25 years ago, the well-known dissident and human rights activist Anatoly Marchenko died in the Chistopol prison. He became the last prisoner to die, serving a sentence under the article "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda."
Anatoly Marchenko is a man of amazing destiny. At the age of 20, he went to jail for a fight in which he did not participate. Then there was an escape from prison and an attempt to escape abroad. Treason to the motherland was Marchenko's first political article. In September 1981, he was convicted for the sixth time under the article anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. The sentence was 10 years in a strict regime camp and 5 years in exile. On August 4, 1986, Anatoly Marchenko went on a hunger strike demanding the release of all political prisoners in the USSR.
The death of Anatoly Marchenko had a wide resonance in the dissident environment of the USSR and in the West. According to one version, it was the death of Marchenko and the reaction of Western politicians to this event that prompted Mikhail Gorbachev to begin the process of releasing political prisoners. A week after the death of Anatoly Marchenko, Mikhail Gorbachev called Andrei Sakharov in Gorky, saying that the academician could return from exile to Moscow.
Alexander Daniel, human rights activist and stepson of Anatoly Marchenko, is sure that the tragedy in Chistopol only forced the country's leadership to more actively and publicly conduct a campaign to release political prisoners, which had already begun by the end of 1986:
- Of course, we all remember that little article in Izvestia in January 1987 (that is, about a month or so after Tolya's death), in which, in very evasive and slippery formulations, it was said that the process of releasing prisoners had begun. But there were other signals that we simply could not see because we did not have the information. For example, in the spring of 1986, arrests on political grounds ceased, that is, long before Tolya's death. According to documents, we know that the issue of releasing Andrei Sakharov from Gorky's exile was also discussed at the Politburo even before the death of Tolya Marchenko: if I'm not mistaken, the last discussion was on December 1. But according to these documents, it is clear that the release of Sakharov was not at all planned to be ranked in this way: no calls from Gorbachev to Gorky were envisaged. It was already amateur performance on the part of Mikhail Sergeevich. And it seems to me that the reason for that dramatic, catchy message to the country and the world, arranged by Gorbachev from the release of Sakharov, could well be the death of Tolya Marchenko. When Gorbachev called Sakharov in Gorky, the first thing he heard in response was: "Mikhail Sergeevich, thank you, but I am now completely absorbed in thoughts about my friend Anatoly Marchenko, who died in the Chistopol prison." And he immediately started talking about the release of political prisoners,” Alexander Daniel recalls.
Dissidents Ivan Kovalev and his wife Tatyana Osipova learned about the death of Anatoly Marchenko while in exile in the Kostroma region. Kovalev and Marchenko once became friends in the camp when they were both punished for saying hello. Ivan Kovalev I am also sure that the process of releasing political prisoners was launched in the USSR even before the death of Anatoly Marchenko, it only accelerated the process:
- Naturally, we did not know the details of his death, because he was in prison in Chistopol, and we were in exile near Kostroma. But it was already clear that some changes were coming. But, having learned the details, we were somewhat surprised, because it was very unusual, not in the nature of Tolya - like this, from scratch, go on a hunger strike for the release of all political prisoners. In the end, he served many years and he always had many reasons for such a hunger strike, but he never did this. Apparently he had learned something from which he concluded that such a hunger strike might have a chance of success. I don’t think that without these events the situation in the country would not have changed, but they definitely became a catalyst for the process,” says Ivan Kovalev.
Soviet dissidents Zoya Krakhmalnikova and Felix Svetov were among those who returned from exile thanks to the campaign to free political prisoners. Their daughter, columnist for The New Times Zoya Svetova notes that the death of Anatoly Marchenko was a turning point for the Soviet dissident movement. According to a journalist who writes a lot about today's prisoners, there are many people in Russian colonies and prisons whose detention is politically motivated:
– Of course, the death of Anatoly Marchenko was a turning point in Gorbachev's signing of an amnesty for political prisoners. And the release of my parents is also connected with this. I remember that day very well, June 23, 1987. I was then returning from the hospital, my third son Tikhon was born to me. We came to the apartment with a baby and the neighbor said: "Your parents from exile just called, they said they were released." A month or two later they returned to Moscow.
