted for it approximately from 700 to 1000 persons.

E. Z. Actually, much more. We include participation of the human rights protection, political, religious, labor resistance, and ‘refusniks’. I am sure that this is not an exhausting list. The number of such people is much larger. The materials about them we must publish in the convenient manner. We must improve the methodology of the search: whom we search, which category of people. Certainly, we shall make mistakes. This Dictionary and the accompanying lists must be regarded as a first rough copy. So, having got an opportunity, we appeal to the former repressed, to their families, to their friends to contact us. Turn to us by mail: POB 10430, 61002, Kharkov-2, tel./fax: (0572) 436455.

I. M. What will be given in each item of this list?

E. Z. The items will be small. The years of life, main activities, repressions and further destiny. About 5 – 7 lines. Who had two or three terms – a little more. In the Dictionary the biography articles will be lengthier.

I. M. Pan Vasyl, why do you, a philologist, a well-known human rights protector and politician (you are still the deputy head of the Republican Christian party), concentrated on the international Dictionary of dissidents.

V. O. If something has happened, but has not been described, it will disappear. And on the contrary, if something has not happened, but is described and spoken about, then this will exist. Myths that stuck in the consciousness of people are sometimes more effective than historical facts.

Unfortunately, history is what was written, not happened. If the participants of significant social events, if eyewitnesses and well-informed people do not care to write down the truth, then new times will come and new people will appear, who will write history as they understand it, or as they want it to be, or as their bosses will order. So, to make history truthful and just, at least to us, we must fix the history in writing and publish it, and then the science of history will be unable to deceive anybody.

Now I must often prove these words because we, Ukrainians are somewhat unable to care about establishing ourselves in this world. Say, we made 16% of the USSR population, but in every political camp during all the times of the Soviet rule we made about a half of the ‘contingent’ (there was such wise term). But this means that Ukrainians all the time fought for their human and national rights, although that is true that for similar actions Ukrainian were punished much more cruel than in Moscow. In the period of perestroyka Moscow writers took out of the drawers what they could not publish during the totalitarian regime, but Ukrainian writers had little in their drawers because the Soviet authorities carefully pulled out everything forbidden not only from the drawers, but from their souls, together with their souls. There is another truth that Ukrainians were very firm. They seldom broke in captivity. That is also true that the prison and camp regime was harder for us, Ukrainians, since we were kept in lands of strangers, in Mordova or the Urals. It was more difficult for us to pass a message to the free world, but in concentration camps the protest actions were held mainly by Ukrainians. It is revolting when Ukrainophobs invent jokes about how bad are we, Ukrainians. We a not worse than other peoples.

I have learned that the Dictionary of dissidents was under preparation and that the Kharkov Group for human rights protection represents the Ukrainian part of this project. I would name this Dictionary ‘The Dictionary of resistance’. The word ‘dissident’ means ‘thinking the other way’, that the apostate of the official ideology. There were such people in Ukraine, and many of them had no communist outlook from the very beginning. But nothing can be done: the term ‘dissident’ has become standard in the West, and nothing can be done with it.

Eugene Zakharov, the executive director of the Kharkov Group suggested me to take part, and about two years I have been working as the coordinator of the program. I believe that my participation in this project is useful. Although I am not a philologist, I know the human rights protection movement from within. I was a political prisoner from 1973 to 1988 with the short interval, totally during 13.5 years, among others for the participation in the Ukrainian Helsinki group. I know personally many participants of human rights protection and national liberation movement. So it is easier for me to speak with them. That is I changed my profession to that of a historian of human rights protection and national liberation movements. My political activities also did not decrease. On the contrary, these topics enabled me to lead better the anticommunist, anti-imperial propaganda and educational work. I work as a publicist (and my work this year was awarded with V. Stus prize). As an educator, I lectured in hundreds of students’ audiences, teachers and students willingly listen to my talks about the figures of the sixties. Senior-grade students willingly listen about Vasyl Stus, whose creations they learn at school. Local branches of Christian parties organized such meetings. I manage to give several lectures a day. Local newspapers, radio, television take interviews from me. At such meetings one must not agitate for his party – it is enough to mention it. Let them judge for themselves what people we are and is it worth to vote for us.

