9. Provocations

· Fiery Trails - 1, Vestibule

In Nakhodka, everyone who had received summonses was invited to the passport office and officially told that in September everyone would be allowed to go abroad. “Get your documents in order, sell your houses, quit your jobs, prepare to leave,” they told us. “You have little time. In three or four months, everything must be ready.”
And people did just that. Vasily Patrushev and I warned that this could well be a provocation, but people wouldn’t listen. Some sold their houses, moved in with relatives or friends, quit their jobs, but when the promised September arrived, no one was given permission to leave.
I understood that the authorities were stalling, that they had no intention of letting anyone go. They needed to stop people with false promises so that the Belgrade Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which would be reviewing the Helsinki Agreement, could proceed smoothly.
I decided that, come what may, I would get an answer from the authorities before this conference began. I began urgently persuading everyone who had been promised permission to leave in September — especially those who had lost their homes and jobs — to go and demand some kind of answer. Many did so.
The authorities gave no answer, and the majority of people realized they had been deceived.

Almost until dawn, we, the church council, discussed what to do and came to a decision: if the authorities were afraid of our issue being discussed at the Belgrade Conference, then we must do everything to raise our issue.
We decided to draft an appeal to the participants of the Belgrade Conference, so that the question of the situation of believers in the USSR would be raised, as well as the question of those who had been deceived regarding emigration, and to declare a ten-day hunger strike during the days of the Belgrade Conference. About two hundred people from Nakhodka agreed to participate in the hunger strike. Over three hundred more joined us from other parts of the Soviet Union.
In September, regarding this matter, we organized a press conference at the apartment of Tatyana Velikanova, a member of the Helsinki group. At her apartment, for the first time, representatives of Pentecostals from Russia, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Belarus gathered. Our movement was gaining strength and authority.
After returning to Nakhodka on October 2, 1977, I was summoned to the local KGB office. KGB Major Rudnitsky read me a warning, based on a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, that if I did not cease my activity, I would be held criminally liable. Vladimir Stepanov received the same warning.
On October 10, 1977, the Voice of America broadcast detailed information about our hunger strike and its cause. And the Voice of America is the most popular radio station in the Soviet Union.
All this time I was under surveillance by KGB agents. They openly followed me, my wife, and my mother. They set up the same surveillance on Stepanov and Patrushev. It was tight control. During the prayer meetings at the time of this hunger strike, a special spirit of unity was felt among church members. A whole delegation of party officials, representatives of the prosecutor’s office, the police, and the KGB came to one of the meetings. During the meeting, they asked for an opportunity to speak with the people.
“Comrades! You have fallen under the influence of religious extremists, dissidents, anti-Soviet elements who are pushing you onto the path of violating Soviet laws,” orated Chupin, the commissioner for religious affairs. “Stop the hunger strike! After all, as of today, you are not being persecuted, not being thrown in prison. Tell me, when was the last time anyone was convicted?”
“Only last year the last one was released,” someone replied.
“Well, this year none of you were imprisoned,” Chupin continued, “and we will not touch you in the future. Yes, there were things before, we don’t deny it, we went too far, but now you can pray in peace. Register, and if the local authorities offend you, why complain abroad? Come to me.”
“You say that because abroad they learned about your crimes, otherwise you would be speaking to us differently now. We don’t believe you. Anyway, you’ll deal with us later, when we calm down and they forget about us abroad.” From all sides came cries: “We don’t believe you, we don’t believe you, we don’t believe you.”
Then the prosecutor spoke, saying that by our actions we were breaking the law by feeding bourgeois propaganda. For this, at least three could bear criminal responsibility. Everyone understood who those three were. And one by one they stood up and said: “If you arrest them, take me too.” Within a minute, our entire congregation was on its feet. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Each one was ready to lay down his life for his friends.
They all stood before the prosecutor, and I was sure that each one was now ready to go into chains, each one was ready to suffer for his neighbor. But, unfortunately, I was mistaken; we did not know then that each of us would be tested, and we did not know how many of us would remain after such testing in two or three years. I would not have believed then that of those who first shouted (“Arrest me too”), two, five years later, would be working for the KGB, reporting with talent — with heart — ruthlessly, eagerly, and would help put me away for a second term.

Our church was unregistered, underground. We didn’t have a building and held our services in homes. Whoever had a larger house, that’s where we gathered. Lately we had been meeting at Anna Chuprina’s home. A couple weeks after our conversation with the prosecutor, as I was walking to work in the morning, I met Stepanov.

