Kuzyukin, Volodymyr Ivanovych

VOLODYMYR IVANOVYCH KUZYUKIN (b. August 5, 1931, in Ramza, Tver Oblast, Russia – d. February 27, 1997, in Bila Tserkva, Kyiv Oblast).
Military communications officer, captain. Wrote several leaflets criticizing the policies of the CPSU.
From a working-class family. In 1951, he graduated from secondary school, and in 1954, from the Ulyanovsk Military Communications School, specializing in the operation and repair of radio equipment. From 1954, he served in the communications troops in the German Democratic Republic, from 1959 in Turkmenistan, from 1964 again in the GDR, and from 1970 in Bila Tserkva, Kyiv region, where he was the assistant chief of communications for military unit No. 1599, holding the rank of captain.
On October 27, 1972, he was arrested by the special department of the Kyiv Military District on charges of conducting “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” (Article 62, Part 1 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR).
The immediate cause of his arrest may have been a denunciation by the owner of the apartment where the Kuzyukin family was living at the time. He had spoken about the 1968 events in Czechoslovakia and showed Czech newspapers in which the Soviet Army was called an occupying force. During a search of Kuzyukin’s home, diary entries were seized and deemed slanderous and anti-Soviet. He was also accused of systematically (since 1964) listening to Western radio stations, under the influence of which he allegedly conducted anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda within the group of Soviet forces in Germany starting in 1969, and produced, stored, and distributed leaflets with slander against Soviet reality.
For instance, in the summer of 1969, Kuzyukin wrote four leaflets. During his vacation on July 23, he left one leaflet on a bookstore counter in Saratov, dropped another into a mailbox, and “distributed” two more in Brest, leaving one on a book kiosk counter and dropping the other into a mailbox. All four leaflets were dutifully brought to the KGB by conscientious employees of Soviet institutions.
In March 1972, in his office in Bila Tserkva, Kuzyukin typed four more leaflets using carbon paper. At the end of March, he left one of them near the entrance to the newspaper office of “Leninskyi Shliakh” (Lenin’s Path), and threw another near the Officers’ House. On April 22, he left two leaflets on the sports ground of his military unit. They were found by soldiers, who read them and handed them over to the “appropriate authorities.”
During the investigation, Kuzyukin was beaten and threatened with the imprisonment of his wife, so he confessed to producing and distributing the leaflets. However, he insisted that he had not intended to undermine the Soviet state and social order, but only wanted to draw the attention of the authorities to certain shortcomings in order to correct them.
On April 6, 1973, the military tribunal of the Kyiv Military District, in a closed session, sentenced Kuzyukin to 5 years in a strict-regime correctional labor colony, without exile. Under Article 37 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR, he was stripped of his military rank of captain and his awards “40 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR” and “For Military Valor.”
He served his sentence in camp ZhKh-385/17, in the settlement of Umor (Ozyorny) in the Tengushovsky district of the Mordovian ASSR. He worked as a sewing machine mechanic, where prisoners sewed work gloves. He suffered severely from a stomach ulcer. In the summer of 1976, Paruyr Hayrikyan exposed Kuzyukin as an informer. The political prisoners stopped communicating with him. Kuzyukin was held in the visiting room for several days, and on August 24, 1976, he was released early, allegedly at the request of his wife (they had two minor children).
He returned to Bila Tserkva and was under administrative supervision for a long time. He worked as a television repairman in a radio workshop, from 1978 as a mechanic, and from 1981 to 1990 as the head of a refrigerated train.
On November 29, 1990, he was rehabilitated by the plenum of the Supreme Court of the USSR, and his military rank of captain was restored.

Bibliography:
Mikhail Kheyfets. Ukrainskiye siluety [Ukrainian Silhouettes]: [A collection of essays]. – N.p.: Suchasnist, 1983. – 287 p. – Also: Ukrainski sylyuety. – Ibid., 1984. – 237 p. (in Ukrainian); Ukrainski sylyuety // Pole vidchaiu y nadii. Almanakh. Comp. Romana Korohodskoho. – Kyiv: 1994. – pp. 207–211; Mikhail Kheyfets. Izbrannoye. V trekh tomakh. Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. – Kharkiv: Folio, 2000. – Vol. 3: Ukrainskiye siluety. Voyennoplennyy sekretar. – pp. 57–60, 255–259, et al.
Information on V. Kuzyukin, compiled by Anatoliy Bondar, Bila Tserkva.