24. Lawyer
A few more days passed. After the morning inspection, a guard entered the cell and announced: “Perchatkin — on your way out, to see the lawyer!” I was led to the lawyers’ room. My lawyer was already sitting there.
Hello. My name is Boris Dmitrievich Dogot. I am your lawyer. I know that you do not trust Soviet lawyers, but here is a letter from your wife. I read the letter. Zina wrote that she had a hard time finding a lawyer who agreed to defend me, and that I should by no means refuse.
Do you realize what you are getting into? If you honestly defend me, your career is over, but if you just appear as a lawyer at the trial, then why do I need a lawyer at all?
- You are right, but I am not a careerist.
He got up from the table, leaned on a crutch, thrusting his right leg forward. - Look, I have a prosthesis.
Three years ago my right leg was amputated. Now they propose to amputate my left leg too. I have very little time left to live. I worked for 15 years as the head of an investigative department. I saw all sorts of things there, my conscience torments me. With your case I want to at least partially atone for my guilt. I have already told your wife and I am telling you: ‘I will defend you honestly, trust me.’ To tell the truth, I did not trust the lawyer, but I did not refuse, I did not want to upset Zina.
Over the course of a week, I met with the lawyer every day. On the second day he wrote on paper: “Yesterday I was called to the KGB, they are making me write reports about everything we talk about and what position we will take in court on each count of the indictment. The room is bugged, so whatever you don’t want the KGB to know — write it on paper. I will write reports only about what we talk about aloud.”
We familiarized ourselves with the case together. The lawyer was indignant at how the investigation was conducted.
“Just like in Stalin’s time,” he wrote, “you are accused of what you thought, what you said, and whom you knew. I understand that it is useless to compete with the KGB; they will always be right, and the judge will act according to their instructions, but still we must find a hook and expose them. They tried hard to find people who could testify against you. I discovered that several pages have been torn out of the case file, but I cannot talk about that; they will immediately remove me on any pretext and assign another lawyer. Write a petition to the court and demand an explanation of who tore out the pages and which pages.”
I immediately understood which pages were missing. That the KGB was afraid that in court I would be questioned about the ‘stakans’, chemicals and the syphilis bar, and that they would have to tell everything. Those charges were dropped, and the pages were torn out. Second: “Furthermore, they are building their accusations against you on the basis of broadcasts from ‘Voice of America’, ‘Svoboda’, as well as on some publications abroad. You must write an official statement to the judge and present it in court. With this you will corner both Soviet propaganda and the KGB’s actions. Soviet propaganda claims that Western mass media are full of lies, that all information coming to them from the USSR is processed and presented in their own interests. Soviet propaganda urges people not to believe either ‘Voice of America’ or any other Western media. In your case, more than half of the charges are built on reports from foreign media.
So it turns out that for the KGB, Western media are truthful and authoritative enough that criminal charges can be built on them. This is a dead end for them. Demand that the judge ask the KGB investigators to present proof on what basis the court can believe bourgeois propaganda. It is very good that you did not answer their questions and did not sign anything. They have no weapon — your own words — to cover themselves. Ask the question ‘Who is lying — Western propaganda or the KGB investigators?’” All week I spent 8–10 hours a day with the lawyer, studying the case and preparing the defense.
And so the trial was set for January 22, but for some reason it was postponed to February 2, and on February 2 it was postponed again to March 18.
“Your case is on the agenda at the Madrid meeting. The KGB does not know what to do with you. To give you the sentence they want would be a scandal; to let you go would be a disgrace for them. Right now Moscow is deciding what to do with you, especially since Amnesty International is trying to send its own lawyers to the trial. I think they will not let you go now, but they will not give you a long sentence either,” the lawyer wrote to me.
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