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THE IRON MAN of HUMAN RIGHTS by Gary Kern Spectacular Events

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THE IRON MAN of HUMAN RIGHTS by Gary Kern Spectacular Events THE IRON MAN OF HUMAN RIGHTS by Gary Kern spectacular events. Obituaries and tributes appeared, but a full summary of the case was never made in our media. Yet Remembering Anatoly Marchenko the example of his lonely struggle endures. The Russians, of course, keep his memory alive. Both Soviet and emigre continue to speak of him, write about him, and argue about \\J^ don't like it when someone from outside him, attesting to the fact that his life and death contain a VV teaches us how to live." Thus spake Soviet moral force which cannot be forgotten, denied, or smoothed spokesman Gennady Gerasimov in reaction to President over. Reagan's emphasis on human rights this summer in Mos­ Marchenko began his sixth term of imprisonment in cow. The Soviet leaders were displeased by Reagan's 1981. The sentence: 10 years strict labor-camp regime and decision to meet with dissidents during his free time away five years internal exile under Article 70 of the USSR from the summit meetings with General Secretary Mikhail Griminal Gode ("Anti-Soviet Agitation and Propaganda"). Gorbachev, and they characterized the dissidents as "not the The evidence against him: a book published in the West best representatives of Soviet society." In this way they under the title From Tarusa to Siberia, describing his 1975 betrayed the old pxe-glasnost view that human rights in the arrest, trial, and prolonged hunger strike, and his 1980 letter Soviet Union are entirely an internal afiFair. To be fully protesting the exile of Andrei Sakharov to the city of Gorky. honest, Mr. Gerasimov should have added: "And we also Earlier he had supported the "Prague spring" of 1968 don't like it when someone from inside teaches us how to and warned the Gzech government of a possible Soviet live." invasion. He was actually brought to trial on the day of the This incident recalled the example of Anatoly invasion he predicted. In 1969 he wrote a powerful account Marchenko, who struggled from within the Gulag system to of his labor-camp experiences, My Testimony. teach the lesson that human rights are every human being's Marchenko was sent to a labor camp in Perm ("Perm affair. There was another reminder of Marchenko at the 35"). In December 1983, he was punished for writing a summit. Andrei Sakharov was present in Moscow to lend his letter to the USSR Procurator General, Aleksandr support to Gorbachev's program of glasnost, demo- Rekunkov, complaining about camp conditions. As other kratizdtsiya, and perestroika. Gorbachev, said Sakharov, prisoners watched, camp supervisors handcuffed him and deserved "a measure of trust in advance" for his program. beat his head against a concrete floor until he lost conscious­ But Sakharov himself was there in large measure because of ness. After this, Marchenko lost for a time the senses of Marchenko. sight, smell, and taste. For the remaining three years of his The Marchenko story held the headlines for a few days in life, he suffered head pains, dizziness, nausea, and audible December 1986 and then was swept away by the onrush of hallucinations. He was permitted to see his wife, Larisa Bogoraz, in April 1984, but never again thereafter. There Gary Kern is a specialist in Soviet subjects. His were later reports of beatings. Sometime in early 1986, he translations from Russian include books by Mikhail was transferred from Perm 35 to Ghistopol Prison, 600 Zoshchenko, the Strugatsky brothers, and Lev Kopelev. A miles east of Moscow, which has the strictest regime in the collection of articles on Evgeny Zamyatin's We, edited by Soviet penal system. Fearing for Marchenko's life, Sakharov Kern, has recently been published by Ardis Press. appealed directly to Gorbachev in February. In May, OCTOBER 19881 13 LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED Marchenko again addressed Rekunkov, writing that the Instead, reports of the offer to free Marchenko suggested punitive use of. hunger, cold, beatings, and drugs had turned that his case was settled, if only he would agree to leave. A him into an "invalid." All of his protests, he added, had been postcard from him requesting a food package, dated Novem­ ignored by the prison administration, which was continuing ber 28, was sent to Bogoraz, indicating that he was alive and "to beat me to death." preparing to recover. But on December 9, she received a Refusing to give in, Marchenko announced a hunger curt telegram from Chistopol Prison: "Your husband strike on August 4, demanding an end to the constant abuse Marchenko Anatoly Tikhonovich expired in the hospital. of prisoners, an official inquiry into his 1983 beating, and Promptly inform the possibility of your arrival. Akhma- permission to see his family. In a letter addressed to