The Movement for Freedom of Emigration. Defectors from the USSR

THE MOVEMENT FOR FREEDOM OF EMIGRATION

THE MOVEMENT FOR FREEDOM OF EMIGRATION

DEFECTORS FROM THE USSR AND VICTIMS OF PUNITIVE PSYCHIATRY

Compiled by OLEG ALEKSEEVICH SOFYANIK, Sevastopol

Edited by: Vasyl Ovsienko.

(As of June 6, 2013—96 entries)

PROFILES:

1. CHINGIZ ABDULLAYEV
2. AVO ABRAMYAN
3. ANTON BORISOVICH AVDEYEV
4. VALERY GEORGIEVICH AVDEYEV
5. NADYR AGAYEV
6. YURI ADAMOVICH
7. SHAMIL GADZHI OGLY ALIMURADOV
8. OLEG ALIFANOV
9. VLADIMIR ANDREYCHIKOV
10. IGOR NIKOLAYEVICH ANTIPOV
11. IMRE ARAKAS
12. YURI YEFIMOVICH BAKUKIN
13. ALI BALAYEV
14. ASLAN BEZHANIDZE
15. DMITRY LVOVICH BERMAN
16. MIKHAIL BIDNY
17. SERGEI BORTNIKOV
18. NIKOLAI IVANOVICH BRESLAVSKY
19. KAZBEK DZAKHOEVICH BRITAYEV
20. YURI PETROVICH BROVKO
21. GERHARD TEODOROVICH BUTERUS
22. ANATOLY BUTKO
23. ALEKSANDR VEDROV
24. VIKTOR VERTEPA
25. ALEKSANDR VOLK
26. NIKOLAI VOLKOV
27. DAMIR GATAULIN
28. GEORGE DAVID
29. VALENTIN DERBENEV
30. STEPAN DZHIKHARKHANYAN and KHACHATUR MURADYAN
31. PAAT DZHUGELIA
32. IVAN DOLGIY
33. MIKHAIL DYUKAREV
34. ZHIDKOV
35. VALERY ZAITSEV
36. VALERY ZAKS
37. VIKTOR ZINOVIEV
38. SERGEI NIKOLAYEVICH IZHITSKY
39. ALEKSANDR MIKHAILOVICH KANAFIEV
40. ANATOLY KARYSHEV
41. YEVGENY KASPRYUK
42. GIA KVACHADZE
43. YURI KEYSIN
44. LEV KINDEYEV
45. VIKTOR KOVAL
46. VITALY KOZLOV
47. VLADIMIR KORZH
48. BORIS KOSHELEV
49. VASILY PAVLOVICH KUBYSHKIN
50. VLADIMIR KURANOV
51. ALEKSANDR KUSIDIS
52. BORIS LESNOV
53. GRIGORY LIVCHIKOV
54. VALERY LYANKU
55. VLADIMIR SERGEYEVICH MAKSIMOV
56. BORIS KARPOVICH MATROSOV
57. ELIM MAKHAEV
58. GRIGORY MELNIK
59. VASILY NAZAROV
60. VASILY NIKITENKOV
61. YURI NIKRETIN
62. SERGEI VSEVOLODOVICH PETROV
63. YURI PETROV
64. PYOTR PETUKHOV
65. ALEKSANDR POLEZHAEV
66. ALEKSANDR PORDZHIYAN
67. ALEKSANDR RAVENSKY
68. YURI REZNIKOV
69. ILIE ROȘIANU
70. VALENTIN RUSSU
71. VLADIMIR FYODOROVICH RYBAK and his son VASILY
72. ALEKSEY SAFRONOV
73. MIKHAIL SVENSER
74. PYOTR SENENKO
75. SERGEI SETSKO
76. YURI IVANOVICH SILENKO and VLADIMIR VIKTOROVICH ROMAN
77. ALEKSANDR SKACHINSKY
78. ALEKSANDR SOBOLEV
79. IGOR SOKOLOV
80. OLEG ALEKSEEVICH SOFYANIK
81. YAROSLAV STOLYAR
82. PYOTR SEMYONOVICH STOYANOV
83. LEONID MIKHAILOVICH SUVOROV
84. STANISLAV GRIGORIEVICH SUDAKOV
85. ALEKSANDR SUKHANOV
86. ANATOLY UVAROV
87. BORIS IVANOVICH URYADOV
88. VLADIMIR GENNADIEVICH USHAKOV
89. EDUARDO GUERRA JIMÉNEZ
90. NIKOLAI ANDREYEVICH CHERKOV
91. GENNADY CHERPAKOV
92. MUSA SHAVKETOV
93. NIKOLAI SHVACHKO
94. LYUBOV SHTEYN
95. PYOTR DMITRIEVICH YAKIMENKO
96. IOSIF YAROSH
97. YEVGENY MIKHAILOVICH YASTREBTSOV

CHINGIZ ABDULLAYEV, an Azerbaijani journalist, b. 1930, a former political prisoner. On September 15, 1982, he entered the grounds of the Swedish embassy in Moscow and requested political asylum. Some time later, he left the embassy, was arrested, and placed in the Kazan Special Psychiatric Hospital. Unfortunately, his subsequent fate is unknown.

AVO ABRAMYAN escaped from the Yerevan Psychiatric Hospital, where he had been confined for anti-Soviet talk. He attempted to cross the Turkish border. He was arrested and committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He developed a mental illness while in the SPH. He was held in the 5th ward (attending physician: Vyacheslav Fyodorovich Vinogradov).

ANTON BORISOVICH AVDEYEV, a Muscovite, b. February 17, 1958, was a mathematician and programmer. His father was a sculptor, and his adoptive mother was Korney Chukovsky’s secretary. In August 1982, he and his friend PAVEL SIMANOVICH traveled to the Kola Peninsula for a vacation and illegally crossed the Soviet-Finnish border. A desperate chase by border guards ensued, but Avdeyev managed to break through into Finland, while Simanovich died during the difficult crossing through the taiga. In 1985, the magazine “Pogranichnik” (“The Border Guard”) published a documentary story about this escape, “Duel at Dawn,” although in the story, as was expected of Soviet border guards, the defectors were caught. The Finnish authorities arrested Avdeyev and imprisoned him in Helsinki. Meanwhile, Avdeyev’s apartment in Moscow was searched, where samizdat and tamizdat were found, along with an invitation from the British Embassy for a film screening. Anton Avdeyev was extradited to the USSR. His trial took place on January 25–26, 1983. At the trial, Avdeyev openly criticized the Soviet regime and identified himself as a Russian nationalist. He was sentenced to three years in a general-regime camp. He served his sentence in a camp in the Arkhangelsk Oblast. His subsequent fate is unknown.

VALERY GEORGIEVICH AVDEYEV (b. 1952 in Voronezh, Russia – d. June 1998 in Voronezh).

A serviceman. He attempted to escape from the USSR. A victim of punitive psychiatry.

Avdeyev graduated from high school in Voronezh, worked at an aircraft factory, and was an inventor. In 1979, he was drafted into the army and served in the Moscow region. He was critical of the regime and dreamed of emigrating. In 1980, he deserted from the army and went to Batumi. In June, he swam to a Greek tanker anchored offshore and asked the ship’s captain to help him leave the USSR. Avdeyev wanted to seek asylum in Switzerland. However, the ship’s crew handed the defector over to Soviet border guards.

On September 30, 1980, the Supreme Court of the Adjar ASSR declared him insane and sent him to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. For some time, he was held there in the same cell as the legendary Aleksandr KANAFIEV. From April 16, he was in the Volgograd SPH. On February 7, 1989, he was transferred to a general-type psychiatric hospital in Voronezh. He was released on July 25, 1989.

During his confinement, Avdeyev did in fact develop a mental illness and suffered from depression. He was periodically committed to a psychiatric hospital. After the collapse of the USSR, he was disillusioned by the onset of savage capitalism and rampant crime: “And this is what we fought for?” In 1997, his mother died, and Valery had a strained relationship with his father. After a conflict, he found himself in a psychiatric hospital again. In June 1998, he escaped and, a few days later, hanged himself in a cemetery, leaving a note saying he did not want to spend his whole life in a psychiatric prison.

(Entry on the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group website in Ukrainian: https://museum.khpg.org/1362643974)

NADYR AGAYEV, b. 1928, a resident of Baku. He spoke out, exposing the abuses of Heydar Aliyev, the then-leader of Azerbaijan. He passed some of the incriminating materials to the Turkish ambassador in Moscow. He was arrested by the KGB in 1978 and committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He was held in the 5th ward. For declaring a hunger strike, he was transferred to the 4th ward (attending physicians: Igor Fomich Kuzenko and Valentina Mikhailovna Konovskaya). He was released in 1990.

YURI ADAMOVICH was held in the 5th ward of the Dnipropetrovsk SPH for renouncing his Soviet citizenship.

SHAMIL GADZHI OGLY ALIMURADOV, b. December 15, 1952, in Baku, of Lezgin ethnicity. He graduated from high school in 1969. That same year, he enrolled in the Baku Polytechnic Institute. Six months later, for financial reasons, he dropped out and went to work at a faience factory. From 1970 to 1972, he studied at the Sasovo Flight School. From November 1972 to March 1976, he worked in the Yakutsk air detachment, first as a co-pilot and then as a pilot of an AN-2 aircraft. From March 1976, he was the commander of an AN-2 aircraft. In 1977, he trained at the higher flight school in Kirovohrad. From September 1977, he was a co-pilot of an AN-24 aircraft. He graduated by correspondence from the Academy of Civil Aviation in Leningrad.

He was critical of the Soviet regime. He sent several statements to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, requesting permission to leave the USSR. On December 27, 1983, he attempted to enter the US embassy but was detained. After a day at the district police station, he was released. In Yakutsk, the KGB sent him for a psychiatric evaluation. He was declared mentally sound by psychiatrists.

By some miracle, Alimuradov managed to get his job back at the air detachment. On December 19, 1985, while serving as a co-pilot on a passenger flight from Yakutsk, Shamil Alimuradov, threatening with a knife, removed the crew from the controls and took the helm himself. The daredevil set a course for China and successfully landed the plane on Chinese territory.

He was arrested by the Chinese authorities and sent by a special train under heavy guard to a prison in Harbin. Alimuradov immediately requested political asylum in the PRC. According to him, the Chinese authorities treated him like a hero and with great respect. In the prison where he was held, he had a very liberal regime: excellent food, unlimited walks, and the opportunity to engage in sports. He was provided with a radio and listened to broadcasts from Western radio stations. He diligently studied Chinese and, after two years, spoke it fluently. He studied Chinese gymnastics and medicine and met with journalists.

On March 4–6, 1986, Alimuradov’s trial was held in Harbin. Soviet embassy staff were present and tried to speak with him, but Alimuradov flatly refused to communicate with the Soviet diplomats. At the trial, he explained the reasons for his actions and denounced the Soviet regime. The audience greeted his final words with applause. The court sentenced Alimuradov to 8 years in prison.

In March 1988, he was released from prison early and settled in Harbin. The Chinese provided him with a well-furnished apartment with a maid. Shamil began teaching an accelerated Russian language course using his own methodology at the Harbin Medical University, the Pedagogical Institute, and then at the Institute of Foreign Languages in Jiamusi. His personal life was also very successful. He could choose any girl he liked. He soon married a young Chinese woman. According to him, these were the happiest and most fulfilling years of his life; he lived like a king.