— This is banditry, plain banditry,” he said, greeting us.
What’s the matter?
“What, you don’t know? The Chuprynas’ house has been wrecked.”
“Wrecked? There was a service there just yesterday.”
“Yes, the service ended at nine, and around eleven, they started smashing up their house. Come, you’ll see for yourself.”
We went over to the Chuprynas’ house. All the windows were smashed, the frames broken. The walls were pitted with dents from stones. Plaster had fallen off. The roof was pierced in many places. We went inside. The whole floor was covered with stones and broken glass. The stones were fist-sized and larger. We were amazed that the entire Chupryna family had survived. It turned out they had managed to run into an inner room where the stones didn’t reach. We counted forty-two cobblestones on four beds. Sergei Onishchenko photographed everything right there. The Chuprynas called the police. A policeman wrote a report and left. That same day, we helped repair the house.
A few days later, Mrs. Chupryna was summoned to the police.
“Just think, some hooligan threw a stone at a window,” said the police chief, smirking. “No one wrecked your house. This is a provocation. You want to send this information abroad as a fact of persecution of believers. How can you prove your house was wrecked?”
“We repaired the house, but we have photographs of what it looked like before the repairs.”
“You have photographs? Interesting, bring them, let’s take a look.”
When Mrs. Chupryna brought the photos, a KGB officer was sitting in the police chief’s office. He looked through the photos.
“Who took these photos and why? What do you intend to do with them?”
“Why are you asking who took the photos and why? You ought to be concerned with who wrecked my house, and to look for whoever did it.”
“Oh, so you wrecked your own house in order to take pictures and send them abroad.”
After such a brazen response, Mrs. Chupryna started crying and went home.
This had to be reported abroad. But doing so had become far from easy. We were separated from Moscow by ten thousand kilometers. To buy a plane ticket, you had to show your passport; travelling by train took almost seven days, and in that time you could be taken off the train more than once.
Our first attempt to get to Moscow with these documents came a month later, but it failed. Stepanov, Mrs. Chupryna, and I arrived at Vladivostok Airport, which is about one hundred forty kilometers from Nakhodka. We went into the airport building. Looked around. There seemed to be no tail. I went up to the ticket counter. A young female cashier sat behind the counter – looked like she’d just finished school.
“Any tickets to Moscow?” I asked.
“Let me check,” the cashier replied. “Yes, there is a departure in two hours.”
“I need three tickets.”
“Your passports, please.”
I handed over the passports. She opened my passport, looked at me, then at the passport, then at me again, and again at the passport.
“Just a moment,” and she disappeared with the passports.
“We’re done for,” I thought.
A few minutes later the cashier returned and, to my surprise, overflowing with politeness, wrote out three tickets. I thanked her, and we went to the waiting area on the second floor. We sat so that we could see the entire hall – I’d already developed the habit of sitting in a way that would allow me to spot a tail.
About fifteen to twenty minutes later, I noticed an odd character, about fifty years old. He wore an old, grimy hat, a shabby, worn coat. He looked like a collective-farm peasant from the provinces, the kind who flew local airlines. Yet this “peasant” had magnificent, expensive shoes and trousers clearly from a costly suit.
“Strange character,” I said to Stepanov. “Look how he’s dressed.”
“Yes, I noticed.”
A few minutes later, this strange “peasant” walked past us several times, occasionally stopping as if reading the flight schedule. Then he disappeared, but two young types appeared who made no secret of watching us. We started discussing what to do: go back home, not tempting fate, or carry on? We decided to fly. After talking it over, we told Mrs. Chupryna to take the bag with the documents and photographs and hide everything in her clothes.
Mrs. Chupryna went to the restroom. The two types rushed after her. The agents were at a loss – evidently, their instructions hadn’t covered such a situation – and then they brazenly barged into the women’s room, only to dash right back out.
Boarding was announced. We no longer saw any open tail. We checked in. Then the line moved to baggage screening, where we had to pass through a magnetic arch that reacted to metal objects. Mrs. Chupryna went first. Immediately a red light flashed and an alarm rang. Mrs. Chupryna was taken to a screening room. Stepanov went second. The same thing happened. He, too, was taken away.
“Enough playing games. It’ll ring for me too, without even going through the arch,” I said to the KGB agent standing next to the policeman. “Call whoever needs me around here.”
From behind the magnetic arch, as if from behind a corner, appeared a smiling KGB Lieutenant Colonel Bykov. He had heard what I said.
“Come on, come on, Boris Georgievich, let’s have a chat.”
He brought me into a room furnished with expensive furniture. Two people were sitting there: the already familiar “peasant,” who turned out to be the deputy head of the regional KGB directorate, Colonel Yubko. The second man introduced himself as follows:
“I am a general, and I’m forced to spend my time on you, even though I have enough to do without you. What do you intend to do with these photographs in Moscow?” He threw onto the table the photos taken from Mrs. Chupryna.
I refused to answer his question.
“Look here, Boris Georgievich, the file on you is growing. I’m not threatening you, I’m just telling it like it is. The time will come when that file will have to be opened by a prosecutor. I’m not here for nothing; I came to warn you, at a rather high level, even though you’ve already received a government warning. You’ll go back home now, and I am warning you: from today on, for a month, you are not to leave Nakhodka. From today, you are under house arrest. And if you truly want to leave the country, that’s not the way to do it.”
After these words he fell silent, looked at me, expecting me to ask, “How?” I said nothing.
“What, do you disdain to ask a KGB man for advice? I’ll give you advice: break all your ties with dissidents and foreign diplomats, and in general, die to politics.”
“I’m not a politician, and I have never been involved in politics,” I said.
“Don’t pretend. You understand perfectly well that you’re being used in big-time politics.”
“Then don’t provide material for big-time politics, don’t persecute us, and don’t prevent those who disagree with you from leaving the Union.”
“Well, there you go – see what you’ve just said, and you claim you’re not a politician. That’s pure politics. Sit quietly for about a year, don’t advise anyone, don’t complain anywhere, cut everyone off from yourself, think only about your family, then quietly submit your documents, and we’ll let you go. Only it must be quiet and unnoticed.”