Here is a short fragment of my life. I left Kyiv for Galytchyna on 19 January and returned to Kyiv on 12 February. During 24 days I visited 29 former political convicts and recorded their stories. All in all, it made 72 hours of audio recording, then I went to Kolomya, to visit Chortkov. On the way I made speeches in two universities, seven special schools and some secondary schools. I got invaluable treasures and I had a great pleasure from the process of communication with choicest people, dear to my heart: Dmytro Kvetsko, Grigoriy Prokopovich, Myroslav Melen from the ‘Ukrainian National Front’, their successors Zorian Popadiuk, Yaromyr Mykytko and Liubomir Starosolskiy, members of the Ukrainian Helsinki group Myroslav Marynovich, Oksana Popovych, Iryna Senyk, Bogdan Rebryk and scores of others.

I am happy that all of them remained as high-spirited, as I had known them personally or from other people. I would like to say to you that in our times – in 60s - 80s -- the KGB-men picked out high-skilled people for incarceration. It was in 20s – 40s when they took everybody without choice; in the political concentration camps really best people of our times were concentrated, and I had the honor to met them there. And now I visit them, get acquainted with their families, they excellent people. They have fine wives and children who are even finer. For example, Oleksa, the 16-year-old son of Yaromir Mykytko, give me the records of his songs on the words of Lina Kostenko and Vasyl Stus, and the second-grade pupil Vasyl Marmus I heard a chastooshka: ‘Our gallant gnats will not caress, They will bite moskals on the bare ass’. His father Volodymir on the night of 22 January 1973, together with other eight men, raised the national flags over Chortkov.

Certainly, such people live mostly in Galytchyna. For instance, in the Kolomya district there exist ‘nests of anti-Soviet people’ -- in 1958 ten youths were tried headed by Bogdan Germaniuk. They organized the ‘United party of liberating Ukraine’. Most of them were from the village of Pyadyky. In the village of Pechenezhyn ‘The Union of Ukrainian youths of Galytchyna’ was arrested in the spring of 1973 (the leader was Dmytro Grynko). The repressed priest Zynoviy Kars and bishop of the Kolomya and Chernivtsi Pavlo Vasylyk reside in Kolomya. There also lives a legendary rebel and later the organizer of anti-Soviet activities Myroslav Symchych, the man who 32.5 years fought with the Soviet establishment. But in Kyiv and in the suburbs I recorded several audio-cassettes. For example, I got seven-hour-long interviews from Mykhaylo Goryn and from Evhen Sverstiuk. I believe that few people could make them loose so much time, except me. Many former political prisoners, now, having come to Kyiv, stop at my place and then I switch on my cassette recorder. Now I get ready to the journey to the South of Ukraine.

As a rule, I record the vivid, unrestrained stories. I always question:

-- from which family is the respondent (because, maybe, his relatives also took part in the national liberation struggle and were repressed);

-- where did he learn, in which years;

-- in what did he see his resistance, in what was he accused;

-- when he was arrested and tried;

-- where he was kept, which were the most outstanding protest actions behind the bars, dates, demands of the incarcerated, the most outstanding episodes;

-- which publications he has, which publications on his exist;

-- what he did after the discharge.