Of course, there are political prisoners in Russia even now, and we all know their names - these are Khodorkovsky, Lebedev, and other people. And we can only hope that someday the penitentiary system in Russia will no longer be used for political purposes, to punish people for political reasons,” says Zoya Svetova.
human rights activist Alexander Daniel hopes that the name Marchenko will be the latest in a long list of political prisoners who died in Russia:
- Tolin's fate is amazing and unique. He's the last person to die under Article 58. But before him were millions, he is the last one in this line. And I really want, of course, that it was really the very last.
In 1988, the European Parliament established the Sakharov Prize. In the same year, it was posthumously awarded to Anatoly Marchenko.
(1938-01-23 )USSR
Anatoly Tikhonovich Marchenko(January 23, Barabinsk, Novosibirsk Region - December 8, Chistopol, Tatar ASSR) - writer, dissident, Soviet political prisoner. Wife - Bogoraz, Larisa Iosifovna.
Biography
In 1958, after a mass brawl in a workers' dormitory between local workers and deported Chechens, in which he did not participate, he was arrested and sentenced to two years in the Karaganda forced labor camp (Karlag). After serving a year, he escaped from prison. He hid for about a year, without documents, was interrupted by odd jobs, and eventually decided to flee abroad.
October 29, 1960 was detained while trying to cross state border USSR with Iran. Before the trial, he was kept in the Ashgabat KGB investigation prison. On March 3, 1961, the Supreme Court of the Turkmen SSR sentenced Anatoly Marchenko to six years in camps under the article for treason.
Released in November 1966. Settled in Alexandrov (Vladimir region), worked as a loader. The camp acquaintance with the writer Y. Daniel introduced him to the circle of the Moscow dissident intelligentsia. In 1967, he wrote a book about Soviet political camps and prisons in the 1960s. "My testimonies". According to A. Daniel, My Testimony appeared in Samizdat as early as 1967. The book was widely distributed in Samizdat, after being transferred abroad it was translated into most European languages and became the first detailed memoir evidence of the life of Soviet political prisoners in the post-Stalin period.
In 1968, Marchenko became a prominent publicist for Samizdat and took part in the human rights movement. On July 22, 1968, he spoke with open letter, addressed to Soviet and foreign newspapers, as well as the BBC radio station about the threat of a Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. A few days later he was arrested and on August 21, 1968, on charges of violating the passport regime, was sentenced to one year in prison. He later described his short stay at liberty and life in the Nyrob camp in his autobiographical book Live Like Everyone Else. A year later, he was not released: he was charged under Article 190-1 (dissemination of slanderous fabrications discrediting the Soviet social and state system), related to Marchenko's book "My Testimony". Sentenced to two years in the camps. By the time of the verdict, he was a fairly well-known dissident.
After his release in 1971, he settled in the city of Tarusa and married Larisa Bogoraz. He continued his human rights and journalistic activities. From the moment he was released, the authorities forced Marchenko to emigrate, threatening him with a new arrest if he refused.
Marchenko did not leave, and his persecution continued. Fifth conviction under Art. 198-2 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (malicious violation of the rules of administrative supervision). Sentenced to 4 years of exile. Served exile in Chun in Eastern Siberia with his wife and child, during this exile Marchenko becomes a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, signs an appeal to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR calling for a general political amnesty in the USSR, was released in 1978.
In September 1981, he was convicted for the sixth time under Art. 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda). Sentenced to 10 years in a strict regime camp and 5 years in exile.
On August 4, 1986, Anatoly Marchenko went on a hunger strike demanding the release of all political prisoners in the USSR. Since September 12, he has been force-fed every day except Sunday. In this regard, Marchenko wrote a letter to Attorney General USSR, accusing medical workers prisons in the use of torture.
The nutrient mixture is deliberately prepared with large lumps of food products that do not pass through the hose, but get stuck in it and, clogging it, do not allow the nutrient mixture to pass into the stomach. Under the guise of cleaning the hose, they torture me by massaging and pulling the hose without removing it from my stomach. … As a rule, one medical worker does this whole procedure. Therefore, he is not able to stir it when pouring the mixture, since both hands are already occupied with him: with one he holds the hose, and with the other he pours the mixture into it from the bowl. I repeat that in this case under the guise of a humane act Soviet authorities in the face of the medical unit of the prison, they subject me to physical torture in order to force me to stop the hunger strike.