“You are mistaken; leaving is not my goal.”
“Well, I consider our conversation finished. We have understood each other perfectly. God grant we never meet again. And think over my advice together with your wife.”
Upon arriving home, I immediately phoned Gleb Yakunin and told him everything.
A few days later, Mrs. Chupryna received a letter from the U.S. Embassy. She was invited to the embassy for a conversation, and she could bring accompanying persons if she wished.
The Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs had assured the U.S. Embassy that the Soviet authorities would not obstruct entry into the U.S. Embassy. We took this letter as a safe-conduct. We bought tickets in advance and again, with the same group, went to the airport. Nobody detained us. Late in the evening, the plane landed in Moscow. We went to Vadim and Zarina Shcheglov, religious dissidents from Yakunin’s group. It was a unique group in which Orthodox Christians, Pentecostals, Baptists, Adventists, and other religious currents united. The doors of Vadim and Zarina’s apartment were always open to everyone who needed help, so despite the late hour, we went there.
In the morning, Vadim and I discussed the purpose of our trip. We were sitting in the kitchen drinking tea. Vadim was sitting near the window.
“I don’t like the look of that green Zhiguli car. However long I’ve been watching, two people are sitting in it and not leaving. I’ll go to work, and you keep an eye on that car. It looks to me like you’ve brought a tail with you,” Vadim said.
We started watching the car. It kept sitting there, only the people in it changed. A Volga would pull up, bring some, take others away. We were being followed.
In the morning, we called the embassy and arranged to arrive at the embassy exactly at ten o’clock. An embassy employee promised to meet us.
“Boris,” Zarina said to me, “we have some papers that we simply cannot get to the West. They must not fall into the hands of the KGB – if they do, people may suffer. With an invitation like yours, the KGB won’t risk detaining you, and even though they’ve set up surveillance, they shouldn’t detain you – after all, they assured the embassy of that.”
“Of course, we’ll take these papers,” I replied. “Only, if it’s that serious, we can’t carry them openly; anything could happen.”
I took out my suit, in which I planned to go to the embassy, handed the trousers to Zarina, and pointed to the waistband.
“Put them here.”
The information was on thin cigarette paper. Zarina ripped open the seam of the waistband, inserted the paper, and sewed it up.
As soon as we stepped out of the apartment, the Zhiguli started moving slowly behind us; there were already four people inside. When we got on the bus, more KGB agents appeared from somewhere. Even though we had the embassy invitation, the open presence of the KGB made us nervous. Next to me stood a burly, bull-necked guy about twenty-eight. When we boarded the metro car, I saw him next to me again. I couldn’t hold back and said:
“Aren’t you ashamed, walking around tracking people? Get an education, acquire a skill, you’d feel like a human being, but instead you’re stomping around after me. That’s how your whole life will pass, stomping behind someone.”
“Just wait, you’ll talk yourself into trouble,” he replied.
We kept arguing like that until we arrived. We got off at the bus stop, located about a hundred meters from the embassy. There were people standing there, ten or twelve. They suddenly formed a crowd and moved toward us. And in front, a policeman appeared from nowhere.
I immediately understood that this crowd had created a human wall to shield us from the embassy employee, who had already come out and was waiting for us.
“Hey, fellows, hold on, where are you heading?” said the policeman. “Come on, show me your passports.”
We handed him our passports. He took them, put them in his pocket.
“Come with me.”
“What’s the matter?” I protested.
“We’ll sort it out at the police station,” the policeman replied.
Just then, two more policemen appeared from behind. Around the corner, some twenty meters from the stop, a police van was parked. The police station was nearby, and about five minutes later we were in the duty officer’s waiting room.
For about four hours, nobody paid us any attention. I was worried about Zarina’s papers I was carrying. I needed to get rid of them so they wouldn’t fall into the hands of the KGB. I asked to go to the toilet, thinking I’d dispose of the papers there. I had done that once before, but this time the accompanying policeman wouldn’t let me be alone.
An hour later, two men in civilian clothes came into the waiting room. One of them pointed at Stepanov:
“You’re going to go fetch your things now.”
“I don’t remember the way.”
“Never mind, we know it,” replied the second.
I couldn’t refuse too strongly, so as not to arouse suspicion, and I said to Stepanov:
“Be careful not to mix up my briefcase. It’s just like Zarina’s, and I have money in it.”
Stepanov was taken away. About an hour and a half later, they returned. Stepanov handed me Zarina’s briefcase. I opened it.
“What kind of briefcase have you brought me? I warned you not to mix them up. Look what he brought me.”
The KGB agent stepped out, returned about ten minutes later, and said:
“All three of you, into the car. Now you,” he pointed at me, “will pick up your things, and from there, to prison. You’ll sit for three days, and then we’ll see what to do with you.”
When we reached the door of Vadim and Zarina’s apartment, the KGB man rang the bell and hid behind my back so he wouldn’t be seen through the peephole. Vadim opened the door. I shoved the agent aside and rushed into the apartment.
“Vadim, the KGB’s after me!”
Vadim understood at once. Together we pressed against the door and locked it. The agents cursed and pushed against the door. I ran into the living room. Gleb Yakunin was already there. Zarina understood everything without words. She ran up to me and began pulling out the papers, while Yakunin was already dialing Sakharov’s number so I could explain what had happened. The KGB men were hammering at the door. I didn’t want any trouble for Vadim and Zarina, so I very briefly told Sakharov everything, and began recounting things in more detail to Gleb while Zarina extracted her papers. Vadim stood by the door the whole time, arguing with the KGB agents. I took my own briefcase and left the apartment.
“We can go,” I said. “Here’s my briefcase.”
“Well, what a nerve you have,” one of the KGB men said.
They took us to prison. Mrs. Chupryna was hysterical:
“I have an invitation to the embassy!”
The KGB agents paid no attention. One of them shoved her in the back.
“You’re being invited to a cell now.”
Mrs. Chupryna was taken away. Then Stepanov and I were put into separate cells. I went on hunger strike.
Three days later, we were escorted to the airport and sent back to Vladivostok.