E. Z. We transcribe these audio interviews and give the text to the authors to correct. After this it became a document. Beside V. Ovsienko we use for the preparation of biographies Irina Rapp and Sophia Karasik (their husbands also did three-year terms for ‘slander at the Soviet reality’ by Article 187-1, and they themselves suffered from out-of-court repressions), Boris Zakharov, Vladimir Kaplun. Viacheslav Baumer transcribes the records, Olga Zviagintseva does the technical work, Aleksandr Ageev creates the database and makes up all our publications. We want to make and publish a book from these audio interviews. Maybe, not one book. As to video recording, here Vakhtang Kipiani helps us. Besides, we have initiated a new series of publications from our archives – memoirs of people, who participated in the human rights protection movement. I want to show different variants of spiritual resistance to the totalitarian regime. We are preparing to the publication of a three-volume collection by Mikhail Heifitz, to which we included his ‘Ukrainian silhouettes’, ‘Place and time’, ‘The POW secretary’ and other creations, in particular about the convicts of Mordova concentration camps of the 70s: V. Stus, V. Chornovil, M. Rudenko, Z. Popadiuk, P. Saranchuk, P. Ayrikian and others. Recently a political convict, the member of the Ukrainian Helsinki group Petro Sichko found the memoirs of his already late wife Stefania Petrash, also a political convict, about their outstanding family (their late son Vasyl Sichko was a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki group; he did the six-year term for human rights protection activity; his another son (Volodymir did the three-year term). Stories told by Petro Sichko will be also included to the book. These stories are about himself and his family, about the verdicts and declarations. We have already published ‘Advocate’s notes’ by Dina Kamenskaya, who defended Vladimir Bukovskiy, Pavel Litvinov, Yuriy Galanskov and others. Until now Lidia Nemirovska lives and works as an advocate in Lugansk. She defended Mykola and Raisa Rudenko, Iosif Zisels, Viktor Nekipelov, believers, Khudenko in Kazakhstan. She wrote a collection of essays about ten her cases. She preserved many materials, and we gave her some as well.

Within the framework of the project ‘East Europe is our common land’ we shall prepare a big Encyclopedia of dissidents. It would be necessary to write not only about the separate people, but also about the most important actions, organizations, and creations of samizdat. First of all we shall have to compile the list of what we want to include.

V. O. ‘A Chronicle of Current Events’ that was published in Moscow already for some time circulates in the Internet. But nobody cared to send to the Internet Chornovil’s ‘The Ukrainian Herald’ and N. Svitlychna’s ‘The Messenger of Repressions’. But they are priceless sources! And who will distribute the entire Ukrainian samizdat? It will make several volumes. Who will compile the encyclopedia of Ukrainian resistance? I know that the publishing house ‘Smoloskyp’ named after Vasyl Simonenko is going to of it. I think that we must take part in this work, since we have a lot of prepared materials.

It must be said, The KGB will keep us busy for life. And that will be not enough.

Published in the magazine ‘Ukrainska kultura’, No.5, 2000, a concised version. 

 

Dear Sirs!

We were unpleasantly amazed with your transmission ‘The times of war’ by Anatoliy Borsiuk. The level of morals and culture of the author of this transmission and his level of journalism is primitive and helpless, which does not suit to our favorite TV-company. In comparison with the journalist, the investigating officer looked much better and showed more humanity. The investigating officer said that the murders could not stop because not only disintegration of psyche exists, but the disintegration of personality which medical experts do not take into account.

It means that the investigating officer saw more facets of the problem. And that makes the case even more horrible, because one understands that these unbelievable crimes were committed not by some beasts, not by usual people, but by people, who gave themselves to evil – partly by their own will and partly under the influence of common informational level of moral. Thanks God that we have such investigating officers. And it is shame that we have such journalists, since this is not only primitive level of the assessment of the situation, but also the instigation of the most brutal and cruel instincts of the public. And our public already suffocates from cruelty and absence of moral.

PL commentary. We remind our reader that in No. 4 for 1999 ‘Prava ludyny’ published the interview of our editor I. Sukhorukova with the priest of the Ukrainian Autocephalic Orthodox church Viktor Marynchak, who answered many questions touched upon in the transmission of journalist Borsiuk.

In a short introduction we certainly could not cover everything that we can say about the role that is played by our press in shaping the civilian consciousness. But this is a very important question. We do not encounter for the first time with the negative reaction of our national elite to the abolishment of the death penalty.

But in such a case the campaign had to be carried out before the decision of the Parliament and at that time the protest of the majority of politicians and journalists was rather lax. And it is not surprising. Only left parties demonstrated their indifference to the threat to exclude Ukraine from the Council of Europe (although it does not mean that they did not dream about it). The Parliament confirming the decision to abolish the death penalty did what had to be done. As is known, the adoption of the decision by the Parliament happened after the decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine that considered the death penalty as non-constitutional. And all this happened almost without protest from politicians and mass media. Then why now we come across with such surprising phenomena as the collection of signatures in Zhytomir (initiated by journalists) under the letter to the President. In this letter the execution of Onoprienko is demanded. This shows little respect tot he operating laws and it is done not by men in the street, but by specialists.

