THE forcible removal Sakharov decisively proves what Soviet oppositionists have been saying for months Soviet leadership is centrally concerned 10 prevent any between domestic critics foreigners during Games. This is the only possible explanation for the decision to remove Sakharov to Gorki, otherwise quite pointiess exercise in gaining bad publicity.
This latest action is part of a general sweep against critics which is wider than anything since the beginning of the 1970s. The drive has inarrest and sentencing of members of the various monitoring groups, the Ukrainian group; union activists, religious groups, national oppositions in Ukraine and among the Crimear Tatars; of young leftist groups and feminists in Leningrad; of samizdat journals including the Current Events and Poiski ches). Psychiatric repression has continued to be used.
Detente The last wide sweep between 1970 and 1972- - when 200 people were arrested in the Ukraine connected to the opening Brezhnev's new detente policy. It was designed to show that detente would mean. any domestic relaxation, and to prevent the opposicurrents from attracting influence in the new international atmosphere that was emerging at that time. Many activists to between 12 and 15 years in prison and exile.
A new form of protest emerged in 1,976 with the formation of Helsinki monitoring groups Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia These groups together to try to expose Soviet violanons or neir own mitments at the 1975 Helsinki Conference Security operation.
Partly in response to Carter's human rights demagogy, and partly because the monnoring groups gamed significant support minorities and religious groups, the Soviet. leadership rounded up movement's main leaders in 1977 including Orlov, Ginsburg and Rudenko. Their heavy sentences were designed to isolate the movement totally from domestic supand were accompanied by atof Dr.
that the contact and! the Olympic an Helsinki especially those For trade Lithuania, ANAYEVO Chronicle of (Sear* CAMPS HUMA RARWAY had been of at RIVER - ROAD political MILES wider on offer were sentenced tempts to The Georgian tively silenced, Russia, and worked voluntary com- wide range came Cothe Soviet Union:
groups Klebanov's from ethnic Association, the second Professional Trade Union Shcharansky, tion (SMOT), has repression since November 1978.
MORDOVIAN CAMP COMPLEX MOSCOW RUSSIA *17A OZENNY SEL'KHOZ STATIOI RIVER PARTS Treatment of Sakharov was mild compared with other things the KGB has crush the monitoring groups outside Moscow altogether group was effecbut the ukrainian group responded to each new wave of arrests with new members, and along with the others contined to produce new documents. More significantly, a of hitherto unheard of to the surface throughout the European region of In particular two trade. union appeared. Vladimir :
Trade Union ГЕСС formed early in 1978, was quickly and brutally crushed; but group the InterAssociasurvived despite it appeared A Moscow-based group monitoring psychiatric repression continues
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3 & Contrai Honpital • HEROZAYOO STATION ¿& Central gation RIVER YAVAS ***10 SF MDREY -18 LESHOY 1182 Time BOYA POLYAMA to operate despite the exile of its founder, Alexander Podrabinek. movement of invalids demanding their social rights has appeared. And a Left Opposition youth group whose leaders were imprisoned or sent to psychiatric hospitals in spring of last year was shown to have had wide support by a protest demonstration involving some 200 students in Leningrad The group's documents also showed that they were in touch with other leftist groups in some half a dozen cities.
In the summer of 1978 a new literary called Poiski founded in Moscow, involving a wide range of political views from Marxist to liberal democratic. Among those involved were Old Bolshevik, Raissa Lert, and the very Marxist historian Mikhail Ghetter. Another literary project, Metropol, appeared with the support of some of Russia's 110S Most recently, a feminist journal started to appear in Leningrad at the end of last year (two articles from the first issue will appear in the next issue of Labour Focus on Eastern Europe).
by continuing ferment in the national republics and amongst groups. In Georgia at least 5,000 people demonstrated in defence of their national rights against their constitution in spring 1978, and summar delivity bas occu bandstar• strong-in Lithuania. of the Crimean Tatars to be able to return to their homeland has also been very vigorous during the last two years.
Savage But the KGB has been hard at work on a search and destroy operation against all these movements during the last few months. It has been savage towards the and the Left Opposition group, using psychiatric repression in both cases.
Metropol has been and contributors to it have been expelled from the Writers' Union. The entire editorial board of Poiski has been threatened with arrest, and two members are already in jail awaiting trial.
Leading Lithuanian and Tatar acsentenees, and since summer 1979 no. fewer than Ukrainian Helsinki Group have been arrested. tenced, Oles Berdnyk, member of the Writers' Union, was given a total of nine years of jail and exile Yuri Badzyo, a former headmaster and party member, year for seven years followed by five popular official nal second issue this All these activities were matched religious changes The struggle trade unionists jail members of the GINSBURG Of the five already senformer Ukrainian activist, was jailed last More of the 30 current Women and Russia have been threatened with jail if they produce a One perhaps significant twist. in course of events has been the decision of the Soviet Supreme Court to annul a three-year jail sentence on Edward Kuleshov, a worker in an engineering factory making combine harvesters in the Donbas region of the eastern Ukraine (see 'Headaches for the Prosecution' in Labour Focus - arrested in 1977 Vol. 3, No. 4 on the fabricated KGB evidence in Kuleshov's case). This unprécedented Supreme Court decision suggests that the Soviet leadership may be wishing to make a propaganda gesture towards trade union opinion in the capitalist world could be
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