Source: https://chronicle-of-current-events.com/2013/09/27/32-1-the-deportation-of-solzhenitsyn/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 02:16:07+00:00

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At the end of August 1973, after five days of interrogation in the Leningrad offices of the KGB, 70-year-old E. D. Voronyanskaya revealed the place where a copy of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s GULag Archipelago was being kept. If the KGB report on the case of Professor Etkind is to be believed (this issue, CCE 32.14), Voronyanskaya also disclosed that Solzhenitsyn had transmitted two copies of the “GULag” manuscript to her through Etkind.
In an interview given to American television on 25 June 1974 A. I. Solzhenitsyn spoke, among other things, about a deal proposed to him by the authorities. They had promised Solzhenitsyn that they would print Cancer Ward in the USSR in exchange for his undertaking not to publish The GULag Archipelago for a period of 20 years [Chronicle’s note].
Meanwhile the first reactions to the work and the first statements of indignation regarding the press persecution appeared in samizdat. There was an article (in translation) by H. Böll about the work’s publication, “It is Necessary to Go Further and Further” and a wide-ranging review by Roy Medvedev.
B. Mikhailov, E. Barabanov, V. Borisov, B.Shragin, L. Chukovskaya, V. Dolgy, Gusyakova, V. Zaitsev, I. Ovchinnikov, V. Osipov, V. Repnikov, V. Rodionov, and M. Agursky.
On 8 February 1974 an attempt was made to deliver a summons to Solzhenitsyn’s wife Natalya Svetlova, summoning her husband to the USSR Procuracy, but Svetlova refused to accept it. On 11 February the summons was repeated.
in reply to its repeated summons.
Free the innocent from imprisonment. Punish the perpetrators of the mass exterminations and the authors of the false denunciations. Punish the administrators and the special detachments which carried out genocide (the deportation of whole peoples). Deprive today the local and departmental satraps of their limitless power over citizens, of their controlling sway over law courts and psychiatrists. Satisfy the millions of lawful, yet suppressed statements of complaint.
At five o’clock in the evening on 12 February eight men burst into Solzhenitsyn‘s flat, led by a senior counsellor of justice, Zverev. A decision empowering them to take Solzhenitsyn to the Procuracy was shown to him. One of the participants in the operation assured his wife that Alexander lsayevich would soon return.
It is no more than ten minutes’ walk from Solzhenitsyn‘s home to the USSR Procuracy, so already at this point the writer’s family suspected that he had not been taken to the Procuracy.
In advance I declare as incompetent any criminal trial of Russian literature, of a single book of it, of any Russian author. If such a trial is prescribed for myself, I shall not go there on my own two feet — they will deliver me there in a Black Maria, with my arms twisted behind me. I shall not answer a single question at such a trial. Sentenced to imprisonment, I shall not submit to the sentence except in handcuffs. In imprisonment itself, having already lost my best eight years to forced labour for the state, and contracted cancer in the process, I shall not work for the oppressors even half an hour more.
… The fifth act of the drama has begun.
On the evening of 12 February in Lefortovo Prison Solzhenitsyn was charged with treason (Article 64, RSFSR Criminal Code). The charge was signed by the senior counsellor of justice Zverev; Deputy Procurator-general of the USSR Malyarov was present when the charge was presented.
On the day after the arrest, 13 February, the ‘Moscow Appeal’ appeared.
That archival and other materials be published which would give a full picture of the activity of the Cheka, NKVD and MGB [Previous titles of the organization now known as the KGB].
At 1 pm on 13 February, in a solitary-confinement cell of Lefortovo Prison, Malyarov read Solzhenitsyn a Decree “Depriving him of his Soviet citizenship”. On the same day he was forcibly deported from the Soviet Union to the Federal Republic of Germany.
After the deportation the campaign flared up in the Soviet press with new vigour and lasted another week.
On 14 February M. Landa published [in samizdat] her support for the ‘Moscow Appeal’.
Later the following people associated themselves with the ‘Moscow Appeal’: E. S. Andronova, L. Aptekar, V. Bakhmin, N.Ya. Joffe, O. Joffe, I. Kaplun, A. Lavut, A. Levitin (Krasnov), G. Podyapolsky, S. Khodorovich, and L. Tymchuk.
On 30 March Solzhenitsyn’s family left the USSR. A letter by his wife was made public.
In bidding farewell to her friends in this letter, she said with confidence that Alexander Isayevich, she herself and their children would return.
[a] Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: An experiment in literary investigation. Parts 1 and 2 (1918-56), YMCA Press: Paris, 1973.
at my home’ . . .
[c] For an exchange between Andropov and Brezhnev about Solzhenitsyn‘s expulsion from the USSR, see 7 February 1974 letter in Bukovsky Archive.

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