I should call a campaign the position of mass media after the abolishment of the death penalty, but, to my pity, the number of publications and TV transmissions against the abolishment is growing lately, and such materials become more insisting. We have already fulfilled the wish of the Council of Europe.

In my opinion, even now such publications is a public poison, because we demonstrate not only cruelty, which blossoms even among national intelligentsia, but also unsteadiness and the wish to adapt. When people, who are influential, demonstrate such views as Mr. Borsiuk, one wishes to ask: why, my dearest, you were silent before? Where were your publications and transmissions? Maybe you were afraid that Ukraine would be driven from the Council of Europe?

That is a pity, but we really did something useful and humane because we were scared by a stern supervisor from the Council of Europe. Oh, God, we are afraid of everybody! Russia, because we a dependent on her energy resources. The Council of Europe, since we are dependent on investments from the European countries. We are afraid of the USA by the same reasons. Thank God, we are not afraid of African countries.

Meanwhile, our society is nearly in a collapse due to our cruelty. I wonder, if a journalists, who casts words: ‘I think that such people must be killed’, does not understand that he throws a match on the field polluted with the fuel. In our group there are no people who love robbers and killers. But every one of us cannot help feeling anger, when coming across such articles and transmissions. In such cases we defend not murderers, but ourselves, our morals and consciousness. That we are right is proved by the statistics quoted in this issue: it is seen that for two years when the death penalties were not executed in Ukraine, the number of grave crimes decreased.

And this is surprising in such a cruel society as ours. But this is concordant with the world statistics that says that the number of grave crimes does not depend on the presence or absence of the death penalty. So, misters journalists and politicians, maybe, before agitating to kill people, we shall stop and think that our society is such that there will be enough people to realize the ideas in practice. And who will be responsible?

Inna Sukhorukova

Veniamin V. Ioffe, the head of St.-Petersburg historical-educational society ‘Memorial’, invited me this summer to visit the neighborhood of the Belomoro-Baltic canal to search ruins of the concentration camps of the 30s-40s. Besides, on 5 August, on the Day of beginning of Big Terror of 1937-38, we planned to take part in the mourning meeting in Sandormokh, where about 6 thousand people had been shot, and to visit the notorious Solovki.

Nine persons took part in the expedition: two of us, former political convicts, a member of ‘Memorial’ Irina Reznikova, three boys – Nikolay Demyanov, Aleksandr Svetlov, Aleksey Starov, and three girls – Nina and Olga Reznikova (the daughters of Irina) and Julia Karpenko. The majority of these youths finished the secondary school this summer. Some of them are the winners of all-Russian competition of historical research works for pupils of high grades ‘Russia – the 20^th century’. All of them are seriously working at the memorial topics.

We left St.-Petersburg on 27 July by train and next day we were in the Karelian town Kargumiaki (Medvezhyegorsk, in Russian) situated at the northern bank of the Onega Lake, on Povenetskiy Bay. The name of the station of the Olonetskaya railway (once Kirovskaya, then Oktiabrskaya) is ‘Medvezhya Gora’ (‘Mt. Bear’).

In the town we foremost visited the museum, which is situated in the building of the former office of the construction of the Belomoro-Baltic canal. It was built in 1931. Near the museum the monument is erected to Kirov, ‘a favorite of party and people’ Kirov, who personally managed the constructing. In the town there still remained such streets as Sovetskaya or named after Kirov and Dzerzinski.

The director of the museum Sergey I. Koltyrin created a special exposition concerning the building of the canal in 1931-33. The exposition includes tools of the builders (barrow, pecker, saw, spade, lamp ‘bat’), photos from this period, sheme of the canal, which, together with lakes and the river Svir, have the length of 221 km, from the settlement of Povenets at the Onega Lake to the town of Belomorsk on the White Sea shore. 37 km of the artificial canal bed, 19 sluices with the hatches 14 meters wide and 200 meters long, were built altogether in 20 months.

