Anatoly Marchenko
Encyclopedia
Anatoly Tikhonovich Marchenko (also Anatoli Marchenko, Anatolii Marchenko, etc.) (January 23, 1938 – December 8, 1986) was an influential and well-known Soviet
dissident
, author, and human rights
campaigner. He was the first recipient of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought
of the European Parliament
, awarded to him posthumously in 1988.
Initially a worker on a drilling gang, and not of intellectual background or upbringing, he became radicalized, and turned to writing and politics, after being imprisoned as a young man on trumped-up charges. During his time in the labour camps and prison
s he studied, and began to associate with dissidents.
He first became widely known through his book My Testimony, an autobiographical account of his then-recent sentence in Soviet labour camps and prison, which caused a sensation when it was released in the West in 1969, after limited circulation inside the Soviet Union as samizdat
. It brought home to readers around the world, including the USSR itself, that the Soviet gulag
had not ended with Stalin.
He also became active in the Soviet human rights movement. He was one of the founder members of the influential and much-emulated Moscow Helsinki Group
. He organized protests and appeals, and authored a number of open letters, several of which landed him in prison again.
He was continually harassed by the authorities, and was imprisoned for several different terms, spending about 20 years all told in prison and internal exile. Nathan Shcharansky
said of him: "After the release of Yuri Feodorovich Orlov
, he was definitely the number one Soviet prisoner of conscience."
He died in Chistopol
prison hospital during his last incarceration, at the age of 48, as a result of a three month long hunger strike
he was conducting, the goal of which was the release of all Soviet prisoners of conscience. The widespread international outcry over his death was a major factor in finally pushing then-General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev
to authorize the large-scale release of political prisoners in 1987.
, in Western Siberia
, in 1938. His parents were illiterate railway workers (his father, Tikon Akhimovich, was a locomotive
fireman, and his mother was a station cleaner). His grandfather was a peasant
, who had been shot by Kolchak
. He had two brothers, one of whom died very young.
He left school after only 8 years, two short of the normal full secondary education. He then joined the Komsomol
, and became a shift foreman on a drilling gang. The gang travelled around Siberia, and on a job at the Karaganda
power station in 1958 he ran into trouble. Some exiled Chechen
s began a fight with some of the Russian workers in the hostel
where Marchenko was staying; after the fight was over, and most of the combatants had left, the police arrested everyone left in the hostel, innocent and guilty alike, and they were all sent to the Karaganda labour camps after a perfunctory trial.
. However, he was captured on October 29 near Ashkabad, just short of the border. He was subsequently tried for treason on March 2, 1961; the charge of treason was because he supposedly intended to engage in work against the USSR for money; in reality it was payback for his attempt to leave. On March 3, 1961, he was convicted; it was a designation that would cripple his life, but also change it, because it officially made him a "political" prisoner, not an ordinary criminal. He was sentenced to six years in labour camp.
After several months in a series of transit prisons, he was moved to a labour camp in Mordovia
. He attempted to escape from there, but did not succeed, and as a result he was sentenced to serve three years of his sentence in prison, which he spent in infamous Vladimir Prison
. While in Vladimir he went on a long hunger strike, a tactic he would often later repeat. In 1963, he was moved back to the labour camps in Mordovia. While there, in March 1966, he survived a bout of suppurant meningitis
with almost no medical care, which caused problems with his ears which would trouble him for the rest of his life.
During his time in the camps he educated himself by studying, reading a number of socio-political works, including the complete works of Lenin
; he would later also read the complete works of Marx
and Engels
. He also met a number of intellectual political prisoners, including Yuli Daniel
, a meeting that would later prove fateful for Marchenko.
, in the Vladimir
oblast
. From May 1968, while still formally living in Alexandrov, he was working in Moscow as a loader, the only job available to him, even though doctors had forbidden him to do hard manual labour.
During this time, he had met Larisa Bogoraz
, the wife of Yuli Daniel (although they were in the process of separating), and through her a number of other people in their circle. He was determined to write a record of the camps, and his fellow prisoners, and he enlisted their aid in his project. They also helped him receive medical care, both for his ears, and for problems with internal bleeding in his stomach.
By December 1967, he had finished work on his book, My Testimony, the first book to reveal that the gulag had continued in full operation through the rule of Khrushchev
and on into that of Brezhnev
. It was described by the Daily Telegraph as "An extraordinarly important book ... a totally realistic, detailed, factual and yet profoundly and human account of Russian prison and camp life...".
