Psychiatric treatment for Soviet unionists

Press, 18 April 1979, Page 20

Psychiatric treatment for Soviet unionists

Bv

ROBERT TAYLOR

in London

The catise of Soviet worker dissidents continues to trouble the consciences of Western trade union movements in spite of the strenuous efforts of the Soviet authorities to obfuscate the issue and lock up the leaders in psychiatric hospitals.

A collection of documents smuggled out of the Soviet Union in the last two years from the workers' “movement” is being published in Britain this month “Workers against the Gulag,” edited by Viktor Haynes and Olga Semyonova; Pluto Press. It includes translations of appeals for solidarity to Western unions from the body set up by a miner. Vladimir Klebanov, in January, 1978, known as the Free Trade Union Association of the Soviet Working People. At present, the International Labour Organisation is investigating complaints about the arrest and imprisonment without trial in hospitals of 43 Soviet workers who joined the F.T.U.A. Last month the governing body of the 1.L.0. angered the Soviet authorities by refusing to drop the inquiries.

Instead, with the exception of the Hungarian member, the governing body asked the Soviet Government to supply detailed, precise information on the persecuted workers and also said it wanted an answer to the “prime allegation” that “it was impossible to legally create in the U.S.S.R. a trade union organisation independent of the State and the Party.” The 1.L.0. is expected to make a judgment at its an-

nual conference this summer. As the Soviet Union is the biggest source of finance for the 1.L.0. — since the departure of the Americans in November. 1977 — a conclusion criticising the Soviet Union could lead to serious repercussions.

But the volume of documents reveals that the workers’ State hardly lives up to its fine rhetoric. An appeal dated May 20, 1977 — an open letter to international opinion — states: "We have been unjustly deprived of work — sacked and left without means of livelihood. The only response we get to our questions is continuous persecution.” The Soviet authorities refuse to give complaints a hearing, although the workers claim “we are decent, principled people who have come out against bribery, swindling, theft of socialist property, concealment of industrial accidents, and other abuses by managers at the enterprises where we used to work.”

The appeal adds that they are people “who for many years have been living a life much worse than a dog in an airport.” The case-histories of the founding members of the F.T.U.A. — the Klebanov group — reveal a persistent story of repression. Again and’again the workers tell of sackings for criticism of management, graft and corruption at work, and the failure of the official unions to deal with their complaints. There are many examples of neglect of safety at work and underpayment of piecework wages.

The authorities replied by sending the complainants to prison, or more often to psychiatric hospitals.

In a letter to Mr Sid Weighell, general secretary of the British National Union of Railwaymen, Mr V. E. Mochayev, head of the international department of the Soviet Trade Union Congress, wrote that some British unions had been “misled by propaganda inventions which have nothing to do with reality.” Mr Klebanov, a miner, has spent the last 20 years in and out of prison and mental institutions for his activities. A large dossier on him has been assembled by Amnesty International, including an independent psychiatric report that says he is not mad. Around 200 workers from all over the Soviet Union signed an appeal to the West for recognition and soidarity with the F.T.U.A. on January, 27, 1978. The book quotes this and also carries appeals made by a Ukrainian worker, Mr Leonid Sery, to Mr Leonid Brezhnev and the American union leader, Mr George Meany, in 1976. He sought the right to emigrate because he and his family could not survive on a minimum wage of 50 roubles a month.

Mr Sery explains how the official unions are part of the Party and State apparatus. “They should have the right of collective bargaining and of demanding wage increases, better working conditions and holidays,” he wrote to Mr Brezhnev.

In his open letter to Mr

Meany last year Mr Sery wrote: “Our intelligentsia may not be allowed freedom of creativity, freedom of thought or speech, but it is far worse for the workers — they do not have the freedom to work, to eat, to rest, to strike or to form their own trade unions. Don’t tell me this isn’t slavery!” The Odessa KGB visited Mr Sery and told him the FTUA “will not be allowed to develop, but will be strangled at birth.” So far the Soviet authorities have treated worker

complaints with contempt. A report in the “Observer,” London, on April 9, 1978, about the Klebanov group was denounced by the Tass news agency as “twaddle from beginning to end.” The Soviet trade unibn newspaper “Trud” called • the group “renegade dissidents with nothing in common with the workers.” The dissident workers' movement appears to have been crushed. But Haynes and Semyonova, in their introduction to the volume of documents, point out that

“no independent workers’ organisations have been seen in the Soviet Union since the 19205." They believe the Klebanov group could be "a turning point in Soviet history’.” A group of professional white-collar workers was also broken up last year, but the Soviet authorities feel more strongly about worker protests than those of the more famous intellectuals, because they question the fundamentals of the regime. 0.F.N.5., copyright.