Most of the sluices have two hatches, i.e. the hatches are consecutive. Up to the 7^th sluice a ship scales in each hatch by 7-8 meters, totally by 125 meters. From this place, going through the rest of sluices, it lowers by 105 meters to the White Sea. Without the pumping a sluice fills with water in 12 minutes.

The canal connected the White Sea and the Baltic Sea, as well as, through the Volga-Baltic canal, with the Caspian, Black and Azov Seas. It functions up to now, but after the war the wooden bonding was substituted with concrete, but some of northern sluices are still wooden.

In Europe of the end of 19^th - beginning of 20^th centuries, in the period, when shipment was the cheapest way of transportation, such canals were constructed during tens of years. Knowing this, one may be proud of the labor feat of the Soviet people, but we cannot forget that at this construction perished about 100 thousand of slaves, or maybe even more (different numbers are specified).

According to Marx’s economic theory, the energy that guarantees the progress is the muscle brawn of workers. To use this brawn to the best advantage on this object, Marxists arrested hundreds of thousands of people, including the outstanding scholars and professionals in building. They founded in Medvezhyegorsk the project institute, in which complicated engineering problems were brilliantly solved. The main part of the ‘manpower’ was peasants, who were considered by Marxists as potential enemies of the ‘classless society’, and who were, at this period, very actively destroyed as ‘kulaks’. Being driven by the ‘power of workers and peasants’ to the mosquito bogs and snows, these good managers died of starvation and exhausting work. Even their graves are not known. They not only dug the canal, they also worked in the lumbercamps in the taiga, where special settlements and camps were built. Some of such camps, especially these, which were operating till 50s, still exist nowadays and are signed on the maps as ‘ruins’, ‘untenantable’ or ‘hut’. Just these objects we were going to search.

Stalin himself was expected to come to the opening of the canal. A hotel with high tower was specially built in Medvezhyegorsk, near the building of the office of the canal. From the tower the leader had to look over 30 kilometers at the settlement of Povenets, where the canal begins from the Onega Lake. Stalin did not come to Medvezhyegorsk, he was only present at the opening of the canal on 2 September 1933. He said that the canal was narrow and shallow.

On 17 August 120 writers headed by Maksim Gorky came to the Belomoro-Baltic canal. They had to anthem this ‘labor feat of the Soviet people’. Already on 20 January 1934 the book of essays of 36 authors was published, including those by Gorky, Aleksey Tolstoy, Ilya Erenburg, Vera Inber, Fedor Panfiorov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Valentin Katayev, Viktor Shklovskiy and Mikhail Prishvin. The rest of the writers, whose human consciousness could not afford such ‘creative inspiration’, were repressed soon. This team also included several Ukrainians. They wrote nothing and were later buried in ten kilometers of Povenets, in Sandormokh, among 1111 convicts of the Solovki concentration camp of special regime, who were shot on 27 October, 1, 2, 3 and 4 November (see the August issue of English edition of the bulletin ‘Prava ludyny’ for 1999).

The nature here was regarded as an enemy of people. ‘If the enemy does not capitulate, he must be destroyed’, said Maksim Gorky. Another communist genius, Michurin, said, ‘We cannot wait favors from the nature, our task is to force it to give us favors’. The woods around the Belomoro-Baltic canal have not recovered up to now.

‘Manpower’ in the post-Soviet countries is exhausted and demoralized.

On 28 July at 6:30 we went from Medvezhyegorsk to Povenets by bus.

Near the second sluice there is a modest granite monument with the bell over it. ‘To commemorate the innocently perished at the building of Belomoro-Baltic canal in 1931 – 1933. In honor of the 500^th anniversary of foundation of the settlement of Povenets’, is written on the monument.

During the WW2 here, on the West bank of the canal, the Finnish army was staying, which, properly, had no intention to cross this frontier of dwelling of the Karelian people in order not to be accused of an invasion (therefore the Nuremberg Court did not included Finland to the list of countries-aggressors). In 1944 the Soviet troops blew the second and third sluices. The settlement of Povenets was swept away by the water. The Finns retreated. When, being in the museum, we asked about the lot of civil population, Mr. Koltyrin very unwillingly answered that the population was warned. More willingly he told about heroic deeds of soldiers of the Soviet liberation army, to whom many monuments are erected here.