It provided a detailed account of both his time in labour camps and prison, as well as a wide-ranging look at conditions there. The publication of the book would later earn him further confinement for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.
, the subject of another famous show trial
.
On March 27, 1968 he wrote an open letter to Alexander Chakovsky, then editor of the Literaturnaya Gazeta
, contradicting a letter from Chakovsky which had been published that day, which had charged that dissidents were "fed .. at public expense in [Soviet] prisons [and] corrective labour colonies". Marchenko bitterly refuted the charges from his own personal experience, pointing out that rations were minimal, and the prisoners over-worked. On April 17, he followed this up with a series of letters on the same subject to the head of the Soviet Red Cross, and other highly-placed people.
His next focus was the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia
. On July 22 that year, he wrote an open letter to a variety of publications, including Communist media in the West, about the situation there, predicting that the Soviet Union would not allow the 'Prague Spring
' to continue.
This was too much for the authorities; as a result, on July 28, he was arrested and charged with "violating passport regulations", because of his presence in Moscow. On August 21 (the same day that the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, as he had predicted it would), he was sentenced to the maximum penalty for that crime, one year in labour camp. In reality, his crime had been the open letter about Czechoslovakia.
He was then sent to a camp in the far-Northern province of Perm
. He was scheduled to be released on July 27, 1969, but before that could happen, he was tried on charges of "defamation of the Soviet political system", notionally for statements on the subjects of Czechoslovakia and human rights in the USSR which he supposedly had made in camp. In reality, as Soviet officials later admitted, it was payback for the publication of My Testimony in the West. He was tried on that charge on August 22, and convicted; on August 26 he was sentenced to a further two years of imprisonment.
, did not expect him to live through this imprisonment, he did, and was released in August 1971.
Given a choice for his place of internal exile
after release, he chose Chuna, in Siberia, where his fellow dissident Larisa Bogoraz, was also in internal exile. (She had been sentenced to four years of exile after being arrested in August, 1968 for publicly protesting the invasion of Czechoslovakia.)
Bogoraz was by now divorced from Yuli Daniel, a process that had started before she met Marchenko. She and Marchenko had become lovers during the period after his first release from prison; later, they married.
In September 1972, the couple moved back to Tarusa
, where they moved into a dilapidated house which Marchenko rebuilt. While there, they had one son, Pavel, born that winter. Marchenko's health was still poor, and he was unable to find any work other than manual labour as a furnace stoker
in a factory.
On August 23, 1973 he wrote to Kurt Waldheim
(then Secretary-General of the United Nations
), expressing concern about the condition of another imprisoned writer. A letter to Willy Brandt
, warning of the dangers of détente
, followed. The authorities replied with increased repressive measures aimed at Marchenko through 1974, and the more they pressed him, the more it moved him to act.
On December 10 he wrote a letter to Nikolai Podgorny
(then the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet
of the USSR) renouncing his Soviet citizenship
, and indicating he intended to emigrate to the United States. The Soviet response was to encourage him to apply for an exit visa to Israel
, which they could use for propaganda
purposes. Typically, Marchenko refused to cooperate, even though he could have easily changed his destination once out of the Soviet Union.
His response was to begin a hunger strike
, on which he was still engaged when he was tried a month later, on March 31. He was quickly convicted, and sentenced that day to four years of internal exile to Siberia, again to Chuna.
During a two-week wait for transport to begin, and for a week thereafter, he continued his hunger strike. During this entire period, he received no special treatment, and was handled just like all the other prisoners. He only gave up on April 21, when it became clear to him that he was at risk of death; his hunger strike had lasted 53 days.
His transportation to Siberia through a series of prisons (Sverdlovsk
, Novosibirsk
, and Irkutsk
) lasted through the rest of April, and May.
During his exile in Siberia, he managed to complete his second book, From Tarusa to Siberia, in October, 1975; it covers the then-recent trial and hunger strike. In 1976, he was one of the founders of the influential and pathbreaking Moscow Helsinki Group
.
During this period, he completed his third and final book, To Live Like Everyone; the title was a favourite phrase of his. It covered the period from 1966 to 1969, when he was writing My Testimony, up through his trial in retribution for its publication.