Marchenko went on a hunger strike for 117 days. 12 days after leaving the hunger strike, Marchenko felt unwell and was sent from prison to a local hospital. He died in the hospital of the Chistopol Watch Factory on December 8, 1986 at 23:50. The burial of the body of the convict Marchenko A.T. was made in grave number 646. The relatives of the convict were present at the burial of the deceased.
He was buried in a cemetery in the city of Chistopol.
Awards
Notes
Links
- Biography of Anatoly Marchenko on the site "Anthology of samizdat"
- Marchenko A. T."My testimony"
- Biography and memoirs of A. Marchenko in the project "Memories of the Gulag and their authors." // Museum and public center. A. D. Sakharova
- To the twentieth anniversary of the death of Anatoly Marchenko. // Institute of Human Rights, April 9, 2007
- To the 70th anniversary of the birth of Anatoly Marchenko. // PRIMA-News, January 21, 2008 (unavailable link)
- In memory of Anatoly Marchenko. // Radio of Russia, broadcast "Clouds", December 9, 2008
- "Renegades" - Anatoly Marchenko. - Documentary. // Channel Five, June 17, 2009
- Anatoly Marchenko at 101 kilometers. // Newspaper "County town A", December 8, 2010
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See what "Marchenko, Anatoly Tikhonovich" is in other dictionaries:
MARCHENKO Anatoly Tikhonovich- (1938 86) Russian writer. The memoir documentary book My Testimony (written in 1967, published in 1968), From Tarusa to Chuna (1976), Live like ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
Marchenko, Anatoly Tikhonovich- MARCHENKO Anatoly Tikhonovich (1938-86), Russian writer. The memoir documentary books My Testimony (written in 1967, published in 1968?), From ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary
SCHIZO
I caught a cold back in the Karaganda camps, and medical care did not have. Since then, I have chronic inflammation of both ears and from time to time there are exacerbations. This time, too, my ears hurt. The head is splitting, it shoots in the ears, it is difficult to sleep at night, it hurts to open the mouth at dinner. In addition, the head is dizzy and dizzy. I went to the camp medical unit. I went, although the camp old-timers told me that it was useless, the earpiece comes once a year, immediately calls everyone who complained about the ears during this year. There are many of these. "What hurts?" - "Ears". Without looking, he writes in a journal and writes out hydrogen peroxide. No examination, no real examination: they won’t give you a release from work, don’t wait. Now, if the temperature is high, then they can be released from work for several days.
I went to the doctor several times and each time I heard only insulting statements that since I do not have a temperature, it means that I am healthy and just shirking from work. And at the end of June, for not fulfilling the norm, I was put in a punishment cell for seven days - a punishment cell, otherwise - a punishment cell. There was nothing unexpected for me in this: I don’t fulfill the norm - I can’t escape the punishment cell. First, they will call to the head of the detachment: if you please, listen to the suggestion that every prisoner must atone for his guilt before the people with honest labor.
Why didn't you comply with the norm? asks the detachment at the end of his sermon. He asks, although he sees that the person in front of him is barely on his feet. - Is ill? But there is no temperature! It is not good to deceive, to simulate, to shirk from work. And to make it clearer to you, he gives you several days in a punishment cell.
What was a punishment cell in 1961? Ordinary camp barracks, divided into cells. The cells are different: single cells, and for two, and for five, there are also for twenty people, and they can stuff there, as needed, and thirty, and forty. The punishment cell is located in the special regime zone, half a kilometer from the tenth. For walks, a tiny, beaten, trampled courtyard was fenced off, on which not a blade of grass even in summer; any green arrow will be eaten by a starving prisoner in the punishment cell. In the punishment cell itself there are bare bunk beds made of thick boards, no mattress, nothing even resembling bedding is supposed to be. The bunks are short - sleep bent over; when I tried to stretch to my full height, my legs dangled. In the middle of the bunks, across them, there is a thick, ridiculous strip that holds the planks together. Well, what would fill it from below? Or to make a groove, if necessary, so that it goes on top? No, this iron strip, three fingers wide and a finger thick, rises over the boards in the middle of the bunk, so that no matter how you lie down, it would crash into your body, which is not protected by anything from it.