The first seven sluices, mostly with two hatches, are situated in several hundreds meters from each other for the space of about ten kilometers. About 9 o’clock we reached the 3dr sluice and boarded the ship ‘Typhoon’. It is very interesting to watch how a hatch is filling with water. In several minutes a ship is rising above the settlement and trees, which remain to the left and below. To the right there are lakes, from where the water comes to he hatches. From the 7^th to the 8^th sluices the ship sails along the Volozero Lake and then about 8 kilometers along the artificial canal.

The soil around is sucked with blood,

Though spilt without a knife

(T. Shevchenko.)

The 7^th and 8^th sluices are the watershed. The Matkozero Lake, which begins after the 8^th sluice is situated below.

Here we found the waterman Aleksey, who put us across the Matkozero Bay. After drinking tea we went through the bog to the Krasnaya river. Log-paved roads, built here by convicts, are quite ruined. But before it was used for crossing the bog on foot and even by horse-carts, it was repaired, rotten logs were changed for new. Such logs connected concentration camps and special settlements with each other and with the external world. The wood was transported by these logs. In one place we found four metal wheels – the remains of a carriage, to which horses were hitched and which was rolling along wooden rails. Now all these logs are not suitable for walking. They are mainly landmarks (the logs are marked on maps). It is more convenient to walk by the bog near the logs. You are stepping on the moss and your foot goes deep to the water, sometimes up to the knee. And all this with knapsacks weighing 30-40 kg.

After passing about three kilometers of bog, about 6 o’clock p.m. we camped on a high dry bank of the Krasnaya river. Gnats annoyed us. At the time when we were cooking the supper Irina Reznikova brought from somewhere a local inhabitant Aleksandr Riabov, who agreed to be our guide. Two women came from somewhere – and these were the only people whom we met there.

Veniamin Ioffe and Aleksey Starov returned from their reconnaissance. They found ruins of a special settlement two kilometers southwest from our camp. In the morning of 29 July me, together with Aleksey and Olga, went to these ruins and photographed them. The ruins consist of three solidly built on a high place log cabins (25x10, 10x8 and 18x8). The roofs had collapsed, but the walls were unbroken. The windows were big, without bars. One barrack had the long corridor, out of which separate, probably living, rooms lead. Another barrack was separated in three parts by blind walls. Maybe, it was a storehouse. All was built approximately in the 30s. The settlers probably were ‘kulaks’. They cut the wood and transported it sometimes by logs and sometimes by dry land to the Matkozero Lake. The forest there is now young – about 50-60 years, but there are lots with old forest, which was not cut.

After the dinner all our expedition headed by guide Aleksandr crossed the Krasnaya river and moved in the northwest direction. The land here is comparatively dry, there are even hills up to 10 meters. Boulders of the Ice Age lay around. Trees, fallen of the wind of the old age, grip these boulders fantastically with their roots.

We came to a hut near the lake, which Aleksandr called ‘Svetlaya Lambushka’ (‘lamba’ in native language is ‘lake’, and ‘svetlaya’ in Russia is ‘clear’). There is no civilization. Our boys and girls, and then me, swam in the lake, although the water is cold.

At 6 o’clock p.m. we moved along the almost invisible path northward to the Konzhozero Lake, went along the bank for some time and then pitched our tents. This place was more civilized: there were some tracks after fires, an oven for smoking fish, a table and benches (already rotten). We ate sitting on the sand on the lake bank. The boys collected the firewood, the girls headed by Julia were cooking cereal, noodles and tea. I found a long metal rod, fixed it between two boulders and made a convenient fireplace, which we used for two days.