This book contributed to his demise, though: in 1980, he was arrested for publishing it. On September 3, 1981 he went on trial for "anti-Soviet agitation", and the next day was given a 15-year sentence (the last 5 of internal exile). He would not complete this sentence.
Over the next few years, Bogoraz began a public campaign to free all Soviet political prisoners, which proved ultimately successful when Gorbachev began mass releases in 1987. However, this proved too late for Marchenko, who had died not long before Gorbachev's announcement - ironically, from the effects of a hunger strike demanding the release of all Soviet political prisoners.
This last hunger strike started on August 4, 1986 when he wrote a letter to the Helsinki review conference
in Vienna
. Sadly, there was little reaction to his hunger strike from the world press. It continued through November, although Bogoraz believed that he ended it around the end of November, when he was placed on the sick list.
Although there were indications shortly before his death that the Soviet authoritites were on the verge of releasing him, Marchenko died before that could happen, on December 8, after being hospitalized the day before.
The exact cause of his death is not certain; some reports indicate problems with his heart, others a stroke
. However, it was certainly caused by the effects of the long hunger strike.
He was buried on December 12, near the prison in Chistopol, after Russian Orthodox rites at a church nearby. His widow was denied a death certificate, and had to write his name in ballpoint pen
on the pine cross on his grave.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
dissident
Dissident
A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When dissidents unite for a common cause they often effect a dissident movement....
, author, and human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
campaigner. He was the first recipient of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought
Sakharov Prize
The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, named after Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, was established in December 1988 by the European Parliament as a means to honour individuals or organisations who have dedicated their lives to the defence of human rights and freedom of thought...
of the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
, awarded to him posthumously in 1988.
Initially a worker on a drilling gang, and not of intellectual background or upbringing, he became radicalized, and turned to writing and politics, after being imprisoned as a young man on trumped-up charges. During his time in the labour camps and prison
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
s he studied, and began to associate with dissidents.
He first became widely known through his book My Testimony, an autobiographical account of his then-recent sentence in Soviet labour camps and prison, which caused a sensation when it was released in the West in 1969, after limited circulation inside the Soviet Union as samizdat
Samizdat
Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...
. It brought home to readers around the world, including the USSR itself, that the Soviet gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
had not ended with Stalin.
He also became active in the Soviet human rights movement. He was one of the founder members of the influential and much-emulated Moscow Helsinki Group
Moscow Helsinki Group
The Moscow Helsinki Group is an influential human rights monitoring non-governmental organization, originally established in what was then the Soviet Union; it still operates in Russia....
. He organized protests and appeals, and authored a number of open letters, several of which landed him in prison again.
He was continually harassed by the authorities, and was imprisoned for several different terms, spending about 20 years all told in prison and internal exile. Nathan Shcharansky
Natan Sharansky
Natan Sharansky was born in Stalino, Soviet Union on 20 January 1948 to a Jewish family. He graduated with a degree in applied mathematics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. As a child, he was a chess prodigy. He performed in simultaneous and blindfold displays, usually against...
said of him: "After the release of Yuri Feodorovich Orlov
Yuri Orlov
Yuri Feodorovich Orlov is Professor of Physics and Government at Cornell University,a prominent nuclear physicist, a former Soviet dissident, and a human rights activist....
, he was definitely the number one Soviet prisoner of conscience."
He died in Chistopol
Chistopol
Chistopol is a town in the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia, located on the left bank of the Kuybyshev Reservoir, on the Kama River. Population: It is served by the Chistopol Airport.-History:It was first mentioned in chronicles at the end of the 17th century...
prison hospital during his last incarceration, at the age of 48, as a result of a three month long hunger strike
Hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...
he was conducting, the goal of which was the release of all Soviet prisoners of conscience. The widespread international outcry over his death was a major factor in finally pushing then-General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
to authorize the large-scale release of political prisoners in 1987.
Detailed biography
Marchenko was born in BarabinskBarabinsk
Barabinsk is a town in Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia, located on the Trans-Siberian Railway between Omsk and Novosibirsk. Population: Barabinsk is located in a steppe area, the Baraba steppe, which has an area of and stretches between the Irtysh and the Ob Rivers.The most important economic sectors...
, in Western Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
, in 1938. His parents were illiterate railway workers (his father, Tikon Akhimovich, was a locomotive
Locomotive
A locomotive is a railway vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. The word originates from the Latin loco – "from a place", ablative of locus, "place" + Medieval Latin motivus, "causing motion", and is a shortened form of the term locomotive engine, first used in the early 19th...
fireman, and his mother was a station cleaner). His grandfather was a peasant
Peasant
A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...