the deyev." The message, she said later, struck her "straight in Vienna Conference on the Observance of the Helsinki the heart." She made ready at once to travel to Chistopol. Accords, he gave examples of arbitrary punishments and The next day was Human Rights Day. Soviet officials criticized the Soviet government for considering the issue of blocked off Pushkin Square and held a news conference in human rights as "entirely an internal affair." The situation Moscow—a preview of the 1987 fake "peace demonstra­ was truly bad: One week later, Mark Morozov, 55, physicist tion." Foreign Ministry spokesman Boris Pyadyshev gave and computer specialist held under Article 70, died in the cause of Marchenko's death as "brain hemorrhage after Chistopol Prison of a "heart attack." a long illness." At the same meeting Andrei Sakharov was In September thousands of letters, telegrams, and peti­ characterized as a criminal and his exile justified as entirely tions for Marchenko poured in to the Soviet authorities from legal. Amnesty International's 3,600 groups in 60 countries. On In Vienna, at the conference to which Marchenko had October 5, the newly freed Yury Orlov arrived in New York appealed, the American delegation proposed a minute of City from out of his Siberian exile and dedicated his first day silence to honor Marchenko. This was one minute too long of freedom to Marchenko. "This is Anatoly Marchenko for the Soviet side, which walked out in protest. When it day," he told the cheering crowd. returned, Yury Kashlev, Soviet Chief of Humanitarian and But in Chistopol, the treatment of Marchenko worsened. Cultural Affairs, accused American Ambassador Warren On October 8 or 9, he was thrown into the "cooler," Zimmerman of trying to wreck the conference. deprived of heat, warm clothing, bed clothes, mattress, In Washington, President Reagan held a ceremony in the reading materials, letters, writing utensils. Such treatment White House with Natan Shcharansky and Yury Orlov. was unspeakably brutal for a man who had endured over two Marchenko was recalled as "a martyr who died for the cause months of fasting. of human rights in the Soviet Union." The world was presented a more generous picture of In Chistopol, Larisa Bogoraz came to the prison gates Soviet treatment at this time. Irina Ratushinskaya, serving a with her son and seven friends. She was granted but a single term under Article 70 for her poetry, suffering from high meeting with the prison physician, who gave the cause of blood pressure, kidney trouble, and malnutrition, was re­ Marchenko's death as acute heart and lung failure due to leased from the Women's Political Zone of Mordovian dystrophy of the myocardia. This means, literally, an Camp ZhKH-395/3-4 and permitted to fly to London for insufficiently nourished heart. This diagnosis was consistent medical treatment. This happy news and the surge of with death caused by the hunger strike. The neuropatholo­ goodwill that it unleashed were transmitted worldwide on gist from the city hospital, however, made a diagnosis of television screens on the eve of the Reykjavik Summit. "cerebral thrombosis," which is more consistent with death At that summit, President Reagan handed General as a result of beatings. Questioned about Marchenko's Secretary Gorbachev an appeal for the release of Soviet condition prior to his death, the prison political director prisoners of conscience. Marchenko was the most pressing replied laconically: "He sometimes got up." This remark case on the long scroll. told the real story about a man said to be "feeling More than a month later, on November 21, Larisa wonderful." Bogoraz was contacted by the KGB and told to fill out exit Bogoraz and the others were not permitted to visit the visas for herself, Anatoly, and their 13-year-old son Pavel to body. Nor was she permitted to transport it to Moscow for emigrate to Israel. Receiving the impression that Anatoly burial. It was held under guard by three agents of the secret had not agreed to this move, she asked for a meeting, but police until the next morning, when a church service and was put off. As to his health, she was told: "Marchenko is funeral were allowed in Chistopol. feeling wonderful." Three days later she met again with the A bus was made available to the assembly, closely KGB and repeated her request to see Anatoly. Again she attended by a car of officials and plainclothes policemen. was promised an answer. But it never came, so she did not With difficulty the group of nine managed to wrest the plain fill out the forms. pine coffin from the officials and carry it into the bus. At It is now believed that on November 25-26, officials from the Russian Orthodox Church, the casket was opened. Moscow paid a visit to Marchenko in Chistopol prison. Marchenko was very thin, with a partial beard and sunken There are indications that he broke his fast on the latter day.
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