On 30 July at 10:30 me, Ioffe, Irina, Olga and Aleksey went along the high southern bank of the Konzhozero to the West, to the Yugorichka river, which flows from the Konzhozero Lake to the Matkozero Lake (i. e., to the canal). The river, about 10 meters wide, in the period of the concentration camps was boarded and used for floating timber wood for the building of the canal. Near the river we waited for Aleksandr Riabov, who showed us some ruins situated about 200 meters from the river and the lake. It is what remained from the 22^nd concentration camp of the Watershed camp department. The size of the largest barrack is 28x12 meters. All attributes evidence that it was the punishment block. The long corridor, sentries’ room, massive doors with locks, lamps over the doors to light cells for the day and night, remains of plank-beds, etc. And many pencil signatures on the doors and on the planks near the doors, which testify that in 1931-1947 the political convicts (Article 58) served in the punishment block terms from several days to half a year. Here are some of these signatures (maybe, they are not exact):
Arti
Bushlay
Turshin
Nikolayev M. B., punishment block from 16 Jan 1946 to 18 July 1945 4 days
Mikhaylov Vladimir
Yakhazhki
Meloda
Kriachko P.M., the Gorky oblast, Article 58-8
30 Dec 1940 Elizarov
16.164-10, 30 Dec 1940 – 30 June 1941
Tarinok 162-10
1933 1936 1937 1940
Ilyev IAY-O?-10 stayed here. Came from Melervi 1934 term 9 years 162-3. 19 years
1 April in cell 40 12 July
162 – 143
Lagoev Ivan
Stayed 19.34 Gavrilov Andrey

There are counts of days by grooves. Near one door we broke off the plank with the list of ten names, probably the list of people taken for work.

On one door we found especially large number of inscriptions and even a caricature: the long-necked Stalin in a war helmet and the signature ‘The Black Death’. This door ought to be placed in the museum, but its weight is about half a quintal. It is impossible to transport it across the bogs in the summer. Maybe the ‘Memorial’ will transport it in the winter by sled.

In one cell the piece of the wall was broken out. Ioffe supposed that Yuri Dmitriev, who visited this place before, broke out this piece with signatures for the museum. Sergey Koltyrin showed us in the museum the video film about this helicopter expedition.

All in all there are seven buildings, among which one can distinguish barracks, office, bathhouse, storehouse, living accommodation. The lofty roof has not yet collapsed. The general impression is that the place was abandoned about 15-20 years ago, the site has not yet grown with forest. Obviously, some representative of the authorities lived here, maybe with his family. In fact, the camp was abandoned about 40-50 years ago.

We found and took with us two wheels from barrows, each weighing 5-6 kilograms. We did not take rusty remnants of lanterns, since they break within a knapsack.

In the morning of 31 July we decamped and went guided by Aleksandr Riabov to the southeast, towards the Rybozero Lake. We stopped near a pool, where Riabov caught the first perch using a warm as bait; for all others he used the bait of fish eyes. Soon the fish soup was boiling.

Meanwhile Ioffe, Aleksey, Julia, Irina, Olga and me returned half a kilometer back, where we had seen barracks of a special settlement. There were half a dozen of barracks. Some of them stood with collapsed roofs and some with collapsed walls. One could recognize a big barrel for sauerkraut. It was dug in reached three meters in diameter.

Having dined on the fish soup, we moved farther eastwards to the Rybozero Lake, and then southwards and southeast until we reached a nameless brook that falls into the lake. We came to a fisherman’s cabin on the lake bank. There was a boat with the taken off motor, fishing nets, an oven for smoking fish, a store of wood, stuffed birds. There were no people. Inside the cabin there were two-storied plank-beds for six sleepers and a small oven. As Riabov explained to us, here is the place where fish is caught and smoked, then it is brought home through the bog to the hard ground. Later we crossed about three kilometers of the bog.

Having left the fishermen’s cabin, we went about two kilometers on the dry ground to the southeast, and in the evening we camped on the left bank of a considerable river Riboksa in a rather damp place. It was difficult without a mosquito net. One’s face and hands become swollen. Convicts and special settlers had no means of protection from bloodsuckers…

In the morning of 1 August we crossed the river jumping from one boulder to another. Here kilometers of log paved roads have preserved, rotten and slippery to walk with comfort. There are footsteps and droppings of a bear, which grazed on blackberry and cloudberry. A big cock of the wood soared.

Three kilometers eastwards we found a ridge, narrow (about 100 meters wide), but long (about 400 meters). It is crossed with basement-type pits. It is difficult to guess what aim they served. The next ridge that lay along three small lakes was open and sincere: it was the ruins of a concentration camp.