, who had been shot by Kolchak
Aleksandr Kolchak
Aleksandr Vasiliyevich Kolchak was a Russian naval commander, polar explorer and later - Supreme ruler . Supreme ruler of Russia , was recognized in this position by all the heads of the White movement, "De jure" - Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, "De facto" - Entente States...
. He had two brothers, one of whom died very young.
He left school after only 8 years, two short of the normal full secondary education. He then joined the Komsomol
Komsomol
The Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...
, and became a shift foreman on a drilling gang. The gang travelled around Siberia, and on a job at the Karaganda
Karaganda
Karagandy , more commonly known by its Russian name Karaganda, , is the capital of Karagandy Province in Kazakhstan. It is the fourth most populous city in Kazakhstan, behind Almaty , Astana and Shymkent, with a population of 471,800 . In the 1940s up to 70% of the city's inhabitants were ethnic...
power station in 1958 he ran into trouble. Some exiled Chechen
Chechen people
Chechens constitute the largest native ethnic group originating in the North Caucasus region. They refer to themselves as Noxçi . Also known as Sadiks , Gargareans, Malkhs...
s began a fight with some of the Russian workers in the hostel
Hostel
Hostels provide budget oriented, sociable accommodation where guests can rent a bed, usually a bunk bed, in a dormitory and share a bathroom, lounge and sometimes a kitchen. Rooms can be mixed or single-sex, although private rooms may also be available...
where Marchenko was staying; after the fight was over, and most of the combatants had left, the police arrested everyone left in the hostel, innocent and guilty alike, and they were all sent to the Karaganda labour camps after a perfunctory trial.
Marchenko becomes a "political" prisoner
In 1960 he escaped from the camp (ironically, just as his sentence was about to be overturned), and seeing no future for himself in the USSR, tried to escape over the border into IranIran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
. However, he was captured on October 29 near Ashkabad, just short of the border. He was subsequently tried for treason on March 2, 1961; the charge of treason was because he supposedly intended to engage in work against the USSR for money; in reality it was payback for his attempt to leave. On March 3, 1961, he was convicted; it was a designation that would cripple his life, but also change it, because it officially made him a "political" prisoner, not an ordinary criminal. He was sentenced to six years in labour camp.
After several months in a series of transit prisons, he was moved to a labour camp in Mordovia
Mordovia
The Republic of Mordovia , also known as Mordvinia, is a federal subject of Russia . Its capital is the city of Saransk. Population: -Geography:The republic is located in the eastern part of the East European Plain of Russia...
. He attempted to escape from there, but did not succeed, and as a result he was sentenced to serve three years of his sentence in prison, which he spent in infamous Vladimir Prison
Vladimir Prison
The Vladimir Prison, colloquially known as "Vladimirsky Central" , is a prison for dangerous criminals, about 100 miles northeast of Moscow in Vladimir, Russia. It was established in 1783. Most are serving a minimum of 10 years, and some are imprisoned for life...
. While in Vladimir he went on a long hunger strike, a tactic he would often later repeat. In 1963, he was moved back to the labour camps in Mordovia. While there, in March 1966, he survived a bout of suppurant meningitis
Meningitis
Meningitis is inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, known collectively as the meninges. The inflammation may be caused by infection with viruses, bacteria, or other microorganisms, and less commonly by certain drugs...
with almost no medical care, which caused problems with his ears which would trouble him for the rest of his life.
During his time in the camps he educated himself by studying, reading a number of socio-political works, including the complete works of Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
; he would later also read the complete works of Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
and Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
. He also met a number of intellectual political prisoners, including Yuli Daniel
Yuli Daniel
Yuli Markovich Daniel was a Soviet dissident writer, poet, translator and political prisoner.He frequently wrote under the pseudonyms Nikolay Arzhak and Yu. Petrov .-Early life and World War II:...
, a meeting that would later prove fateful for Marchenko.
First release, and the writing of My Testimony
Marchenko was released on November 2, 1966, and spent months travelling through Russia, trying to find a locality which would let him register to live there. He finally succeeded in being allowed to register in Barabinsk, and later in AlexandrovAlexandrov
Alexandrov or Aleksandrov is a town in Vladimir Oblast, Russia, north-east of Moscow. Population: Alexandrov Sloboda served as the capital of Russia for three months under Tsar Ivan the Terrible until he agreed to return his court and the relics of Moscow which he had taken with him...