But a thaw began in Soviet-Chinese relations. On December 25, 1989, Alimuradov was unexpectedly arrested, escorted by 20 soldiers, 2 prosecutors, and employees of the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the border, and handed over to the Soviet authorities at the Suifenhe border crossing. He was received by the deputy head of the Yakutia KGB, Zhuravsky; the head of the investigative department of the Yakutia KGB, Aleksandr Chistikhin; and the prosecutor of Yakutia. That same day, he was flown to Yakutsk and placed in the MVD pre-trial detention center. He was initially held in a general cell with criminals, but after threatening a hunger strike, he was transferred to solitary confinement.

On June 22, 1990, the Supreme Court of the Yakut ASSR sentenced Shamil Alimuradov to 5 years in a reinforced-regime camp. He served his sentence in a camp in Yakutia, then in Kemerovo. He actively fought for the rights of prisoners. In the camp, he enjoyed great authority and respect among the inmates.

He was released on December 25, 1994. Since 1995, he has been living in Moscow. He is in business.

OLEG VLADIMIROVICH ALIFANOV (b. January 24, 1954, in the village of Shevchenko, Starobesheve Raion, Donetsk Oblast)

A worker, a dissident. He attempted to leave the USSR. A victim of punitive psychiatry.

In 1933, the Alifanov family fled the famine on foot from Sloboda Ukraine to the Donbas. Oleg graduated from high school. From 1972 to 1974, he served in the border troops on the Soviet-Iranian border in Azerbaijan. After demobilization, from 1975, he worked in Moscow as an electric welder and a construction worker. He witnessed theft, padding of figures, and contradictions between communist propaganda and reality. In 1979, he was the only one in his brigade to condemn the occupation of Afghanistan. He was called a “traitor” for the first time. He studied for six months in preparatory courses for admission to the philosophy department of Moscow University, but the prospect of becoming a teacher of “scientific communism” did not appeal to him. After all, his critical views on the existing system had already been formed.

Tired of personal problems and life in Moscow dormitories, he returned to the village of Shevchenko in the Donetsk Oblast, where his grandmother lived. Having a lot of free time, he began to read Russian classics—Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy—and listen to broadcasts from Radio Liberty and Voice of America. A spiritual awakening occurred: from an ordinary Soviet citizen, crushed by Soviet ideology, he became a dissident. Once, while listening to Radio Liberty, Alifanov became convinced that protests against the Soviet regime would have a greater effect if they were made not only by intellectuals but also by ordinary people—workers and peasants. Alifanov wrote an open letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU with a rather tolerant critique of the Soviet regime. In July 1985, during the International Youth and Student Festival in Moscow, he came to Moscow. He sent one copy of the letter by mail and decided to hand the second to the staff of a Western embassy for publication. For several days he wandered around Moscow, trying to get into an embassy, but the tight security around the embassies prevented him from carrying out his plan.

On July 30, 1985, Alifanov was sitting in a café across from the French embassy, observing it. He noticed that he was also being watched by men in gray suits sitting at neighboring tables and realized that he had to make a break for it immediately, or the KGB would catch him before he could act and his idea would fail. Leaving the café and walking along the embassy fence, he saw that the policeman in the booth was distracted by a phone call. Alifanov quickly grabbed the metal fence, pulled himself up, vaulted over the 3-meter fence, and thus escaped from the USSR for a few hours. The embassy staff were extremely surprised by his sudden appearance and said that the ambassador was not there, and only he could decide on granting Alifanov the political asylum he had requested.

At that time, the KGB and the police surrounded the embassy with a reinforced cordon. A colonel from the MVD demanded that the diplomats immediately hand over the “dangerous criminal.” Meanwhile, the diplomats took Oleg into the embassy building, fed him, talked with him, took his letter, and assured him that they would pass it on to the West. According to Alifanov, they were polite, friendly, and correct. They asked about his plans. Oleg said that he would leave the embassy at 9 p.m. The diplomats were satisfied with this answer and said they would not forget him and would follow his fate. At 9 p.m., after 6 hours in the embassy, Alifanov, accompanied by a French diplomat named Stefan, left the embassy. The diplomat walked him to the Oktyabrskaya metro station and said goodbye. In the metro station lobby, KGB agents arrested Alifanov and took him to the nearest police station, where they began to interrogate him. At first, they threatened him with violence, then a high-ranking KGB officer arrived and questioned Alifanov about the layout of the embassy and the number of employees.

After the interrogation, Alifanov was taken to the Kashchenko Psychiatric Hospital in Moscow, where they told him he would die in a “loony bin.” After giving him the standard diagnosis of “sluggish schizophrenia,” they began to inject him with neuroleptics.

Meanwhile, the French diplomats kept their word: his letter was published in the Parisian newspaper “Le Matin” and caused a huge resonance in the West. The text of the letter was broadcast by Radio Liberty and Voice of America. Alifanov had achieved his goal.

Two months later, he was transferred to a psychiatric hospital in the village of Vinzili near Tyumen, closer to his mother, who lived in Surgut. The regime here was much milder.

After three months of confinement, Alifanov was released, probably with the help of the French. He worked in Donetsk, then moved to the village of Shevchenko, where he lives to this day. The sense of justice that led him to his legendary breakthrough into the embassy prompted him to appeal to Amnesty International and the heads of other states with petitions for the release of other political prisoners. He wrote letters to newspapers about current public affairs.

(Entry on the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group website in Ukrainian: https://museum.khpg.org/1361651339; autobiography – in the “Interviews” section: https://museum.khpg.org/1361652510)

VLADIMIR ANDREYCHIKOV (b. 1964 in Omsk Oblast, Russia – d. 1995, in Simferopol).

Attempted to escape from the USSR. Executed by firing squad.

Vladimir was the fourth child in his family. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Crimea and settled in the village of Vilino, Bakhchysarai Raion.

In 1980, for an attempt to leave the USSR, Andreychikov was arrested and sentenced to 3 years in the camps. He was released in 1983.

After a conflict with the local police chief, he was arrested on fabricated criminal charges and in December 1983 was sentenced to 5 years in the camps. After his release in 1988, he sent a statement to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in June renouncing his Soviet citizenship.

On June 22, 1988, Andreychikov held the first and only anti-Soviet demonstration in the history of Sevastopol. At home, Vladimir sewed a white cape with the slogan “Death to Communism!” written on it, put it on, and in this attire, demonstratively headed towards Sapun Ridge, where the World War II Memorial Complex is located. He told passers-by that he hated the Soviet government, that today was a holiday for him—the day the war began—and that Hitler was better than the communists. Near the Triumphal Arch, he was detained by policemen and KGB operatives and taken to the Nakhimovsky District Department of Internal Affairs of Sevastopol. During interrogation, the brave man stated that he hated the Soviet government and wanted to express his protest against the moral terror he had been subjected to since birth in this country.

A month after his arrest, Andreychikov was sent for an examination at the Sevastopol Psychiatric Hospital. There, he unexpectedly had an appendicitis attack. Shortly after the surgery, while under guard at Sevastopol City Hospital No. 1, with his scar not yet healed, Andreychikov escaped. He was in hiding for two months. To get money for his escape from the USSR, Vladimir broke into a store in his home village of Vilino, cracked a safe, and stole 4,000 rubles. He was arrested the same day.

On September 13, 1988, Andreychikov was brought to Vilino for a crime scene reenactment. There, he made a daring escape from custody. On September 20, he was caught by the local police officer, Vasily Kulynyak, who beat Andreychikov severely during interrogation and tormented him. In his testimony, Andreychikov repeatedly told investigators that he had one goal: to leave the Soviet Union, and he was ready to do anything if the opportunity arose.

In February 1989, Andreychikov was sentenced by the Nakhimovsky District Court of Sevastopol to 6 years in a strict-regime camp. He served his sentence in the Vinnytsia zone IV 30-86. In the camp, he befriended Stanislav Girzheu (b. 1967). Girzheu was in the camp from 1989 to 1991 on a criminal charge. In the zone, the friends decided to create an underground anti-communist combat group and, after their release, to obtain weapons in a fight and kill communists and KGB agents. Girzheu was released 3 years earlier than Andreychikov but continued to correspond with his friend and met him at the gates of the zone on the day of his release.

In the camp, Andreychikov engaged in self-education and wrote good poems; here is one of them: “Payback // I have forgotten what love is, // and under the moonlit city sky // I uttered so many sworn words, // that I darken when I remember them. // And one day, pressed against a wall // by the ugliness that follows me, // alone, I will cry out in my sleep // and wake up, and leave, leave... // Late at night, the door will open, // it will be a joyless moment. // I will stand at the threshold like a beast, // that wanted warmth and comfort. // She will turn pale and say: go away! // Our friendship is now behind us! // I mean nothing to myself! // Go away! Don’t look at me crying! // And again along the forest road, // where weddings once flew by, // restless, gloomy, nocturnal, // I will anxiously walk away into the blizzard.”

Andreychikov was released in April 1994. Together with Stanislav Girzheu, he came to Crimea. He kept the oath he had made in the zone and began to take revenge on the communists and KGB agents who had become successful businessmen in the now-independent Ukraine. In September–October 1994, the friends carried out a series of armed raids on the homes of former party officials. As a result of the raids, 5 people were killed. The culmination of their activities was a raid in the village of Vilino on the house of the police officer Kulynyak, who had arrested Andreychikov in 1988. The officer himself and almost all of his family members were demonstratively killed on October 10, 1994.

The case received wide publicity. All police forces were deployed to capture Andreychikov and Girzheu. The Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Chernyshov, arrived from Kyiv. On October 14, 1994, they were “located.” In Sevastopol, Berkut officers blew open the door of Andreychikov’s sister’s apartment with a charge and captured him and Girzheu while they were sleeping. They were taken to the Sevastopol MVD headquarters and were simply beaten to death with kicks. The head of the Sevastopol MVD, General Beloborodov, who saw this, tried to stop the beating, but Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Chernyshov, who was standing nearby, led him away.

After the beating, Andreychikov ended up in intensive care, and Stanislav Girzheu’s kidneys were beaten out. During the investigation and trial, Andreychikov stated that he was avenging himself on the criminal functionaries of the Soviet government and was satisfied with his actions, had no regrets, and had achieved his goal.

During their stay in the Simferopol pre-trial detention center, Andreychikov and Girzheu were constantly beaten by the guards. In 1995, the Supreme Court of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea sentenced Andreychikov and his friend to be shot. The sentence was carried out the same year.

(Entry on the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group website in Ukrainian: At the KhHRG website https://museum.khpg.org/1370415551)

IGOR NIKOLAYEVICH ANTIPOV, b. July 14, 1937, a Muscovite, a worker. He was arrested on October 10, 1971, at Sheremetyevo-2 Airport while attempting to illegally fly on a scheduled plane to Italy. He managed to board the plane illegally but was discovered and seized by border guards. He was charged under Article 64 of the RSFSR Criminal Code. On May 5, 1972, he was committed to the SPH in Kazan. On October 27, 1981, he was transferred to Psychiatric Hospital No. 5 in Moscow (“Stolbovaya”), on May 28, 1990, he was transferred to PH No. 13 in Moscow, and from July 25, 1990, to PH No. 10 in Moscow. He was released in 1992. He developed a mental illness during his long stay in Soviet psychiatric prisons. His mother, Zinaida Aleksandrovna Borisenok, and his sister, Lyubov Vasilievna Kozlova, live in Moscow.

IMRE ARAKAS, b. December 1, 1958, in Tallinn, Estonia. He graduated from high school No. 46 in Tallinn. He was actively involved in sports: track and field, tennis, wrestling, and especially boxing, becoming a candidate for Master of Sports. He lost his mother early—she died of cancer in 1976.

In the same year, Imre and a friend drew a star and a swastika with an equals sign between them on a police car near the Baltic Station in Tallinn. He was arrested and given a 2-year suspended sentence.

