LEVIN, ARKADY ZINOVIYOVYCH (b. December 1, 1933, in Pochep, Belarus—d. January 3, 1978, in Haifa, Israel).
Engineer, samizdat distributor, human rights activist, political prisoner.
Levin was born into the family of a forestry employee. His mother was a homemaker. During World War II, the family, which included three children, was evacuated to Krasnoyarsk Krai. After the war, the family settled in Kharkiv. His father worked at a factory as the head of a sawmill. Levin was in the same class and became very close friends with H. Altunyan and V. Nedobora.
After graduating from school in 1951, Levin tried to enroll in the Geological Prospecting Institute in Moscow. After an unsuccessful attempt, he worked in a construction trust. In 1959, Levin graduated from the correspondence department of the Kharkiv Automobile and Highway Institute and went to work at Ukrdiprokomunbud. During these years, he read extensively, with a particular interest in philosophy and politics. After Stalin’s death and the 1956 denunciation of his activities, Levin, trying to make sense of reality, studied the works of the classics of Marxism and the writings of A. Gramsci, and became involved with samizdat. His closest friend and confidante was always his sister, Tamara. Gradually, by 1968–69, his circle of acquaintances expanded from his school friends to include Moscow dissidents (P. Yakir, P. Hryhorenko, Yu. Kim, I. Yakir, and others) and Kyiv dissidents (he became especially close with L. Plyushch). Levin actively distributed samizdat.
In 1969, upon learning of the arrest of P. Hryhorenko, Levin, along with H. Altunyan, traveled to Moscow and signed a letter in defense of P. Hryhorenko and the Crimean Tatars. A short time later, Levin and his sister were among 10 Kharkiv residents who supported the first letter from the Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR (IG)—an appeal to the UN dated May 20, 1969, regarding gross violations of human rights in the USSR. Among those who supported the letter to the UN was his colleague and friend O. Kalynovsky. On June 11, 1969, at the organization where Levin worked as a chief project engineer, a meeting was held during work hours concerning his and Kalynovsky’s signing of human rights letters. The KGB presented the letter in defense of P. Hryhorenko and the Crimean Tatars and passed it off as the letter to the UN. This was primarily done to avoid acquainting the meeting participants with the numerous facts of human rights violations. Levin refused to repent; in response to reproaches for defending the Crimean Tatars, he declared: “I am outraged by the thought of accusing an entire people.” The meeting condemned Levin and Kalynovsky as “accomplices of imperialists” and “slanderers,” and demanded their dismissal from their jobs.
Similar meetings were held on the same day in Kharkiv organizations where other signatories of these letters worked. Based on the materials from these meetings, a samizdat collection titled “The Soviet Healthy Collective Condemns the Renegades” was published.
Levin signed a letter to the USSR Prosecutor General R. Rudenko in defense of the arrested H. Altunyan (July 31, 1969), and he also signed a letter from the IG to UN Secretary-General U Thant in defense of A. Levitin-Krasnov and other persecuted IG members (September 26, 1969). He appeared as a defense witness at the trial of H. Altunyan (November 26, 1969). The court issued a separate ruling regarding all defense witnesses who had signed the letter defending P. Hryhorenko and the appeal to the UN, severing their cases into a separate proceeding.
On December 2, 1969, Levin’s home was searched. At the time, L. Plyushch was visiting him. On the same day, Levin was arrested on charges of slandering the social and state system. The main point of the accusation was the drafting and distribution of the two aforementioned letters. He was held for a month for a psychiatric evaluation but was found sane. A case was initiated against all the “signatories,” and later the materials on those to be arrested were separated. In total, four “signatories” were arrested in this case in Kharkiv. Initially, the KGB tried to “create” an anti-Soviet organization in which Levin was assigned the role of the main ideologue.
On January 17, 1970, the IG released a letter in defense of those who were persecuted for signing and supporting the group's letters, including a defense of Levin.
On April 24, 1970, the Kharkiv Oblast Court sentenced Levin under Article 187-1 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR to three years of imprisonment. At the beginning of the trial, Levin protested its closed nature and demanded that his relatives and friends be allowed into the courtroom. The protest was denied, at which point Levin refused to participate in the proceedings, did not answer questions, and declined to give a final statement, declaring that the verdict was predetermined and he did not wish to take part in a comedy. After Levin's trial (by which time three Kharkiv residents who had signed the letters—H. Altunyan, V. Nedobora, and V. Ponomaryov—had already been sentenced), seven Kharkiv residents, six of whom had also signed the letters, sent a letter to USSR Prosecutor General R. Rudenko protesting the illegal court decisions in these cases. Levin’s sister, Tamara Levina, was fired from her job.
He served his sentence in a general-regime camp in the village of Horodyshche, Rivne Oblast. After his release in December 1972, Levin returned to Kharkiv. He was unable to find work in his profession and worked as a digger.
The persecution of dissidents continued, and Levin was particularly shaken by the confinement of L. Plyushch in a special psychiatric hospital. All of this led Levin to the difficult decision to emigrate. In May 1975, he left for Israel. Immediately upon his arrival, he launched an active campaign for the release of L. Plyushch from the “psychushka.” Levin sent letters and statements to the leaders of many foreign communist parties, including the French and Italian parties, as well as to international human rights organizations, which undoubtedly helped secure the release of L. Plyushch.
On January 3, 1978, Levin died of a heart attack. He is buried in Haifa, Israel.
Bibliography:
Alexeyeva, L. Istoriya inakomysliya v SSSR [The History of Dissent in the USSR]. Vilnius-Moscow: Vest, 1992, pp. 227–228.
Kasyanov, H. Nezghodni: ukrayinska intehentsiya v rusi oporu 1960–80-kh rokiv [The Dissenters: The Ukrainian Intelligentsia in the 1960s–80s Resistance Movement]. Kyiv: Lybid, 1995, p. 84.
Khronika tekushchikh sobytiy [A Chronicle of Current Events]. Amsterdam: Herzen Foundation, 1979, issues 1–15, pp. 187, 312, 314, 331, 335, 386–387, 403, 406–407, 444, 496.
Plyushch, L. I. Na karnavale istorii [At the Carnival of History]. London: OPI, 1979, pp. 299, 380, 382–383, 395, 402–403, 457, 543.
Mizhnarodnyy biohrafichnyy slovnyk dysydentiv krayin Tsentralnoyi ta Skhidnoyi Yevropy y kolyshnyoho SRSR. T. 1. Ukrayina. Chastyna 1 [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. 374–376. https://museum.khpg.org/1184403166
Rukh oporu v Ukrayini: 1960–1990. Entsyklopedychnyy dovidnyk [The Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960–1990. An Encyclopedic Guide]. Foreword by Osyp Zinkevych, Oles Obertas. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010, pp. 366–367; 2nd ed.: 2012, pp. 410–411.
Iryna Rapp, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. 2006. Last reviewed on August 10, 2016.
No photo available.