, in the Vladimir
Vladimir Oblast
Vladimir Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . Its administrative center is the city of Vladimir, which is located east of Moscow...
oblast
Oblast
Oblast is a type of administrative division in Slavic countries, including some countries of the former Soviet Union. The word "oblast" is a loanword in English, but it is nevertheless often translated as "area", "zone", "province", or "region"...
. From May 1968, while still formally living in Alexandrov, he was working in Moscow as a loader, the only job available to him, even though doctors had forbidden him to do hard manual labour.
During this time, he had met Larisa Bogoraz
Larisa Bogoraz
Larisa Iosifovna Bogoraz was a dissident in the Soviet Union....
, the wife of Yuli Daniel (although they were in the process of separating), and through her a number of other people in their circle. He was determined to write a record of the camps, and his fellow prisoners, and he enlisted their aid in his project. They also helped him receive medical care, both for his ears, and for problems with internal bleeding in his stomach.
By December 1967, he had finished work on his book, My Testimony, the first book to reveal that the gulag had continued in full operation through the rule of Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
and on into that of Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...
. It was described by the Daily Telegraph as "An extraordinarly important book ... a totally realistic, detailed, factual and yet profoundly and human account of Russian prison and camp life...".
It provided a detailed account of both his time in labour camps and prison, as well as a wide-ranging look at conditions there. The publication of the book would later earn him further confinement for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.
Marchenko openly becomes a dissident
On September 5, 1967, Marchenko announced to the authorities his association with the dissident circle by appearing at a search of the apartment of the mother of Alexander GinzburgAlexander Ginzburg
Alexander Ilyich Ginzburg , was a Russian journalist, poet, human rights activist and dissident.During the Soviet period, Ginzburg edited the samizdat poetry almanac Sintaksis. Between 1961 and 1969 he was sentenced three times to labor camps...
, the subject of another famous show trial
Show trial
The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as...
.
On March 27, 1968 he wrote an open letter to Alexander Chakovsky, then editor of the Literaturnaya Gazeta
Literaturnaya Gazeta
Literaturnaya Gazeta is a weekly cultural and political newspaper published in Russia and Soviet Union.- Overview :...
, contradicting a letter from Chakovsky which had been published that day, which had charged that dissidents were "fed .. at public expense in [Soviet] prisons [and] corrective labour colonies". Marchenko bitterly refuted the charges from his own personal experience, pointing out that rations were minimal, and the prisoners over-worked. On April 17, he followed this up with a series of letters on the same subject to the head of the Soviet Red Cross, and other highly-placed people.
His next focus was the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
. On July 22 that year, he wrote an open letter to a variety of publications, including Communist media in the West, about the situation there, predicting that the Soviet Union would not allow the 'Prague Spring
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
' to continue.
This was too much for the authorities; as a result, on July 28, he was arrested and charged with "violating passport regulations", because of his presence in Moscow. On August 21 (the same day that the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, as he had predicted it would), he was sentenced to the maximum penalty for that crime, one year in labour camp. In reality, his crime had been the open letter about Czechoslovakia.
He was then sent to a camp in the far-Northern province of Perm
Perm Oblast
Until December 1, 2005, Perm Oblast was a federal subject of Russia in Privolzhsky Federal District. According to the results of the referendum held in October 2004, Perm Oblast was merged with Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug to form Perm Krai.The oblast was named after its administrative center,...
. He was scheduled to be released on July 27, 1969, but before that could happen, he was tried on charges of "defamation of the Soviet political system", notionally for statements on the subjects of Czechoslovakia and human rights in the USSR which he supposedly had made in camp. In reality, as Soviet officials later admitted, it was payback for the publication of My Testimony in the West. He was tried on that charge on August 22, and convicted; on August 26 he was sentenced to a further two years of imprisonment.
Siberian exile and family
Although many (including his American publisher, DuttonE. P. Dutton
E. P. Dutton was an American book publishing company founded as a book retailer in Boston, Massachusetts in 1852 by Edward Payson Dutton. In 1986, the company was acquired by Penguin Group and split into two imprints: Dutton Penguin and Dutton Children's Books.-History:Edward Payson Dutton founded...
, did not expect him to live through this imprisonment, he did, and was released in August 1971.