In 1978, he and a friend decided to escape to Sweden. Taking a dog with them, in October 1978, they tried to cross the Baltic Sea in a stolen motorboat, but the engine broke down, and they had to land near Paldiski. Fortunately, the border guards did not notice the escapees.

In the same year, Arakas was the organizer and an active participant in a brawl with Russians at a disco in the Tomp Palace of Culture. A search for him began. He went underground and created an underground youth terrorist group. They managed to rob the armory of the “Dynamo” sports society and steal 13 pistols. The daredevils were preparing an assassination attempt on the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia, Karl Vaino. Arakas and his friends managed to fire on Vaino’s car, but he remained unharmed. Shortly after the failed assassination attempt, Imre Arakas was captured by the KGB.

In 1979, during his trial, Imre managed the impossible: he made a daring escape from the courtroom. He struck a guard, pushed past the other guards, and ran out of the courthouse. A chase began, and Arakas jumped from a height of 8 meters from the Toompea observation deck and successfully escaped. All KGB and MVD forces were deployed to capture the daredevil. Arakas became a living legend of protesting Estonia. According to his friend, he was ready to do anything to avoid submitting to the Soviet authorities and communists.

Arakas tried to escape by sea to the West. On the shore, near Vääna-Jõesuu, as he was preparing a boat, he was discovered by a border patrol. Arakas fired at the border guards, they returned fire, and a shootout ensued, but despite the hail of bullets, he managed to escape. Imre was hiding in Tallinn in the apartment of his friend, Aleks Lepajõe. The KGB managed to track him down. On July 24, 1979, tear gas was fired into the apartment, and it was stormed. Arakas was captured by the KGB. The sentence: 15 years in the camps.

He spent the first three years in the Vologda closed prison, then was in a zone in the Gorky Oblast. He actively fought for the rights of prisoners, was repeatedly placed in the punishment cell (SHIZO), and 6 times in the cell-type room (PKT). In 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet empire, he was transferred to Estonia and held in the Rummu zone. He was released in 1992.

Democratic Estonia did not acknowledge or reward its hero in any way. He had to start everything from scratch. He traveled to Denmark on a forged passport, where he went into business. Already a wealthy man, he returned to Estonia, where he continued his business. A brave and principled man, Arakas often clashed with both the authorities and the local mafia. He survived seven assassination attempts. He is married and has two children. He currently lives with his family on the island of Mallorca in Spain.

YURI YEFIMOVICH BAKUKIN, b. 1954, from the Gorky Oblast. He was first arrested in 1972 for leading a youth neo-fascist organization. He was convicted under Article 70 of the RSFSR Criminal Code. He served 5 years in a camp. After his release, he tried to board a foreign ship in Odesa but was detained by border guards. He was released after stating that he would refrain from similar attempts in the future. In 1979, he tried to cross the Iranian border near Ashgabat. He was arrested and committed to a special psychiatric hospital in Tashkent, then transferred in 1984 to the regional psychiatric hospital in Gorky, but after 6 months was sent to the Leningrad SPH. He was released in 1989. He has three brothers, but they do not maintain contact with him.

ALI BALAYEV, a resident of Baku. In 1981, he fled to Khomeini’s Iran and requested asylum. He was arrested. For illegally crossing the border, an Iranian court sentenced him to 2 years in prison. He spent them in Tehran’s most terrible prison, Evin, and was immediately extradited to the USSR. He was sent to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH, to the 5th ward (attending physician: Igor Fomich Kuzenko). He was released in 1988; his subsequent fate is unknown.

(The warden of Evin Prison during Balayev’s stay was Asadollah Lajevardi, popularly known as the “Butcher of Tehran.” Lajevardi was an Islamic revolutionary who had himself spent 14 years in that prison. He was so tortured by the Shah’s SAVAK police that his spine was broken and he could not stand for more than 10 minutes, but this did not stop him from torturing and executing prisoners himself after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power. In 1998, he was killed by a Fedayeen terrorist at a bazaar in Tehran.)

ASLAN BEZHANIDZE, b. 1964, a native and resident of Batumi. Intending to escape from the USSR, the tenth-grader attempted to hijack a plane. On April 14, 1980, he boarded an L-410 plane flying from Batumi to Sukhumi. After takeoff, Bezhanidze passed a note to the pilots demanding to fly to Turkey. He threatened to blow up the plane. But the plane returned to Batumi, where Aslan was arrested. He was declared mentally ill and committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He was held in the 5th ward (attending physician: Valentina Mikhailovna Konovskaya). He was given huge doses of psychotropic drugs. He was released in 1986. He currently lives in Georgia, in the town of Khelvachauri, and is involved in a large fishing business.

DMITRY LVOVICH BERMAN, b. 1965, a resident of Mykolaiv, a locksmith. He spoke out critically of the regime and intended to emigrate. He was arrested on August 1, 1988, on a fabricated murder charge. On March 1, 1989, he was sentenced by the Zavodskyi District Court of Mykolaiv to 13 years in a strict-regime camp. In October 1989, his sentence was reduced to 10 years in the camps. In February 1990, he was released on his own recognizance pending a new trial. He lived in Mykolaiv. In the summer of 1990, he came to Moscow, went to the Canadian embassy, and requested asylum. The diplomats allowed Berman to stay at the embassy, and he remained there for several months. Unfortunately, his subsequent fate is unknown.

(This is a rare precedent of Western embassies granting asylum to Soviet citizens. In 1978, the Siberian Seven—the Vashchenko and Chmykhalov Pentecostal families—with great difficulty, only through their own persistence, received asylum at the American embassy and spent 4 years in the embassy basement. In 1983, a Bulgarian citizen (an ethnic Turk) in Moscow broke into the Turkish embassy and spent 2 years there. In 1985, Turkish leader Turgut Özal met with Gorbachev in Moscow and persuaded him to release the defector. The Turk flew to Ankara on Özal’s plane.)

MIKHAIL BIDNY, a fighter in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). He spent 20 years in the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He was held in the 5th ward (attending physician: Igor Fomich Kuzenko). His fate is unknown.

SERGEI BORTNIKOV, b. 1955. On September 16, 1987, he successfully crossed the Romanian border, was detained by Romanian border guards, and on September 17 was extradited to the USSR. He was committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He was held in the 3rd ward. He was released in 1990.

NIKOLAI IVANOVICH BRESLAVSKY, b. 1905, a resident of Dnipropetrovsk. During the war, he served in a group of Soviet troops in Iran, deserted, and fled to Turkey. He lived there until the end of the war. Under the Yalta Agreements, he was extradited to the USSR. He was convicted of treason. He spent 11 years in the camps. He was released in 1956 and, with the idea of emigrating, came to Moscow. While trying to enter the Turkish embassy, he was arrested and committed to an SPH. He was first held in the Leningrad SPH, and in 1972 was transferred to the Sychevka SPH. He died in the special hospital.

KAZBEK DZAKHOEVICH BRITAYEV (b. 1935 in Ossetia – d. October 13, 1981, in Kazan).

For crossing the border, he was twice committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Born into an Ossetian family. In 1963, near Batumi, he tried to illegally cross the Turkish border. He was arrested and committed to a psychiatric hospital in Georgia for 6 months.

In the mid-70s, he went to work as a supplier on the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM). In 1976, the 41-year-old Britayev crossed the Amur River on a makeshift raft and thus successfully escaped from the USSR to China. He requested asylum in the United States, but the Chinese authorities refused to send him to a country unfriendly to them. For about 3 years, Britayev lived in Shanghai and Nanjing. After another persistent request to be released to the US and his refusal to live in China, the Chinese authorities extradited Britayev to the USSR. They treated him insidiously: they threw a banquet in his honor, got him drunk to the point of insensibility, and handed him over to the Soviet border guards.

In April 1979, Britayev was committed to the Kazan Special Psychiatric Hospital. He told fellow inmates that, with his experience of crossing the border, he would leave the USSR after his release.

In the SPH, Britayev worked well in the workshops. The head of the ward, Captain Korolev, promised to release him soon. Britayev was in a state of joyful excitement, but on October 13, 1981, while in the bathhouse, he died instantly. His fellow inmates suspected that Britayev, being a person dangerous to the authorities, was deliberately poisoned: instead of a psychotropic pill, he was given a pill with poison. His brothers flew in from the Caucasus, but his body was not released to them; he was buried in the prison cemetery in their presence.

YURI PETROVICH BROVKO, a Muscovite, b. 1939, a physicist, junior research fellow. On January 25, 1975, he broke into the Swedish embassy in Moscow and asked for help to leave the USSR. After the diplomats refused to let him stay at the embassy, he left the mission and was arrested by the KGB. He was committed to the Kashchenko Psychiatric Hospital. He was released in the same year. He currently resides in Moscow, is engaged in scientific research, and is actively published in scientific journals and on the internet.

GERHARD TEODOROVICH BUTERUS, b. 1935, a financial inspector from Chelyabinsk. In the spring of 1979, in the Odesa port, he boarded a Greek ship and requested political asylum. The ship’s captain handed him over to the border guards. He was committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. In 1985, he was transferred to the Chelyabinsk PH. His subsequent fate is unknown.

ANATOLY BUTKO, a doctor, a native and resident of Artemovsk, Donetsk Oblast.

In 1970, he came to Batumi and, intending to escape from the USSR, bought a ticket for a cruise ship to Sochi. Taking an inflatable ring, a flask of water, and chocolate with him, he jumped overboard at night, intending to swim to Turkey. The lights of the Turkish coast were visible. During his swim, he nearly got caught under the bow of a patrol boat. Border helicopters flew low over the water, but the darkness and waves reliably concealed the fugitive, and the lights on the shore allowed him to maintain the correct direction. Strong headwinds and waves hindered his swimming. The daredevil swam all night and, exhausted, lost consciousness by morning. The inflatable ring he had prudently taken on his escape saved him. He woke up during the day on a beach in Poti, 60 km from Batumi. Rescuers called the border guards, and Butko was arrested.

In preparing his escape, Anatoly had not accounted for the very strong and powerful counter-current running from the Turkish coast north towards Tuapse. The legendary defector Yuri VEKHOTIN found himself in a similar situation in 1963 when he tried to swim from Batumi to Turkey. Despite his excellent athletic training, he could not overcome the current and was also carried overnight not to Turkey, but to Poti, where he was also arrested.

The famous Oleg SOKHANEVICH also tried to swim to Turkey in this area in 1966, but he too failed to overcome the powerful current. However, he was luckier and did not fall into the hands of the border guards.

In 1962, only one person managed to successfully swim from Batumi to Turkey—Pyotr PATRUSHEV, a Master of Sports in swimming. He later published a book, “Sentenced to Death by Firing Squad.”

Anatoly Butko was committed to the Donetsk general-type psychiatric hospital, where he spent a year. After his release, he became interested in poetry. For reading anti-Soviet poems, he was arrested by the KGB in 1973 and committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He was released in 1977. He did not abandon his thoughts of emigrating from the USSR and began preparing to hijack a plane. He was informed on and, in 1981, was again seized by the KGB. He was once again committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. In 1984, he died in the Dnipropetrovsk special hospital.

ALEKSANDR VEDROV. He fled to Romania. He was extradited to the USSR. In 1979, he was in the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. Unable to endure the torture of neuroleptics, he hanged himself in 1981.

VIKTOR VERTEPA wrote letters to newspaper editors criticizing the Soviet regime. He was committed to the 5th ward of the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. His fate is unknown.

ALEKSANDR VOLK. In 1980, he was arrested while trying to cross the Romanian border. He was held in the Dnipropetrovsk SPH, in the 3rd ward (attending physician: Nelya Mikhailovna Butkevich). His fate is unknown.

