Soviet peace activist is sentencec
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-12-15Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 5 →
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ON October 7 1983 a Moscow court sentenced independent peace activist Oleg Radzinsky to one year's imprisonment and five years' internal exile.
He could have expected up to seven years imprisonment, but international solidarity by members of the Western peace movement clearly had an effect on the Soviet authorities.
Oleg Radzinsky had already spent a year before his trial in custody, first in Moscow's Lefovtovo prison, then transferred to the notorious Serbsky psychiatric institute.
New pamphlet, 50p; latest TSC! bulletin, 30p, plus postage. From TSC, BM Box 5965,: London WCIN 3XX.
The Moscow group, despite official harassment, has been able to survive and carry out important independent peace initiatives.
On June 27 a petition addressed to Margaret Thatcher was handed in to the British embassy, despite KGB obstruction, protesting at the arrests at the Upper Heyford blockade. Four members of the group attempted to receive Mrs Thatcher's reply on September 5, but were stopped by police.
What Margaret Thatcher said in her reply to the group would make most interesting reading.
Coffin This action must put the nail in the coffin of the allegation made by both the Soviet authorities and the right-wing opponents of our own peace movement that any independent organisations in the Soviet bloc are inevitably pro-Western and embrace imperialist justifications in the nuclear weapons debate.
On the evenings of August 6 and 7, seminars and poetry readings were held in the flat of Valery Godyak to commemorate Hiroshima. Up to 30 supporters attended, and there was only minimal KGB harassment. Obviously the close attention paid by some Western observers is inhibiting the Soviet authorities on occasion from clamping down on the group's activities as hard as they would wish.
Next issue: a discussion article on the peace movements in Eastern Europe.
According to the exiled group's leader Sergei Batovim, now in New York, the independent peace movement may have up to 2000 supporters scattered throughout the USSR. From the city of Rybinsk in the North, to Odessa on the Black Sea, and east to the city of Tyumen in Central Siberia, up to ten cities have independent peace groups.
Whether the independent peace movement can survive in the present political climate depends on the consistency and solidarity of socialists and disarmers in the West. The independent peace activists in Russia ask only to campaign for nuclear disarmament free from the bureaucracy and official orchestration by the state-run peace movement of the USSR.
It is up to us to ensure that our fellow campaigners in the Soviet Union do not share the same fate as Oleg Radzinsky Protests All protests concerning the unjustified imprisonment of Oleg Radzinsky should be sent to:
Mr Yuri V Andropov, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, The Kremlin, Moscow, USSR; or Mr Yuri Zhukov, Chairman, Official Soviet Peace Committee, Prospekt Mira 36, Moscow, USSR.
It only costs a 19p stamp fo an act of vital and very worth while internationalism.
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› cialist Organiser no.159 December 15 1983 Page
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TURKEY A TOWN ON TRIAL