There is a thick grill on the window, a peephole in the door. In the corner, the constant companion of the prisoner is a bucket; a rusty vessel of a bucket for four, the lid is welded to it with a thick chain. A long iron pin, with a thread at the end, is welded to the wall of the bucket. It is inserted into a special hole in the wall, and on its end, which goes through the wall into the corridor, the warder screws a large nut. Thus, the bucket is tightly attached to the stone wall. During the mandrel, the nut is unscrewed so that the prisoners can take out and empty the bucket. This procedure takes place once a day, in the morning. The rest of the time, the bucket stands in its rightful place, spreading a terrible stench around the cell ...
At six in the morning there is a knock on all the doors:
- Climb! Rise to the mandrel! - They are going to wash. The turn comes to our cell. However, this is only what is called - to wash. I didn’t have time to wash my hands, they are already chasing you in the neck:
- Faster, faster, you will blur in the wild! - It takes less than a minute to wash one prisoner. Those who do not have time to wash themselves will rinse their faces in the chamber above the bucket.
And here we are in the cell, waiting for breakfast. It is also the same name. A mug of boiling water and a ration of bread - 450 grams for the whole day. At lunch they will give a bowl of lean cabbage soup - almost only water, in which smelly sauerkraut is boiled, and there is almost none in the bowl. Probably, even cattle would not eat them, these cabbage soup. And the prisoner in the punishment cell will drink them over the edge, wipe the bowl with a crust, and will look forward to dinner. For dinner - a piece of boiled cod from a matchbox, slippery and stale. Not a gram of sugar, not a gram of fat is allowed in the punishment cell.
It is terrible to remember what a person in a punishment cell comes to from hunger. You are waiting for the exit to the zone more than the end of the term. Even the general half-starved camp norm seems like an unprecedented feast in the punishment cell. It is terrible to remember how I myself was starving. It is even more terrible to realize that now, when I am writing about this, my comrades are starving in punishment cells ...
The time creeps between breakfast and lunch, between lunch and dinner. No books, no newspapers, no letters, no chess. Checking twice a day, before and after dinner a half-hour walk through the bare courtyard behind barbed wire - that's all the entertainment. During the check, the guards are in no hurry: they count the prisoners in each cell, recount, and check with the number put on the board. Then begins a thorough examination of the chamber. The guards are tapping the walls, the bunks, the floor, the grating on the window with large wooden hammers to see if the bars have been sawn, if there is a tunnel, if the prisoners are preparing an escape from the punishment cell. Check if there are any graffiti on the walls. During the check, we all have to stand, taking off our hats - I will tell you later why this is necessary.
During a thirty-minute walk, you can go to the restroom. However, if there are twenty people in the cell, it is difficult to be in time: a lavatory for two. A queue forms, you are rushed again:
- Hurry, hurry, time is running out, there is nothing to sit around. - I didn’t have time - there is a bucket in the cell. And they don’t let you go to the restroom anymore, whether you are an old man or a sick person. During the day in the chamber of the stuffy place, the stench. It is cold at night even in summer: the hut is stone, the floor is filled with cement, the punishment cell is built specifically so that it is cold and damp there. There is nothing to cover with, nothing to lay on, except for a pea jacket - it, like all warm clothes, is taken away before being put in a punishment cell, and given out only for the night.
There is no point in even thinking of taking with you to the punishment cell any of the food or smoke even for half a puff, paper, pencil lead - everything will be taken away during the search. You, your underwear, trousers, jacket thrown off by you will be felt through and through.
At night, from ten in the evening until six in the morning, you lie crouched on the bunk. An iron strip digs into the side, through the cracks between the boards it pulls from the floor with dampness, cold. And I would like to fall asleep, so that even in a dream I can forget about today's torment, about the fact that tomorrow the same thing will happen again - but you won’t have time. But you can’t get up, run around the cell - the warden will see through the peephole. You get lost, tossing and turning from side to side, almost to the light, you just doze off - a knock on the door, shouts:
- Climb! Climb! On the mend!