NIKOLAI GEORGIEVICH VOLKOV, a resident of Sverdlovsk. From 1974, he sought to leave the USSR. He renounced his Soviet citizenship and was repeatedly committed to psychiatric hospitals. On August 16, 1983, he staged a demonstration on Red Square demanding to leave the USSR, distributing handwritten leaflets to passers-by in the form of an open letter to the French ambassador, in which he told the story of his struggle to emigrate from the USSR. He was seized by the KGB, committed to a psychiatric hospital, where he declared an indefinite hunger strike. He was transferred to the Kazan SPH. His subsequent fate is unknown.

DAMIR GATAULIN tried to escape by sea to Turkey. He was arrested. He was held in the 5th ward of the Dnipropetrovsk SPH.

GEORGE DAVID, b. 1945, a resident of Chișinău. He distributed leaflets calling for Moldova’s secession from the USSR and passed human rights materials to the West. He was arrested in January 1987 and committed to the 4th ward of the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He was released in the summer of 1990. He died in Chișinău in 1996.

VALENTIN DERBENEV, an officer in the GRU’s radio-electronic intelligence in the Far East. In 1970, he illegally fled to China. He was held for 9 years on closed military bases in the PRC. In 1979, he was unexpectedly extradited to the USSR. In 1980, he was executed by firing squad on charges of treason.

STEPAN DZHIKHARKHANYAN and KHACHATUR MURADYAN. On the evening of November 10, 1981, two 15-year-old youths climbed over the fence into the courtyard of the Belgian embassy in Moscow—Stepan Dzhikharkhanyan, the son of the famous actor Armen Dzhikarkhanyan, and Khachatur Muradyan, the son of a sculptor. They requested asylum. They stated that they did not want to lose their youth in the USSR and did not want to endure false Soviet propaganda. After 3 hours, the embassy staff escorted the young visitors out. The KGB and their parents were waiting for them at the embassy gates. After interrogation, the boys were released into their parents’ custody. After perestroika, Stepan Dzhikharkhanyan lived in the United States, where he was involved in the modeling business.

PAAT DZHUGELIA, b. 1968, a native and resident of Sukhumi. In protest against the Soviet regime and intending to hold a press conference in London, on December 24, 1990, he attempted to hijack a plane. During a flight from Moscow to Sochi, threatening with a dummy explosive device, he ordered the crew to change course and fly to London. The plane landed in Sochi, and special forces arrested Dzhugelia. He was sentenced to 7 years in the camps. His subsequent fate is unknown.

IVAN DOLGIY, a resident of Kyiv, a lawyer, worked in the Ministry of Trade. For an open letter to Brezhnev with harsh criticism of the regime and accusations against Brezhnev personally of fascism, he was arrested by the KGB and committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH in 1980. He was held in the 9th ward. He was released in 1985.

MIKHAIL DYUKAREV, b. 1954. In 1974, while serving his compulsory military service in the construction units of the border troops on the Soviet-Iranian border, he fled to Iran. He lived in the USA for 8 years. In 1982, he returned to the USSR. He was sentenced to 12 years in the camps for treason. In September 1984, he committed suicide in the work zone of camp VS-389/35 (Vsekhsvyatskaya station, Perm Oblast).

ZHIDKOV, a lecturer at Kazan University. In 1981, he successfully crossed the Romanian border, then entered Yugoslavia, but was captured in Belgrade and extradited to the USSR. He was held in the 5th ward of the Dnipropetrovsk SPH (attending physician: Igor Fomich Kuzenko). He was released in 1988.

VALERY ZAITSEV, a resident of Simferopol, b. 1953. In 1980, he illegally fled to Poland. He tried to meet with the leadership of “Solidarity.” He was arrested in Warsaw and extradited to the USSR. Until 1986, he was held in the 5th ward of the Dnipropetrovsk SPH (attending physician: Valentina Mikhailovna Konovskaya). He was released in December 1986. He lives in Simferopol and works as a welder.

VALERY ZAKS (b. 1956 in Dnipropetrovsk – d. summer 1980 in Dnipropetrovsk).

A Jewish refusenik. For an attempt to hijack a plane to fly out of the USSR, he was committed to a special psychiatric hospital, where he died.

For a long time, he sought to leave for Israel but was constantly refused by the Soviet authorities. He was fired from his job. Driven to desperation, he decided that the only realistic way to break free to the free world was to hijack a plane.

On October 15, 1978, at 3:10 p.m., an AN-24 with 42 passengers and 5 crew members took off from Simferopol Airport on a flight to Ternopil with a stopover in Odesa. Eleven minutes after takeoff, Valery Zaks opened fire with a Margolin pistol and, threatening with an explosive device, demanded that the crew fly to Turkey. The crew did not comply, and 9 minutes later, the plane made an emergency landing at the departure airport in Simferopol, where Zaks was neutralized.

The 22-year-old Zaks was declared insane and in 1979 was committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He was held in the 3rd ward (attending physician: Nelli Mikhailovna Butkevich).

In the summer of 1980, at a medical commission, when Valery asked when he would be released, the head of the medical unit told him that he would “croak in the special hospital.” After this, Valery Zaks fell into a depression and, finding no strength to live on, went out with a work team and committed suicide by throwing himself from the 4th floor into a pile of construction debris.

(Entry on the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group website in Ukrainian: https://museum.khpg.org/1365865619)

VIKTOR ZINOVIEV worked as a journalist on the radio. Wanting to emigrate to Australia, he met several times in Moscow with employees of the Australian embassy. He was seized by the KGB and thrown into the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He was held in the 3rd ward (attending physician: Nelli Mikhailovna Butkevich). His fate is unknown.

SERGEI NIKOLAYEVICH IZHITSKY, a resident of Donetsk, b. 1958. On July 21, 1985, he illegally crossed the border into China, where he lived for a year. Unable to leave the PRC for the West, he voluntarily returned to the USSR. He was arrested on July 6, 1986. On February 2, 1987, he was convicted of illegally crossing the border and sent to the SPH in Oryol. He escaped from the psychiatric hospital and was recaptured by the KGB. His parents also expressed a desire to emigrate to the FRG, for which they were committed to the Gannushkin Psychiatric Hospital in Moscow, but were released after two weeks. Sergei’s subsequent fate is unknown. His father, Nikolai Antonovich, and mother, Zoya Yefimovna, live in Donetsk.

ALEKSANDR MIKHAILOVICH KANAFIEV (b. May 26, 1953, in the village of Frunzenskoye, Alushta Raion, Crimea – d. March 8, 1995, in Simferopol).

A physical education specialist. He attempted to flee abroad. A victim of punitive psychiatry. An activist in the human rights movement in Crimea.

He graduated from high school in 1970. On August 17, 1970, on the recommendation of Minister of Defense A. Grechko, he volunteered for the Airborne Troops. He served in the Tula VDV Division 55599, military unit 33842. In the army, he was a member of the VDV sports team and performed for foreign guests. He was discharged on November 11, 1972.

In 1972, he entered the preparatory department of the Faculty of Physical Education at Simferopol University. He graduated from the university in 1977. He was invited to postgraduate studies. He worked as a therapeutic exercise instructor at the Ministry of Defense sanatorium “Krym” in the village of Frunzenskoye.

Disillusioned with Soviet reality, he decided to flee to Turkey. On May 13, 1978, he attempted to cross the Black Sea in an inflatable boat. He was at sea for 29 hours, but a strong storm washed the fugitive back to shore. He was arrested by border guards. On May 17, he was committed to the Crimean Regional Psychiatric Hospital (“Stroganovka”). He was released on June 30. On July 15, 1978, he moved to Odesa and got a job as a foundry worker at a factory, but the KGB did not leave him in peace, organizing surveillance and provocations.

On August 13, 1978, Kanafiev crossed the border into Romania, reached Bucharest in a few days, went to a synagogue, as he was Jewish, and together with the rabbi went to the Israeli embassy, but at the entrance to the embassy, he was arrested by the Securitate (Department of State Security of Romania). On August 17, he was handed over to the USSR.

On August 19, 1978, in handcuffs, Kanafiev escaped from the border detachment and reached Azerbaijan. On October 1, 1978, he was arrested by border guards on Cape Kurkos near Lankaran while attempting to escape to Iran in an inflatable boat. On February 22, 1979, he was committed to the Dnipropetrovsk Special Psychiatric Hospital. On January 7, 1982, he was transferred to the Simferopol general-type psychiatric hospital.

On July 23, 1982, Kanafiev escaped from the psychiatric hospital with the intention of reaching the Romanian border, but was arrested the same day in Krasnoperekopsk (removed from the Simferopol–Odesa train). On August 25, 1982, he was again committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. On October 25, 1984, he was transferred to the Simferopol general-type PH. He was released in October 1985.

On May 14, 1986, Kanafiev was baptized into the Orthodox faith.

On July 17, 1986, he again crossed the Romanian border, intending to get to France. When crossing the border, he left a portrait of the famous Soviet border guard Karatsupa on the border fence wire with the inscription: “To the Soviet border guards, with best wishes for success in their difficult and honorable service. Respectfully, Aleksandr Kanafiev.” He walked 20 km into Romanian territory and was captured by the Securitate. On August 18, he was extradited to the USSR. He was severely beaten in the border detachment. In the Odesa pre-trial detention center, he attempted suicide.

On October 5, 1986, he was again committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. The torturers in white coats told him he would be held for life. But perestroika began. On June 14, 1988, Kanafiev was transferred to the Simferopol PH, and on December 21, he was released.

He abandoned the idea of emigration and decided to fight the regime in his home country. He was an activist in the organizations “Good Will” and “People’s Front of Crimea.”

In Simferopol, on August 19, 1991, Kanafiev went out alone to demonstrate against the GKChP. He was arrested and severely beaten in the Central District Department of Internal Affairs of Simferopol. He was released on August 22, 1991.

Subsequently, Kanafiev was the leader of the public organization “Republican Movement of Crimea.” He fell ill with cancer. He died in Simferopol on March 8, 1995, at the age of not quite 42. Thousands of people attended his funeral service and burial; he was seen off on his final journey as a national hero.

(Entry on the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group website in Ukrainian: https://museum.khpg.org//1330588886)

ANATOLY KARYSHEV served a sentence in a criminal camp. He passed his memoirs about the life of prisoners in a Soviet criminal zone to the West. He even received a fee of 500 dollars. He was seized by the KGB and sent to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He was held in the 9th ward (attending physician: Oleg Vasilievich Novikov). His fate is unknown.

YEVGENY KASPRYUK in 1979 in Moscow, while on the move from a stolen car, scattered anti-Soviet leaflets. He was held in the 5th ward of the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He was released in 1986.

GIA KVACHADZE, from Georgia. He twice tried to escape to the West. The first time, he spent 5 years in the Kazan SPH. After the second attempt, he was committed to the 5th ward of the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. His fate is unknown.

YURI KEYSIN, a resident of Chișinău. In 1974, he deserted from the army and illegally fled to Romania. He was extradited to the USSR and committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH, where, according to unconfirmed reports, he died.

LEV KINDEYEV, from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. In 1971, he was arrested while trying to escape to Turkey in an inflatable boat across the Black Sea. In 1972, he was committed to the Kazan SPH. According to unconfirmed reports, he died in the Kazan special hospital in 1983.

VIKTOR KOVAL distributed leaflets in support of the Polish “Solidarity.” He was held in the 5th ward of the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. His fate is unknown.