This ridge was wider, about 200 m, and more than half a kilometer long. In the lower northern part there are barracks with cells, at least seven. Punishment block with rough iron bars. The we found such signatures:

1938, 1941,

Bubarev K. O. 13 March 1938

Sergey

A bathhouse was recognizable. Lower, about 50 meters above the lake one can still distinguish polls of the fence, the remnants of the sentry tower with the characteristic roof like that of a nesting box.

Ioffe said that here up to three thousand convicts could be kept. The camp could be operating up to mid-fifties.

At the top several administrative and living buildings for the guards were placed.

Having returned to our camp on the Riboksa bank, we returned to the fishermen’s cabin at about 6 p.m. The cabin was empty again, and we quickly marched southwards through the bog. That was the path along which fishermen carry the smoked fish to the hard ground road, all in all about three kilometers. We hardly found a single dry spot for a short rest.

At last, in the evening, we reached the ridge with a hard road where one can use a car of a motorcycle. There were ruts from wheels several days old. We walked still another kilometer and camped by the roadside.

On 2 August about 10 a.m. we walked southwards along the hard road. Our road received smaller paths and became wider and wider until it became a decent gravel track. But there was no passing transport. Having walked 5-6 kilometers we encountered a motorcycle with a sidecar and two young men near it.

The are the fishermen from the cabin we had visited. The people are scarce here, but all know about all. The magic words ‘Memorial’ and ‘Sandormokh’ open their hearts to us. One of them, Edward, appeared to ride in one bus with us on 28 July from Medvezhyegorsk to Povenets. His grandfather was a repressed Ukrainian. Yet the young man could not recollect either his grandfather’s surname or the place he had come from. This is the way the memory perishes, and our offsprings become Russian…

We sent Aleksandr with the other man to ride to the village Gabselga that is situated not far from the Onega Lake and to hire a car. But when we finished our dinner, a truck appeared from the side we came from. It took us to Gabselga under a driving rain. There was a Kyrgyz with a boy in his early teens in the truck. The are emigrants. A war is raging in Kyrgyzia, and several managed to come to Gabselga. They pick up blackberries. The yield this year is poor. They do not catch fish and they do not eat fish.

During 30 kilometers of road we saw only two cars and one motorcycle. Having changed our truck for a van in Gabselga, we have come to Medvezhyegorsk about 7:30 p.m. We put up at hotel ‘Onezhskaya’, had a cold shower, and then we felt how swollen were our feet, how mosquito-beaten we were, how all our body ached…

A kind of trouble happened with Aleksandr, his motorcycle driver was drunk and ran over a boulder. The driver struck the windshield, and Aleksandr flew out. They reached Gabselga. Aleksandr managed to found a car and went in search of us while we were relaxing in the hotel. He found us, complained at aching ribs and shock, and went to bed without supper.

3 August was announced by Ioffe as a day off – we have spared this day, since we had luck in finding guides and assistants. The weather was nice too.

On 4 August at 4:30 a.m. we met at the railway station a group from St.-Petersburg headed by Tatiana Morgachova. She brought about 30 relatives of the Solovtsy convicts shot down in Sandormokh. Among them: Valentina P. Bovsunivska from Kyiv – the daughter of Petro F. Bovsunivski, a teacher of a planning-statistical school; Rada M. Poloz from Moscow -- the daughter of Mikhail M. Poloz, the Ukrainian ambassador in Russia, later the head the State Planning Committee, and then the Minister of Finances of the UkrSSR; Eleonora A. Vangengeym -- the daughter of Aleksey F. Vangengeym, a professor, the head of the Meteorological Center of the USSR, born in Krapivny near Chernigov. A historian Yaroslav Timchenko came too and later the Valentina Skachko, a member of the all-Ukrainian ‘Memorial’, and a journalist Rostislav Martuniuk with his mother and stepfather. In the morning of 5 August lots of people arrived in the hotel, including Yuri Verbovy, the consul of Ukraine in St.-Petersburg, and Vitaliy P. Fartushny, the leader of Ukrainian community in Petroskoy (Petrozavodsk).

All these people, including some locals, took a part in the meeting in Sandormokh; some of them went to Solovki the same day.