The term in the punishment cell is limited - no more than fifteen days. But this rule is easy for the boss to get around. In the evening they will be released into the zone, and the next day they will be imprisoned again, for another fifteen days. For what? There is always something for: standing in the cell blocking the peephole; I picked up a cigarette butt for two puffs on a walk (one of my friends threw it out of the zone through the ban); rudely answered the warden. Yes, they will give you another fifteen days just like that, for nothing. Because if you are really indignant, if you allow yourself to be provoked to a protest, then you will get not fifteen days in a punishment cell, but a new conviction by decree.
In Karaganda, they once kept me in a punishment cell for forty-eight days, releasing me only to read out a new decree on “placement in a punishment cell.” The writer Julius Daniel was given two consecutive punishment cells in Dubrovlag for being "rude to the sentry." This was as recently as 1966. Some cannot endure inhuman conditions, starvation and cripple themselves: maybe they will put you in the hospital and at least for a week you will get rid of naked bunk beds, from a stinking cell, you will get more human food. While I was sitting in the cell, two convicts did the following: they broke off the handles from their spoons and swallowed them; then stay. And they do not feed me with a nutrient mixture, as I did in Ashgabat, but with the same camp gruel, only thinner, so as not to clog the hose. In the cell they give the gruel a little warm, and with artificial nutrition they try to give it hotter. They know that this is a sure way to ruin the stomach.
Few people are able to endure a hunger strike for a long time, achieving their goal; however, I know of several cases where prisoners went on a hunger strike for two or three months. The main thing is that it is still useless. The answer to a petition about a hunger strike in any instance is the same as to other complaints. Just now, the head of the starving man himself will come to the cell, since the weakened prisoner cannot walk.
Your protest is unfounded. Remove the hunger strike, we won't let you die anyway: death saves you from punishment, and your term has not yet ended. Here you go free - please die. You complain, complain about us to higher authorities! Write - it's your right. We will still look into your complaint...
I ended up in such a “sanatorium” because of an illness. He served seven days and went out, as they say, holding on to the walls - he was put to death.
But, despite the weakness, I had to go to work the very next day so as not to earn a new term in the ShIZO.
Anatoly Tikhonovich Marchenko was born 80 years ago - a writer, a well-known dissident and a Soviet political prisoner. The last "victim of Article 58". Marchenko did not live to see his birthday. He died in a Soviet prison, when "perestroika and glasnost" had already been announced in the country. Soviet power was living out its last days...
Anatoly Marchenko was born on January 23, 1938 in the city of Barabinsk Novosibirsk region in the family of an assistant machinist, railway worker, Tikhon Akimovich Marchenko and Elena Vasilievna Marchenko. After graduating from 8 classes, he left on a Komsomol ticket for the construction of the Novosibirsk hydroelectric power station. Received the specialty of a shift drilling foreman. Later he worked at new buildings of Siberian hydroelectric power stations, at mines and in geological exploration in Tomsk region and at Karaganda GRES-1.
In 1958, after a mass brawl in a workers' dormitory between local workers and deported Chechens, in which he did not participate, he was arrested and sentenced to two years in the Karaganda forced labor camp (Karlag). A year later, he escaped from prison - shortly before the decision came to the colony on his release with the removal of a criminal record by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In 1959–1960, he wandered around the country without documents, doing odd jobs.
On October 29, 1960, Anatoly tried to cross the Soviet-Iranian border, but was detained and imprisoned in the Ashgabat KGB investigation prison. On March 3, 1961, the Supreme Court of the Turkmen SSR sentenced Anatoly Marchenko to six years in camps for treason.
After his release, in November 1966, Marchenko settled in Aleksandrov. Vladimir region and worked as a porter. Camp acquaintance with the writer Julius Daniel introduced him to the circle of Moscow dissident intelligentsia.
In 1967, Anatoly Marchenko wrote the book My Testimony, in which he spoke about Soviet political camps and prisons in the 1960s. My Testimony was widely circulated in samizdat as early as 1967. After being transferred abroad, the book was translated into many European languages and became the first detailed memoir about the life of Soviet political prisoners after Stalin's death.