VITALY KOZLOV, b. 1935, a Muscovite, a worker. In 1956, he was arrested by the KGB for anti-Soviet agitation and was committed to the Kazan SPH. After his release, he sought to leave for Argentina to join his relatives. After being refused by the Soviet authorities, in 1973, he broke into the Argentine embassy in Moscow and requested political asylum. After the diplomats refused to grant him asylum, he left the embassy and was arrested. He was committed to the SPH in Kazan. He developed a mental illness in the special hospital. His subsequent fate is unknown.

VLADIMIR KORZH, b. 1941, was arrested in 1962 for anti-Soviet propaganda and committed to the Leninakan psychiatric hospital (now Gyumri, Armenia). There he met Nikolai Krapivkin, who was also committed to the psychiatric hospital for anti-Soviet activities. The friends escaped from the psychiatric hospital and tried to cross the Turkish border. Korzh managed to break through to Turkey, but his friend N. Krapivkin was killed by border guards. V. Korzh lived in the West for several years, traveling around Europe, until he ended up in Stockholm, where he married a Swedish woman. They had two sons. In Sweden, Vladimir learned that his mother was seriously ill and returned to the USSR illegally. In 1968, he was arrested and committed to the Leningrad SPH. His mother died, but Korzh was not even allowed to say goodbye to her. He was released in 1971. V. Korzh decided to return to his family, but luck turned against him: he failed to cross the Norwegian border. He was seized by border guards and sent to the Sychevka SPH. He was released in September 1976. His subsequent fate is unknown.

BORIS KOSHELEV, b. 1940. In March 1971, while a sailor on a foreign-going vessel, he fled from a Soviet ship in Japan. The Japanese authorities extradited him to the USSR. He was ill with tuberculosis. The newspaper “Novoye Russkoye Slovo,” published in the USA, issued a sharp protest to the Japanese authorities. After his extradition, Koshelev died in Lefortovo Prison in Moscow.

VASILY PAVLOVICH KUBYSHKIN, b. 1920, a worker, a Muscovite. He was arrested in 1958 for distributing leaflets. He was committed to the Leningrad SPH. In 1962, he was released. In 1964, for anti-Soviet activities, he was again seized by the KGB and committed to the Kazan SPH. In 1965, he was transferred to the Chernyakhovsk SPH. In 1976, he was transferred to Psychiatric Hospital No. 5 in Moscow. His relatives disowned him. Due to the lack of guardians, he was not discharged from the psychiatric hospital. He died there in 1990. His relatives lived in Moscow at the address: Federativny Prospekt, bldg. 6, apt. 1, flat 9.

VLADIMIR KURANOV, b. 1947, from Gorky. He worked as an engraver in Simferopol. In 1970, he was arrested by the KGB for creating an underground youth organization. Until 1977, he was in the Dnipropetrovsk Special Psychiatric Hospital. At the request of his parents, in 1977, he was transferred to the Kazan SPH. In early 1979, he was discharged to the Gorky psychiatric hospital. His subsequent fate is unknown.

ALEKSANDR KUSIDIS, b. 1920, an ethnic Greek. He actively sought to leave for Greece. He was arrested and committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. In 1973, he was held in the 9th ward. In 1984, he was transferred to a general-type psychiatric hospital. Due to the lack of a guardian, he was not released. He died in the PH in 1991.

BORIS LESNOV. On Sunday, October 11, 1981, at 9:15 a.m., a car broke through onto the grounds of the American embassy in Moscow. The driver, a mechanical engineer from Ulyanovsk named Boris Lesnov, gave the American marines guarding the embassy a loaded rifle, with which, he said, he was going to shoot himself if he was denied asylum in the embassy. B. Lesnov was taken to the consular section of the embassy. He told the diplomats that he was 42 years old, from Ulyanovsk, and had spent 4 years in the Kazan Special Psychiatric Hospital for anti-Soviet agitation, where he had met the legendary terrorist who shot at Brezhnev, Anatoly Ilyin. After his release, he could not find a job anywhere. He went to Gorky, where he tried to meet with the disgraced academician Andrei Sakharov, but had to abandon the idea due to heavy KGB security. Driven to desperation, he decided on a daring break-in to the embassy. His negotiations in the consular section lasted 5 hours. The American diplomats explained to Lesnov that they could not help him, that only the Soviet authorities could grant permission to leave, and they could not let him stay at the embassy. Western correspondents arrived at the embassy. As he was leaving the embassy, Boris Lesnov managed to shout to them: “Now it’s all over for me, I’ll spend the rest of my life in a loony bin.” The KGB agents smashed the cameras of many journalists who were filming Lesnov’s arrest. Lesnov was committed to the SPH in Kazan, where, according to unconfirmed reports, he died.

GRIGORY LIVCHIKOV, b. 1954, a resident of Tula, Russia. After graduating from a technical school, he worked at the Tula Arms Plant. Not wanting to serve in the Soviet Army, he broke into the military enlistment office of the Proletarsky district of Tula, stole his personal file, and then set fire to the building, after which he fled. He went to Tyumen, where he managed to obtain forged documents. Livchikov went to Leningrad, where he got a job as a locksmith at a military factory. Working at a defense plant, he began to gather classified information. He even managed to steal secret documentation. In the summer of 1974, Grigory decided to flee to the West. He managed to get an automatic rifle. Near Vyborg, he tried to cross the Finnish border but was discovered by a border patrol. Livchikov started shooting back, and a firefight with the border guards lasted for almost 2 hours. He was wounded and captured. He was committed to the Leningrad SPH, where he was “treated” with electroshock therapy for 5 years. In 1979, he was transferred to the Tula regional psychiatric hospital (Petelino), where he was held in the 12th ward (head of the ward: Vladimir Vasilievich Vladytsky). He was released in 1981. While in confinement, he developed a mental illness. He was periodically committed to the Tula PH. He died of throat cancer in 1984.

VALERY LYANKU, from Moldova. A particularly dangerous repeat offender. He escaped from a criminal camp. He crossed the border into Romania. He was extradited to the USSR. He was committed to the 7th ward of the Dnipropetrovsk SPH.

VLADIMIR SERGEYEVICH MAKSIMOV, b. 1920, a resident of Leningrad. After graduating from high school in 1937, for criticizing the Stalinist regime, he was arrested and sentenced under Article 58 to 10 years in the camps. He was released in 1947. He created an underground organization, the “Union of Veterans of Soviet Concentration Camps.” A few months after his release, he was again seized by the KGB. He was sent for an examination at the Serbsky Institute, where he was diagnosed with “schizophrenia.” He was sent to the Kazan SPH. He was released in 1972. He was engaged in literary work and, under the pseudonym Maxim Sladky, wrote a series of witty stories: “Nina of Petrograd,” “Calm the Madmen,” “Maria Ivanovna,” and others. He tried to pass his works to the West and was again arrested by the KGB, sent to the Leningrad SPH, and in 1973 was transferred to the Sychevka SPH. His subsequent fate is unknown.

BORIS KARPOVICH MATROSOV, a retired Soviet Army officer, was arrested in the mid-70s for writing an anti-Soviet book. He was held in the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. A friend of Viktor Rafalsky and Vasyl Sery. He was released in 1979. He lives in Voronezh.

ELIM MAKHAEV, b. 1942, a Chechen, a resident of Grozny. He was the leader of the underground Caucasian United Renaissance Party. In 1969, he was seized by the KGB and committed to the Sychevka SPH. He was released in 1976. On November 9, 1978, intending to escape from the USSR, he tried to hijack a plane. He bought a ticket for the Grozny–Baku flight. Shortly after the AN-24 gained altitude, Makhaev followed the flight attendant, who was carrying tea to the pilots, burst into the cockpit, shot and wounded flight engineer Ryadchenko in the leg with a well-aimed shot, and demanded to change course to Turkey. A struggle ensued. The pilots managed to push Makhaev out of the cockpit. He fired several times at the armored cockpit door. The plane made an emergency landing in Makhachkala. A KGB capture group began to storm the plane. The daredevil fired back. Unwilling to surrender and go to a Soviet prison again, Elim Makhaev shot himself.

GRIGORY MELNIK, b. 1930, lived and worked in Baku. In 1961, he fled to Iran, from there he moved to the FRG. A year later, he decided to return. He illegally crossed the border into the GDR. The East German authorities extradited the fugitive to the USSR. He was committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He was held in the 9th ward (attending physician: Oleg Vasilievich Novikov). He was released in 1983. His subsequent fate is unknown.

VASILY NAZAROV. At 3 p.m. on August 29, 1981, Vasily Nazarov, 54, and his mother, Natalia Nazarova, 74, both residents of Solnechnogorsk, Moscow Oblast, drove into the American embassy compound. Western journalists and KGB agents gathered at the embassy. An employee of the consular section who came out to them stated that they had come to the embassy to publicize their labor dispute and were not going to request political asylum. At 6:30 p.m., the Nazarovs left the embassy. They were taken to the 11th police station. Natalia was released, but Vasily was arrested and sent to Butyrka Prison. He was later sentenced to 3 years in the camps. His subsequent fate is unknown.

VASILY NIKITENKOV. On March 16, 1971, Vasily Nikitenkov, 43, along with his family—his wife and two daughters, aged 5 and 9—tried to break into the US embassy. His wife and daughters were detained, but Nikitenkov himself, with the help of embassy staff, fought off the police and broke into the embassy. He told the diplomats that he wanted to emigrate to the USA. They explained the procedure related to emigration and gave him a written invitation to visit the embassy whenever he wished. Nikitenkov stayed at the embassy for 4 hours and left after the embassy filed an official protest with the Soviet authorities regarding the brutal detention of his family members. Nikitenkov and his wife were committed to a regional psychiatric hospital. In May 1971, he managed to smuggle an open letter from the psychiatric hospital to the West asking for protection. He was charged under Article 70 of the RSFSR Criminal Code and sent to the Serbsky Institute. From March 1972, he was in the Kazan SPH. In January 1975, he was transferred to a Moscow regional psychiatric hospital. He was released in May 1975. In 1979, in protest against the Soviet regime, he organized explosions in Moscow and the region. He was arrested on September 30, 1979, and committed to the Kazan SPH. While in the special hospital, he wrote and passed to the West a book with biographies of dissidents held in the Kazan SPH, “Voices from the Yellow Silence.” He was released in 1989. His subsequent fate is unknown. He lived in Klin, Moscow Oblast.

YURI NIKRETIN, b. 1959. From Nalchik. In 1981, he broke into the US embassy in Moscow. After leaving the embassy, he was arrested. He was committed to the Chernyakhovsk SPH. In February 1989, he was transferred to the Leningrad SPH. He developed a mental illness in confinement. In the summer of 1990, he was transferred to a psychiatric hospital in Nalchik. His subsequent fate is unknown.

SERGEI VSEVOLODOVICH PETROV (b. 1958, in Mariupol, Donetsk Oblast)

A serviceman. Fled to China.

Petrov served in the army in the Far East. Dissatisfied with the Soviet system, in 1978 he deserted from the army and fled to China. He lived in China for a year, underwent training at an intelligence school, and in 1979 was illegally sent by Chinese intelligence into the USSR. He did not have time to complete his mission—he was captured by the KGB. He was sentenced by a military tribunal of the Transbaikal Military District to 10 years in a strict-regime camp for treason. He served his sentence in the political camps of Mordovia. He was released in 1988. He lived in Mariupol and tried to have his case reviewed and be rehabilitated, but in vain. In May 1989, he went to Karelia, intending to illegally flee to Finland. To get money for the escape, he committed a daring robbery. He was caught while crossing the border. He was held in the pre-trial detention center in Segezha. He was sentenced by a court in Petrozavodsk to 15 years, including 5 years in prison. He was held at the address: 160600, Vologda, institution OE-256-st. 1. His subsequent fate is unknown.