Given a choice for his place of internal exile
Internal Exile
Internal Exile was Fish's second solo album after leaving Marillion in 1988. The album, released 28 October 1991, was inspired by the singer's past, his own personal problems and his troubled experiences with his previous record label EMI.The album's music reflects Fish's indulgence in the vast...
after release, he chose Chuna, in Siberia, where his fellow dissident Larisa Bogoraz, was also in internal exile. (She had been sentenced to four years of exile after being arrested in August, 1968 for publicly protesting the invasion of Czechoslovakia.)
Bogoraz was by now divorced from Yuli Daniel, a process that had started before she met Marchenko. She and Marchenko had become lovers during the period after his first release from prison; later, they married.
In September 1972, the couple moved back to Tarusa
Tarusa
Tarusa is a town and the administrative center of Tarussky District of Kaluga Oblast, Russia, located on the left bank of the Oka River, south of Serpukhov, northeast of Kaluga, and about south of Moscow. Population:...
, where they moved into a dilapidated house which Marchenko rebuilt. While there, they had one son, Pavel, born that winter. Marchenko's health was still poor, and he was unable to find any work other than manual labour as a furnace stoker
Stoker
A stoker is "one who stokes".Stoker may also refer to:* A fireplace poker* Mechanical stoker - a coal-feeding device on a steam locomotive...
in a factory.
Marchenko continues with dissident activity
Tarusa was only about 100 kilometers from Moscow, so they were able to maintain contact with dissident circles in the capital, which were suffering increasing repression as they more openly challenged the government. Marchenko and Bogoraz considered emigrating, but the increasing repression moved him to act.On August 23, 1973 he wrote to Kurt Waldheim
Kurt Waldheim
Kurt Josef Waldheim was an Austrian diplomat and politician. Waldheim was the fourth Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981, and the ninth President of Austria, from 1986 to 1992...
(then Secretary-General of the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
), expressing concern about the condition of another imprisoned writer. A letter to Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt, born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm , was a German politician, Mayor of West Berlin 1957–1966, Chancellor of West Germany 1969–1974, and leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany 1964–1987....
, warning of the dangers of détente
Détente
Détente is the easing of strained relations, especially in a political situation. The term is often used in reference to the general easing of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1970s, a thawing at a period roughly in the middle of the Cold War...
, followed. The authorities replied with increased repressive measures aimed at Marchenko through 1974, and the more they pressed him, the more it moved him to act.
On December 10 he wrote a letter to Nikolai Podgorny
Nikolai Podgorny
Nikolai Viktorovich Podgorny was a Soviet Ukrainian statesman during the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, or leader of the Ukrainian SSR, from 1957 to 1963 and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1965 to 1977...
(then the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet
Presidium of the Supreme Soviet
The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was a Soviet governmental institution – a permanent body of the Supreme Soviets . This body was of the all-Union level , as well as in all Soviet republics and autonomous republics...
of the USSR) renouncing his Soviet citizenship
Citizenship
Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...
, and indicating he intended to emigrate to the United States. The Soviet response was to encourage him to apply for an exit visa to Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, which they could use for propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
purposes. Typically, Marchenko refused to cooperate, even though he could have easily changed his destination once out of the Soviet Union.
His first major hunger strike
In response to his refusal to cooperate in any way, on February 26, 1975 he was again arrested, and charged with violating the repressive "administrative supervision" measures which had been imposed on him the previous summer.His response was to begin a hunger strike
Hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...
, on which he was still engaged when he was tried a month later, on March 31. He was quickly convicted, and sentenced that day to four years of internal exile to Siberia, again to Chuna.
During a two-week wait for transport to begin, and for a week thereafter, he continued his hunger strike. During this entire period, he received no special treatment, and was handled just like all the other prisoners. He only gave up on April 21, when it became clear to him that he was at risk of death; his hunger strike had lasted 53 days.
His transportation to Siberia through a series of prisons (Sverdlovsk
Yekaterinburg
Yekaterinburg is a major city in the central part of Russia, the administrative center of Sverdlovsk Oblast. Situated on the eastern side of the Ural mountain range, it is the main industrial and cultural center of the Urals Federal District with a population of 1,350,136 , making it Russia's...
, Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk is the third-largest city in Russia, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and the largest city of Siberia, with a population of 1,473,737 . It is the administrative center of Novosibirsk Oblast as well as of the Siberian Federal District...