After My Testimony was published, Marchenko became a well-known publicist in samizdat and began to participate in the human rights movement. On July 22, 1968, he issued an open letter about the threat of a Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, addressed to the Soviet and foreign press. A few days later, Marchenko was arrested and, on August 21, 1968, on charges of violating the passport regime, was sentenced to a year in prison. Anatoly Tikhonovich later described his short stay at liberty and life in the Nyrob camp in his autobiography “Live like everyone else”. A year later, however, he was charged under article 190-1 of the Criminal Code (“dissemination of slanderous fabrications discrediting the Soviet social and state system”), related to the book “My testimony”. This accusation led to a two-year sentence in the camps. By the time the verdict was passed, Marchenko was already a well-known dissident.
After his release in 1971, Marchenko settled in Tarusa, married Larisa Bogoraz; and continued his human rights and journalistic activities. From the moment he was released, the authorities forced Marchenko to emigrate, threatening him with a new arrest if he refused.
After refusing to emigrate, persecution by the authorities continued - he was convicted for the fifth time, this time under article 198-2 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, "Malicious violation of the rules of administrative supervision", and sentenced to 4 years of exile, which he served in Chun, in Eastern Siberia, together with his wife and child. During this exile, Marchenko became a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group and signed an appeal to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR calling for a general political amnesty in the USSR. Anatoly Marchenko was released in 1978.
For the sixth and last time he was arrested on 03/17/1981. This time, the authorities did not resort to fabricating a "non-political" accusation: Marchenko was charged with "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda." The accusation included almost all the texts he wrote (with the exception of My Testimony and journalism of 1968–1971, for which the statute of limitations had expired), including drafts of unfinished articles. Immediately after his arrest, he stated that he considered the CPSU and the KGB to be criminal organizations and therefore would not participate in the investigation. Sentenced by the Vladimir Regional Court (09/04/1981) under Art. 70 part 2 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR to ten years in a strict regime camp, followed by a five-year exile.
IN last word said in court: “Since this political system believes that its only way to coexist with people like me is to keep them behind bars - well, then, then, then I will be forever, until the end of my days, behind bars. I will be your eternal prisoner."
In the article “Save Anatoly Marchenko”, A. Sakharov called the verdict “blatant revenge” and “outright reprisal” against Marchenko "for wonderful books about the modern Gulag (of which he was one of the first to speak), for stamina, honesty and independence of mind and character."
On August 4, 1986, Anatoly Marchenko went on a hunger strike demanding the release of all political prisoners in the USSR. Since September 12, 1986, he was force-fed every day except Sunday, which is why Marchenko wrote a letter to the USSR Prosecutor General, accusing the prison medical staff of torture.
“The nutrient mixture is deliberately prepared with large lumps of food products that do not pass through the hose, but get stuck in it and, clogging it, do not allow the nutrient mixture to pass into the stomach. Under the guise of cleaning the hose, they torture me by massaging and pulling the hose without removing it from my stomach. …
As a rule, this whole procedure is done by one medical worker. Therefore, he is not able to stir it when pouring the mixture, since both hands are already occupied with him: with one he holds the hose, and with the other he pours the mixture into it from the bowl. I repeat that in this case, under the guise of a humane act, the Soviet authorities, represented by the medical unit of the prison, are subjecting me to physical torture in order to force me to stop the hunger strike.
Marchenko went on a hunger strike for 117 days. A few days after the end of the hunger strike, he felt unwell and was sent from prison to a local hospital.
On December 8, 1986, at 11:50 p.m., at the age of 49, Anatoly Tikhonovich Marchenko died in the hospital of the Chistopol Watch Factory. He was buried in grave No. 646. Relatives were present at the burial. Later he was reburied in the cemetery of the city of Chistopol.
Marchenko's death had a wide resonance in the dissident environment of the USSR and in the foreign press. His death and the reaction to it prompted Mikhail Gorbachev to begin the process of releasing prisoners convicted under "political" articles. Sakharov was returned from Gorky's exile. A few years later, the communist regime collapsed...