(Entry on the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group website in Ukrainian: https://museum.khpg.org/1362645248)

YURI PETROV (after his release, he took his mother’s surname, Kartashevsky), b. 1959. He tried to hijack a plane and fly it to Sweden. On June 17, 1977, he bought a ticket for a Kaliningrad–Riga–Tallinn flight. There were 26 passengers on board the YAK-40. Threatening with a dummy explosive device, he demanded that the crew fly to Sweden. But the pilots landed the plane in Ventspils, where Petrov was arrested. He was sent to the Chernyakhovsk SPH. He was released in 1980. His subsequent fate is unknown.

PYOTR PETUKHOV, a resident of Bryansk, b. 1949. Dreaming of traveling the world, on the eve of his conscription into the army in 1968, he tried to cross the Turkish border near Batumi. But he was seized by border guards. During the investigation, he behaved bravely and defiantly, openly telling the KGB agents that he hated them and the bloody Soviet regime. He was declared insane and sent to the Sychevka Special Psychiatric Hospital. He was subjected to intensive “treatment” with haloperidol. In the SPH, he developed a mental illness. He died in the Sychevka special hospital from liver poisoning in 1976 at the age of 27.

ALEKSANDR POLEZHAEV, b. 1952, a native of Georgia. He served his compulsory military service in the Black Sea Fleet in a marine infantry unit. In 1973, while on a warship off the coast of Egypt, he deserted with an automatic rifle and tried to reach Israel on foot through Egyptian territory. Not far from the Israeli border, he was surrounded by Soviet servicemen and Egyptian border guards sent in pursuit. He engaged in battle, firing from his rifle for several hours, killing two and wounding several people. He was captured. At the Serbsky Institute, he was declared insane and, under the article “treason,” was sent to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He was there until 1976, was declared cured, stood before a military tribunal, and was shot.

ALEKSANDR PORDZHIYAN from Baku. He organized a party of young communists. He criticized the CPSU. He was arrested. He spent 10 years in the Kazan SPH, then was transferred to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH (attending physician: Nelli Mikhailovna Butkevich). He developed a mental illness in confinement. His fate is unknown.

ALEKSANDR RAVENSKY, b. 1965, was arrested in 1983 near Murmansk while attempting to cross the Finnish border. This was his third attempt. He was first detained by border guards in 1981 near Vyborg while crossing the Finnish border, and in 1982 in Sochi while trying to escape to Turkey in an inflatable boat. As a minor, he was handed over to his father’s supervision on both occasions. In 1984, he was sentenced to 2 years in the camps. He served his sentence in a camp in Karelia; a few days before his release in 1985, he was stabbed to death in the camp.

YURI REZNIKOV, a cadet at the Military Medical Academy in Leningrad. He wrote letters to Western radio stations and tried to meet with staff at the American consulate in Leningrad. He was seized by the KGB in 1981, accused of treason, and committed to the Kazan SPH. He was released in the late 80s. His fate was tragic: he developed a mental illness in confinement and, at home in Leningrad, killed his mother during a quarrel. He was again committed to the Leningrad SPH.

ILIE ROȘIANU, b. 1922. From the Izmail Raion, Odesa Oblast. A Christian monarchist. In 1969, he hung the flag of royal Romania on the building of the Izmail city committee of the Communist Party. He was committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. According to unconfirmed reports, he died there in the mid-70s.

VALENTIN RUSSU, from Chișinău. An engineer. He scattered leaflets in Chișinău and successfully fled to Romania. He was extradited to the USSR. He was committed to the 5th ward of the Dnipropetrovsk SPH (attending physician: Valentina Mikhailovna Konovskaya). He was released in 1987.

VLADIMIR FYODOROVICH RYBAK, b. 1938, together with his son VASILY, b. 1963, intended to hijack a plane to Turkey on December 17, 1982. They were arrested. Both were residents of the Yevpatoria district of Crimea. They were committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH, and in 1987 were transferred to the PH in Khmelnytskyi. They were released in 1988. After their release, they lived in Crimea. Their subsequent fates are unknown.

ALEKSEY VITALIEVICH SAFRONOV (b. January 13, 1952, in Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia Oblast)

A serviceman. Convicted for an attempt to cross the border between the GDR and FRG.

Born into a military family. In 1969, he graduated from high school in Yevpatoria. In May 1970, he was drafted into the army. He served in the GDR. In the autumn of 1970, the special department of his unit found forbidden literature in his possession: Mikhail Bulgakov’s “Heart of a Dog,” Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov’s “The Technology of Power,” and Milovan Djilas’s “The New Class.”

Fearing arrest, Safronov and a friend decided to flee to the West. In the town of Grimma near Leipzig, they seized a car and headed towards the FRG border on the autobahn. On November 25, 1970, near the Bavarian town of Hof, they were discovered by East German border guards. The daredevils decided to engage them in battle. As a result of the shootout, Stasi agent Klaus Böhme was seriously wounded. Safronov’s friend, Sergei Anatolievich Kolmakov (b. 1951, from Novomoskovsk, Tula Oblast), unwilling to be taken prisoner, shot himself.

By a military tribunal in Potsdam, under Articles 64 and 70 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, Safronov was sentenced to 12 years of imprisonment in a strict-regime camp.

He was held in zones ZhKh-385/17 in Mordovia, in VS-389/36 (Perm Oblast), for 3 years in Vladimir Prison, in the BUR of the 37th zone, and in the 35th zone of the Perm Oblast. He was released on November 24, 1982.

He worked in Yevpatoria as an inlay artist at a furniture factory. In 1983, he married. He graduated by correspondence from the Kharkiv National Automobile and Highway University. He worked as a foreman. He currently lives in Yevpatoria. He is a pensioner.

(Entry on the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group website in Ukrainian: https://museum.khpg.org/1362647190)

MIKHAIL SVENSER, a Jewish refusenik, a Hebrew teacher. He was arrested in 1984 and committed to the Dnipropetrovsk Special Psychiatric Hospital. He was held in the 5th ward (attending physician: Valentina Mikhailovna Konovskaya). His fate is unknown.

PYOTR SENENKO, a resident of Kerch, a music school teacher. He was arrested in 1979 for distributing leaflets criticizing Brezhnev. He was committed to the 9th ward of the Dnipropetrovsk SPH (attending physician: Oleg Vasilievich Novikov). In 1985, he was transferred to the Simferopol PH. He was released in 1986. His subsequent fate is unknown.

SERGEI SETSKO, b. 1943, a resident of Gomel, Belarus. A peculiar record-holder for the number of illegal border crossings, for which he spent almost 17 years in the camps. In the summer of 1973, he successfully swam across the Danube near Izmail and fled to Romania, but was detained by the Romanian authorities and handed over to the USSR. He was held in the Odesa pre-trial detention center, and the investigation was conducted by the Odesa regional KGB directorate. He received 3 years in a camp. In 1976, after his release, he successfully fled to Romania, then crossed the Bulgarian border, and finally, he managed to cross the Bulgarian-Turkish border. Setsko lived in Turkey for 6 months, but was unexpectedly arrested by the Turkish special services as a Soviet spy and extradited to the USSR. After his release in 1983, he crossed the Romanian border but was detained and sent back. Prison again. In the summer of 1991, he was arrested near Batumi while trying to go to Turkey. Setsko crossed the border for the fifth time on October 22, 1995, entering Romanian territory. But times had changed: the special services officers met him as an old acquaintance and, after consulting, let him go in peace.

YURI IVANOVICH SILENKO and VLADIMIR VIKTOROVICH ROMAN.

THE ATTEMPTED MOST DARING SEA ESCAPE FROM THE USSR AT THE TWILIGHT OF THE SOVIET EMPIRE (Based on materials from the KGB border troops).

Both residents of Nevinnomyssk, Stavropol Krai.

Vladimir Roman served in the army near Moscow, but dissatisfied with the Soviet regime and dreaming of escaping to the West, in the summer of 1989 he deserted from his unit and illegally arrived in Nevinnomyssk to see his friend Yuri Silenko. They had been friends since childhood and attended a radio club together. Yuri Silenko was a Master of Sports in shortwave radio communication. He was critical of the Soviet system and had written a book criticizing the regime, which he dreamed of publishing in the West. Together, they decided to escape across the Black Sea to Turkey.

To carry out their daring plan, in August 1989 the friends went to the sea in Tuapse. They were emboldened by the fact that just before their attempt, two people from Yalta had successfully reached the Turkish city of Samsun in an inflatable rowboat in 5 days (this escape was repeatedly reported by Western radio stations). Arriving in Tuapse, the friends rented an apartment and spotted a high-speed boat at the pier of the “Azot” resort. For three days, they observed the coast and the border guards, studying the border security system. They bought an additional 3 spare cans of gasoline to ensure they would make it to Turkey.

On the night of August 16–17, 1989, they decided it was time to act. They sat in a video salon until two in the morning, then headed to the pier. They unnoticedly entered the base and, without starting the engine, pulled the boat away from the shallows. Then they moved along the coast at low speed. Suddenly, the boat was caught in the beam of a border searchlight, but they moved the boat behind the nearest pier and the border guards did not notice the fugitives. They went ashore, paid the landlady of the apartment, and brought the 3 cans of gasoline. After refueling the boat, at 6:30 a.m. on August 17, 1989, the daredevils went out into the open sea. A border radar operator noticed the boat speeding across the sea but thought it was the previous day’s fishermen whose engine had broken down, and they had been stationary all night and were now returning to base. The fugitives were lucky: the boat’s disappearance was only discovered at 11 a.m., when the fugitives had already been racing towards freedom for 4 hours.

Meanwhile, the border boats of the Transcaucasian Border District were put on alert. The ships rushed to the interception line. All hope was on a high-speed patrol boat commanded by Captain 3rd Rank A. Markov, but it unexpectedly broke down at sea. The search for the fugitives was led by the head of the operational group of the district troops, Captain 1st Rank Yevgeny Kvashin. Captain 2nd Rank Aleksandr Kaygorodov, who joined the operational group, correctly calculated the search area for the violators based on the type of boat and engine power. The Transcaucasian Border District was considered a “high-tension area” among border guards. It was on this section of the Soviet empire that the most attempts were made to break out of the USSR to the West. Kaygorodov was an experienced border guard. He had detained fugitives who jumped from cruise ships to reach Turkey in inflatable boats; participated in the detention of a certain Master of Sports in swimming who risked swimming to Turkey in a 5-point storm; and caught a fugitive who spent several days at sea on an inflatable mattress.

Major General Konstantin Pleshko urgently arrived at the headquarters and took command of the operation to capture the fugitives. Since the boats could not intercept the defectors in time, the decision was made to deploy aircraft. The crew of an AN-26 plane, commanded by Captain Sergei Vasilyansky, at 1:40 p.m., spotted the boat with the fugitives, moving towards Turkey at a speed of 60 km/h. The plane was flying at its maximum altitude. At first, the pilots mistook the target for a pod of dolphins, but after descending lower, they identified an “Amur” type boat, with bort number 2752 and two people on board. The fugitives in the boat ignored all the crew’s demands to stop and continued to move. At headquarters, they realized they were dealing with brazen violators. They were “burning their bridges,” as they say, “leaving no ashes.” It was necessary to use weapons, but there were none on board the plane. It was decided to send up a helicopter and try to create interference for the boat with the force of its rotors. The helicopter crew, commanded by Captain Sergei Poletaev, hovered over the boat, and the AN-26 returned to base as its fuel was running out. They started firing signal flares, but the fugitives stubbornly moved forward. At headquarters, they became nervous: the violators’ boat was rapidly approaching Turkish territorial waters. The decision was made to open fire. (The last time border guards had shot at a boat with fugitives breaking through to Turkey was in 1977).