, and Irkutsk
Irkutsk
Irkutsk is a city and the administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia, one of the largest cities in Siberia. Population: .-History:In 1652, Ivan Pokhabov built a zimovye near the site of Irkutsk for gold trading and for the collection of fur taxes from the Buryats. In 1661, Yakov Pokhabov...
) lasted through the rest of April, and May.
Life in exile again
On arrival in Chuna, he started work as a log handler at a sawmill, a place where he had worked during his previous period of exile. Later in 1975, he suffered an attack of neuritis, and was hospitalized in Irkutsk, although he was forced to leave before he was fully recovered.During his exile in Siberia, he managed to complete his second book, From Tarusa to Siberia, in October, 1975; it covers the then-recent trial and hunger strike. In 1976, he was one of the founders of the influential and pathbreaking Moscow Helsinki Group
Moscow Helsinki Group
The Moscow Helsinki Group is an influential human rights monitoring non-governmental organization, originally established in what was then the Soviet Union; it still operates in Russia....
.
His last period of freedom
In September 1978, his term of exile ended, and he was allowed to leave Chuna, and he and his family moved back to the vicinity of Moscow. He was given an ultimatum to leave the Soviet Union or go back to prison, but ignored it.During this period, he completed his third and final book, To Live Like Everyone; the title was a favourite phrase of his. It covered the period from 1966 to 1969, when he was writing My Testimony, up through his trial in retribution for its publication.
This book contributed to his demise, though: in 1980, he was arrested for publishing it. On September 3, 1981 he went on trial for "anti-Soviet agitation", and the next day was given a 15-year sentence (the last 5 of internal exile). He would not complete this sentence.
Marcheko's final hunger strike, and death
Little is known of his last period of imprisonment, although in December 1983 he was badly beaten by guards, losing consciousness as a result.Over the next few years, Bogoraz began a public campaign to free all Soviet political prisoners, which proved ultimately successful when Gorbachev began mass releases in 1987. However, this proved too late for Marchenko, who had died not long before Gorbachev's announcement - ironically, from the effects of a hunger strike demanding the release of all Soviet political prisoners.
This last hunger strike started on August 4, 1986 when he wrote a letter to the Helsinki review conference
Helsinki Accords
thumb|300px|[[Erich Honecker]] and [[Helmut Schmidt]] in Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Helsinki 1975....
in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. Sadly, there was little reaction to his hunger strike from the world press. It continued through November, although Bogoraz believed that he ended it around the end of November, when he was placed on the sick list.
Although there were indications shortly before his death that the Soviet authoritites were on the verge of releasing him, Marchenko died before that could happen, on December 8, after being hospitalized the day before.
The exact cause of his death is not certain; some reports indicate problems with his heart, others a stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
. However, it was certainly caused by the effects of the long hunger strike.
Funeral
His wife and son travelled to Chistopol to bury him there; they were not allowed to bring his body back to Moscow for burial.He was buried on December 12, near the prison in Chistopol, after Russian Orthodox rites at a church nearby. His widow was denied a death certificate, and had to write his name in ballpoint pen
Ballpoint pen
A ballpoint pen is a writing instrument with an internal ink reservoir and a sphere for a point. The internal chamber is filled with a viscous ink that is dispensed at its tip during use by the rolling action of a small sphere...
on the pine cross on his grave.
Quotations
- "When I was locked up in Vladimir Prison I was often seized by despair. Hunger, illness, and above all helplessness, the sheer impossibility of struggling against evil, provoked me to the point where I was ready to hurl myself upon my jailers with the sole purpose of being killed. .. One thing alone prevented me, one thing alone gave me the strength to live through that nightmare; the hope that I would eventually come out and tell the whole world what I had seen and experienced. .. And I gave my word on this to my comrades who were doomed to spend many more years behind bars and barbed wire." (Introduction to My Testimony)
- "I am convinced that publicity is the sole effective means of combatting the evil and lawlessness which is rampant in my country today."
Other sources
- Anatoly Marchenko, (translator Michael Scammell), My Testimony (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1971, paperback edition - This edition contains an appendix with many documents related to the events of 1968-1969, which is not present in other editions.)
- He Gave Moscow No Peace, New York Times
- Marchenko Buried Near Jail In Rites of Orthodox Church, New York Times
- Samizdat West, TIMETime (magazine)Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
- The Limits of Glasnost