After a warning shot across its course, the boat’s engine was shut down. As soon as the helicopter turned towards the shore, the boat sped forward again. Another shot across its course—and the boat stopped. Now the helicopter hovered over the fugitives like a hawk over its prey, waiting for the patrol boat (PSKR). The patrol boat was already on the horizon, and the desperate daredevils once again sped across the water. The tension reached its peak. Silenko and Roman were breaking through recklessly.

The fuel in the helicopter’s tanks was running low. The military council of the border district decided to open fire to kill. Senior Lieutenant Ilatovsky fired a sniper’s burst at the boat. The burst hit the engine. The boat caught fire. The fugitives began to throw some items overboard (a manuscript of an anti-Soviet book). Then, putting on life jackets, they jumped overboard from the burning boat. At 3:30 p.m., the boat commanded by Lieutenant-Captain V. S. Kositsyn approached the violators. At 3:32 p.m., the fugitives were brought on board. Roman stated that he hated the USSR and that they were heading to Turkey.

At 9:30 p.m., the fugitives were brought to the base. Both were sent for examination to the Serbsky Institute. They were declared sane. In March 1990, a court sentenced Roman for desertion, illegal border crossing, and theft of property on a large scale (hijacking the boat) to 12 years in the camps. Silenko was sentenced to 11 years of imprisonment. Unfortunately, their subsequent fate is unknown to us.

ALEKSANDR SKACHINSKY, b. 1950, from Gagra, Georgia. In January 1982, he attempted to cross the Black Sea in an inflatable boat and escape to Turkey. He went missing. He most likely died in the cold, stormy sea.

ALEKSANDR SOBOLEV, a retired general. He tried to claim a huge inheritance from relatives who had died in France, but the Soviet authorities denied him the inheritance. Outraged by the authorities’ actions, he renounced his Soviet citizenship and began to seek to leave the USSR. In 1975, he was arrested by the KGB and committed to the 9th ward of the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He was given a spinal tap, after which his legs were paralyzed, and he died in terrible agony. His relatives, under pressure from the KGB, disowned him.

IGOR SOKOLOV, a resident of Irkutsk. A Master of Sports in skiing, first-class in boxing. He prepared for several years for an escape to China. He trained intensively and could freely walk 60 km with a 50 kg backpack. He secretly infiltrated closed military facilities and photographed them. He gathered a mass of classified information that he intended to pass to Chinese intelligence. He managed to steal secret blueprints for an aircraft engine. Possessing a phenomenal memory, he memorized a five-volume collection of Mao Zedong’s sayings. At the moment of crossing the border, he was captured and, in 1981, committed to the SPH in Kazan. He died in the special hospital.

OLEG ALEKSEEVICH SOFYANIK (b. May 4, 1964, in Sevastopol).

A dissident. For refusing to serve in the army and renouncing his USSR citizenship, he was subjected to punitive psychiatry. An athlete-swimmer.

In 1977, while in the 7th grade of school No. 41 in Sevastopol, he began writing letters to the radio station “Deutsche Welle” and sending postcards with calls to fight against the existing system to addresses taken from a telephone directory. On October 13, 1977, he was detained by the KGB. Given his minority, he was given a prophylactic talk.

In 1979, Sofianyk and his friends created an underground group, the “Committee of Fighters for Freedom.” They distributed leaflets with calls for revolution. They ended with the slogans: “Down with the bloody tsardom of Brezhnev and Co.! Long live the revolution!”

On March 14, 1979, he was arrested by the KGB along with his friend Igor Sharts. He spent three days in a pretrial detention cell (KPZ). A psychiatric examination found him sane, but since he was not yet 16, he was released into his parents’ custody.

In 1981, he graduated from school and worked at a factory for a year. In 1982, he entered the Sevastopol Instrument-Making Institute. On October 15, he was detained by the KGB in Moscow while meeting with an employee of the US embassy, to whom he wanted to tell his story and ask for help to leave the USSR. After interrogation, he was expelled from Moscow.

Twice—in July and November 1983—Sofianyk was called up for military service. He fled from the Simferopol assembly point. In December 1983, he was called up for the third time. He began his service in a construction battalion in Tula. On January 12, 1984, he publicly refused to serve for political reasons and on the same day was committed to the 12th ward of the Tula Regional Psychiatric Hospital. On February 8, a medical commission diagnosed him with “sluggish schizophrenia.” He was released in July 1984.

In 1985, Sofianyk was reinstated as a 2nd-year student at the institute. But life in the USSR was unbearable for him. In October 1985, he bought a ticket for the cruise ship “Moldavia” from Odesa to Batumi. He had an inflatable boat with him. On the night of October 24, between Sukhumi and Batumi, he jumped overboard with the intention of swimming to Turkey. The crew of a Yugoslavian ship heading to Novorossiysk wanted to pick him up. He refused. On the third day, he was detained by a patrol boat. He was held in the “Dranda” pre-trial detention center near Sukhumi and was transferred to Crimea. He was charged under Article 75 of the Ukrainian SSR Criminal Code, “Illegal exit abroad.” When asked by the KGB agents why he chose such a risky method of escape, he replied that it was better to die at sea than to live in the Soviet Union. In December 1985, he was committed for compulsory treatment to a general-type psychiatric hospital in Sevastopol. He was released in February 1987.

In October 1987, he was detained while trying to enter the French embassy in Moscow, where he intended to request political asylum. He was released on December 27, 1987.

In March 1988, he sent a statement to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR renouncing his Soviet citizenship for political reasons. On March 20, he was again forcibly committed to a general-type psychiatric hospital in Sevastopol. He was released in September 1988.

In October 1988, he joined the public organization “Freedom of Emigration for All” and collaborated with the newspaper “Ekspress-Khronika” of Aleksandr Podrabinek. In August 1989, he joined the “Democratic Union” party of Valeria Novodvorskaya and headed its Sevastopol organization. He has collected hundreds of stories about escapes from the USSR, which he intends to publish as a book.

He works as a security guard in Sevastopol. He is the president of the informal group “Association of Former Political Prisoners.” He is an athlete involved in marathon swimming and the president of the “Dolphin” marathon swimming club.

Bibliography:

KhHRG Archive: manuscript of O. Sofianyk’s autobiography.

“The Champion Was an Entrepreneur, the Prizewinner—a Former Dissident.” // Panorama Sevastopolya, No. 38, 2002. – September 19.

Yuri Paramonov. “To Turkey on an Inflatable Boat. The History of Escapes from the Soviet Union Across the Black Sea.” // Panorama Sevastopolya, No. 45 (110), 2002. – November 13.

“The Lone Swimmer. Sevastopol Resident Oleg Sofianyk Plans to Swim Across the Kerch Strait and Then the Black Sea.” – Krymskoe Vremya, No. 136 (1980), 2004. – July 28.

International Biographical Dictionary of Dissidents in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former USSR. Vol. 1. Ukraine. Part 1. – Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; “Prava Lyudyny.” – 2006. – pp. 740-741. On the KhHRG website: https://museum.khpg.org/1184517256 from June 26, 2006.

Natalia Akimova. “Oleg Sofianyk—A Swimmer with a Dissident’s Record.” // Pervaya Krymskaya, No. 204. – 2007. – December 14-20: http://1k.com.ua/204/details/2/1

The Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960–1990. An Encyclopedic Guide / Foreword by Osyp Zinkevych, Oles Obertas. – Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010. – pp. 619-620; 2nd ed., 2012. – pp. 702-703.

Vasyl Sadovsky. “On the Waves of Protest. Marathoner-Dissident Sofianyk Swam Across Sevastopol Bay in Support of the ‘Rise Up, Ukraine!’ Rally.” // Ukrayina Moloda, No. 58 (4498), 2013. – April 17.

“A Record Is Set! Oleg Sofianyk Swam Across the Black Sea”: September 5, 2011: http://meridian.in.ua/news/6648.html

“Marathon Swimmer from Sevastopol Oleg Sofianyk and His Partner from Moscow Swam Across the Red Sea in Five Days”: May 27, 2013: http://fakty.ua/164065-marafonec-iz-sevastopolya-oleg-sofyanik-s-naparnikom-iz-moskvy-za-pyat-dnej-pereplyli-krasnoe-more

Wikipedia: http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki

Vasyl Ovsienko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. Compiled June 20, 2006, based on materials from O. Sofianyk. Last read August 29, 2006, June 6, 2013.

(Entry on the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group website in Ukrainian: https://museum.khpg.org/1184517256)

YAROSLAV STOLYAR, b. 1953, was arrested while serving in the army on charges of espionage. He was committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. After his release, he was arrested twice on criminal charges. A poet. He resides in Horlivka, Donetsk Oblast. He practices folk healing.

PYOTR SEMYONOVICH STOYANOV, b. 1928. In 1962, he was arrested under Article 62 of the Ukrainian SSR Criminal Code. He was in political camps. In the 70s, for an attempt to cross the border, he was committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He currently lives in Odesa and serves as a priest.

LEONID MIKHAILOVICH SUVOROV, b. 1930, a resident of Dnipropetrovsk. A long-distance captain of the Black Sea Shipping Company. An athlete of athletic build. In 1977, he was arrested for possession of anti-Soviet literature and a manuscript of his own anti-Soviet book; he was charged under Article 187-1 of the Ukrainian SSR Criminal Code. He spent 11 years in the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. They did not want to discharge him due to the lack of a guardian. On February 27, 1989, at the demand of American psychiatrists, he was hastily released. He became partially blind in confinement. He lived in poverty in a dilapidated house on the outskirts of Dnipropetrovsk.

STANISLAV GRIGORIEVICH SUDAKOV (b. February 9, 1945, in Dnipropetrovsk – d. October 22, 1992, in Dnipropetrovsk)

He tried to break out of the USSR. A victim of punitive psychiatry.

On August 19, 1974, Sudakov and his family broke into the US embassy in Moscow but were denied political asylum by American diplomats. Upon leaving the embassy, he was arrested. During his detention, he resisted and was charged with “hooliganism” (Article 206, Part 2 of the RSFSR Criminal Code). Until 1979, he was held in the Dnipropetrovsk Special Psychiatric Hospital, then was transferred to the Tashkent SPH, and later to the SPH in Taldy-Kurgan (Kazakhstan). In 1982, he was sent to the psychiatric hospital in Iren, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, where he was held in the 9th high-security ward. In 1984, he escaped and hid for a year with his sister in Tallinn (Estonia). In 1985, he was captured by the KGB in a restaurant in Tallinn. He was held in the Leningrad SPH. In March 1989, he was examined by American psychiatrists. In 1990, he was transferred to the Dnipropetrovsk regional psychiatric hospital. In late 1990, he was released. In confinement, he was pumped full of large doses of neuroleptics and beaten. There he contracted tuberculosis and lost a great deal of weight.

Sudakov’s adopted son, Vadim, b. 1966, was convicted on fabricated criminal charges. His son, Yaroslav, b. 1974, was held in an orphanage.

Shortly after his release, Sudakov was placed in a regional tuberculosis dispensary. He died there at the age of 47.

(Entry on the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group website in Ukrainian https://museum.khpg.org/1362645982)

ALEKSANDR SUKHANOV, b. 1966. Originally from Ukraine. He served in the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. He deserted, entered the US embassy in Kabul, and requested asylum. He spent a week at the embassy. After the Soviet authorities assured American diplomats that Sukhanov would not be repressed, on November 4, 1985, he left the embassy. He was immediately arrested and soon shot.

ANATOLY UVAROV, from Novosibirsk, a mathematician, a research fellow at the Novosibirsk branch of the Academy of Sciences. In 1976, he broke into the Swedish embassy in Moscow and requested political asylum. Upon leaving the embassy, he was arrested and committed to the SPH in Kazan. His subsequent fate is unknown.

BORIS IVANOVICH URYADOV, b. 1923, an engineer from Volgograd. He was arrested in 1969 in the Odesa port while trying to escape from the USSR: he hid in the cargo hold of a foreign ship. He was committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. In 1971, Lieutenant Colonel Prus appointed him as a foreman, and under his leadership, several buildings of the SPH were constructed. Prus kept Uryadov on a very mild, liberal regime and even shook his hand. He was released in 1974.

VLADIMIR GENNADIEVICH USHAKOV and his wife N. G. USHAKOVA, collective farmers from the “1st of May” kolkhoz in the village of Voloshcha, Drohobych Raion, Lviv Oblast, twice broke into the American embassy compound in Moscow by car. They gave American diplomats documents about a labor dispute with the management of the enterprise where they worked and asked for help to leave the USSR. The first time they broke into the embassy was on September 29, 1981. When they were leaving the embassy in their car, they were detained by the KGB, but were then released. The second time they broke into the embassy by car was on March 2, 1982. This time they were arrested. Ushakov’s wife was released, but he was accused of attempting on the life of a sentry at the embassy gates, under Article 191, Part 2 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, although the sentry was not even touched by the car. The investigation was conducted by investigator Tikhomirov of the Krasnopresnenskaya district prosecutor’s office in Moscow. The trial took place on November 2, 1982, and the sentence was 3 years in a general-regime camp. The Ushakovs had two children. Unfortunately, the subsequent fate of the Ushakovs is unknown.

EDUARDO GUERRA JIMÉNEZ, b. 1942, a Cuban, a senior lieutenant in the Cuban Air Force, on October 5, 1969, while on a training flight in a MiG-17, hijacked the plane to the USA. The plane, with a full armament on board, was not detected by American air defense radars and landed safely at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. The most incredible thing about this situation was that when Jiménez landed his MiG-17, the plane of US President Richard Nixon landed almost simultaneously. When Jiménez left his plane, Nixon was descending the ramp of the presidential liner surrounded by security. The desperate defector and the US President literally came face to face. However, they did not get to talk: Jiménez was immediately seized by American special services agents. Subsequently, there was a big scandal in the American media, and generals of the Air Force and Air Defense who had missed a Cuban military plane with a full combat load arriving unhindered in the USA were removed from their posts.

Jiménez requested political asylum in the USA and stated that he hated Castro’s communist regime. Eduardo Jiménez wanted to continue his flying career in America, but his dreams of the sky were not to be. No airline wanted to hire the ex-hijacker as a pilot. Jiménez worked as a jeweler’s apprentice, in a factory, as a dishwasher. At first, he lived in Miami, then moved to New York. In 1971, he was first arrested by the police in Manhattan while trying to sell marijuana to a taxi driver. However, he was not imprisoned but was only warned and released. Unable to find a permanent job and wandering, in 1975 Jiménez committed an armed robbery in New York and fled to Florida. He was arrested and sent back to New York under convoy. At his trial, he stated that he was disillusioned with life in the USA and wanted to return to Cuba. The court sentenced Eduardo to 5 years probation. While on probation, he stole a car and hit a police officer while fleeing from a chase. He was arrested and spent 2 years in prison. At his trial, Eduardo Jiménez once again stated that his life in the USA had become meaningless, he could not find a job, and most importantly, had no opportunity to fly.

After getting out of prison and still unable to find work, Jiménez became completely disillusioned with America. On June 12, 1979, he boarded a plane flying from New York to Miami. There were 194 passengers on board. Jiménez went to the cockpit and stated that he had explosives in his backpack. He ordered the crew to change course and fly to Havana. He remained in the cockpit for the entire flight, was very nervous, and when the plane landed in Havana, he shouted his apologies to the passengers. The Cuban authorities immediately arrested the 37-year-old hijacker. A court in Havana sentenced him to 20 years in prison. Unfortunately, the subsequent fate of Eduardo Jiménez is unknown to us.

NIKOLAI ANDREYEVICH CHERKOV, b. 1935. He graduated from a physical culture technical school. He lived and worked as a physical education teacher in a high school in Yalta. He was critical of the Soviet regime. He decided to flee to the West. On the night of September 3-4, 1966, in Tuapse, he swam to the ship “Polaris,” which was anchored offshore, and climbed aboard via the stern ladder. Cherkov asked the officer on duty to grant him asylum on the ship and help him leave the USSR. The officer took him to a cabin and locked him in. In the morning, the ship’s captain called the border guards and handed Cherkov over to the Soviet border guard service. Nikolai Cherkov was sentenced to 2 years in a general-regime camp for illegally crossing the border. In the camp, he came to God and became a believer, an Evangelical Christian-Baptist. After his release, he worked as a janitor in Smolensk. He actively preached and distributed religious literature. In 1980, he renounced his Soviet citizenship. He was arrested in 1982 and, for distributing religious literature, was sentenced in September of that year to 3 years in a strict-regime camp. His subsequent fate is unknown.

GENNADY CHERPAKOV. In 1971, he tried to escape to Turkey by sea. He was committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH, where he spent 10 years.

MUSA SHAVKETOV, from Turkmenistan. He fled to Iran in 1978, was extradited to the USSR, and committed to the 3rd ward of the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. His fate is unknown.

NIKOLAI SHVACHKO (b. 1949, in Kharkiv – d. March 1985, in Kharkiv).

A defector from the USSR, a victim of punitive psychiatry.

He became critical of the Soviet regime as a teenager. In 1963, at the age of 14, he tried to break into the French embassy in Moscow but was detained. In 1965, he decided to cross the border illegally. He went to Georgia, to Batumi, but seeing how carefully the border was guarded and that it was practically impassable, he abandoned his plan and returned home.

He came to the conclusion that the only possible way to escape from the USSR was to hijack a plane. To achieve this goal, Shvachko decided to obtain a weapon. In the summer of 1966, he single-handedly attacked a factory guard, killed him, and seized his service pistol. That same summer, Shvachko and a friend went to Georgia again to carry out their daring plan. On August 3, 1966, they bought tickets for the Poti–Batumi flight. In the air, threatening the crew of an AN-2 with a weapon, the daredevils demanded to fly to Turkey. But the pilots refused to comply and fought with the hijackers. The plane landed in Batumi. Shvachko and his friend were arrested. During the investigation, Shvachko told the KGB agents that he hated the criminal regime and that at the trial, he would expose the communist system and its rulers. The investigator said that if he confessed to committing the crime for criminal motives, he would go to prison, but if he insisted that he was a dissident, it would be a special psychiatric hospital for life. Shvachko refused such a deal, was declared insane, and sent to the brutal Dnipropetrovsk SPH, where he spent 9 years.

After his release in 1975, Shvachko moved to live with relatives in Kazan. He worked at a factory, got married, but his family life did not work out. After his divorce, he returned to Kharkiv and lived with his parents. He was a good friend of the dissident Aleksandr Shatravka. Together they went on seasonal work trips to Tyumen several times. Shvachko remained under KGB surveillance. On public holidays, he was periodically committed to psychiatric hospitals.

In late 1984, Shvachko was summoned to the Kharkiv KGB directorate and asked to testify against the imprisoned A. Shatravka. But Shvachko refused to testify against his friend. He was sent directly from the KGB building to the Kharkiv regional psychiatric hospital. There he was severely beaten by orderlies and injected with neuroleptics. Shvachko was released in March 1985. He was in a depressed state. Crushed by Soviet reality, with neither the strength nor the will to live, in March 1985, he committed suicide by throwing himself under an electric train.

(Entry on the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group website in Ukrainian: https://museum.khpg.org/1363199232),

LYUBOV SHTEYN, b. 1949. In 1971, she tried to escape to the West. She was arrested in Czechoslovakia and extradited to the USSR. She was held in the Kazan SPH, then was transferred to the SPH in Talgar. She developed a mental illness in confinement. In 1989, she was transferred to the Psychoneurological boarding school in the village of Kurygino, Kirov Oblast. Her subsequent fate is unknown.

PYOTR DMITRIEVICH YAKIMENKO, b. 1960, a resident of Ashgabat. He worked as a laboratory assistant at the Institute of Botany of the Academy of Sciences of the Turkmen SSR. Intending to flee to the West, he decided to hijack a plane to Turkey. The 23-year-old Yakimenko flew from Ashgabat to Yerevan on a scheduled TU-154 plane on January 25, 1983. Arriving in the capital of Armenia, Yakimenko bought a ticket at the city airport ticket office for the flight E-81 of the local Aeroflot line to the district center of the border Shamshadin district, the village of Berd, scheduled for the same day. There were 5 passengers on board the YAK-40. Yakimenko had a homemade explosive device with him, which he had attached to his body under his clothes. It was not discovered during the pre-boarding inspection. After takeoff, Pyotr, through a flight attendant, passed an order to the crew to change course and fly to Turkey. But the plane landed in Leninakan. When special forces began to storm the hijacked plane, the daredevil, not wanting to surrender to the KGB alive, tried to activate the explosive device, but it failed to detonate. After his arrest, he was accused of treason, declared insane, and sent in June 1983 to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He was placed in the 10th ward. In December 1988, he was transferred to a general-type PH in Ashgabat. In the summer of 1989, he was released. He lived in Ashgabat with his father. His subsequent fate is unknown.

IOSIF YAROSH, a resident of Sochi, was in the Dnipropetrovsk SPH for sending congratulatory postcards to academician Sakharov. His fate is unknown.

YEVGENY MIKHAILOVICH YASTREBTSOV, b. 1948, a worker. He escaped from prison, where he was held on a criminal charge. In the summer of 1981, he came to Crimea and, on an inflatable mattress near Sevastopol, tried to swim to Turkey. He was caught in neutral waters. He was committed to the Dnipropetrovsk SPH. He was there until the summer of 1986 and was transferred to the Kemerovo PH. On July 5, 1987, he was released. He lived in Novokuznetsk.

LIST OF DOCTORS of institution YaE 308 RB, Dnipropetrovsk (SPH), compiled by political prisoner ALEKSANDR KANAFIEV (1953–1995), who was held in the Dnipropetrovsk SPH three times, with short breaks, from 1979 to 1988.

OLEG VASILIEVICH NOVIKOV – head of the medical unit

IGOR FOMIC KUZENKO – head of the 5th ward

VALENTINA MIKHAILOVNA KONOVSKAYA – attending physician

YURI MIKHAILOVICH DYAGTEREV – attending physician

VYACHESLAV FYODOROVICH VINOGRADOV – head of the 6th ward

ANATOLY IVANOVICH IVANOV – head of the 4th ward

LYUDMILA ALEKSEEVNA LYUBARSKAYA – doctor, party organizer, distinguished by particular cruelty and sadism towards prisoners

NINA ALEKSEEVNA FYODOROVA – doctor

TAISIYA MARKOVNA YEREVANTSEVA – doctor

LEONID PAVLOVICH KOKHAN – doctor

ALEKSEY ANDREYEVICH GAVRILOV – party organizer, showed particular cruelty to prisoners

NELLI MIKHAILOVNA BUTKEVICH – head of the 5th ward, distinguished by particular cruelty to political prisoners

ANATOLY IVANOVICH BELOV – head of the 2nd ward

YURI IVANOVICH KLEPIKOV – head of the hospital

NIKOLAI IVANOVICH ZHURAVLEV – head of the regime