1977 was drawing to a close. Christmas was approaching. At one of the meetings, I suggested sending Christmas greetings to the President of the United States and the entire American people, and calling on them to pray for those who do not have freedom of religion. I composed the text of the telegram and took it to the post office. I put my own return address. Two days later, I received a summons to the KGB. The KGB building in Nakhodka looks like an ordinary building. An ordinary three-story building. It gets lost among the houses cascading down to the sea. You’d walk past and never think it’s the KGB. No sign, just the address: Portovaya, 22.

I opened the heavy, massive door and found myself in a small corridor. The door behind me smoothly clicked shut. I started to open the door ahead. Locked. “Maybe it’s lunch break?” I thought, and wanted to leave, but the rear door wouldn’t open either. From the inside, it could only be opened from the street. I was trapped. “Some system,” I thought, and at that moment, a small window opened in the wall to the right, one you wouldn’t notice right away. A voice came from the window: “Who do you want?”

I peered through the window. Inside, everything was arranged so you couldn’t see anyone. I silently shoved the summons through. The voice said: “Wait.”

What else could I do, unable to go forward or back. A few minutes later, the door ahead opened, and I saw KGB Major Rudnitsky. He was about my age. Lean, tall, broad-shouldered. I had been hearing about him for a long time. Ten years earlier, he had been a “mechanic at the bus depot” and worked with believers. But no one suspected then that he was a KGB senior lieutenant. He gained the trust of believers, started attending meetings. But one day, Rudnitsky appeared before the believers in the uniform of a KGB senior lieutenant and as the head of the KGB’s anti-religion department. But now he was already a major.

“Welcome,” Rudnitsky said with a smile, and led me into a spacious room on the left side of the entrance. It was the “Lenin Room,” or a classroom. Chairs stood in rows throughout the room, and at the front, a speaker’s podium. I glanced quickly at the chairs and estimated that about fifty people worked here. Rudnitsky noticed this at once.

“You’re no fool,” he said. “No sooner in the door than you’re figuring out how many of us there are. Right, I’d have done the same.” He placed the telegram on the table in front of me.

“This telegram won’t do.”

“Why?”

“First, it’s anti-Soviet, and second, it’s foreign policy, and foreign policy is handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

“What makes it anti-Soviet?”

“The fact that you call on people to pray for those without freedom of religion.”

“Can you answer for the whole world? Is there freedom everywhere in the world?”

“For the whole world – no, but here – there is freedom.”

“The telegram doesn’t say there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, or that people should pray specifically for the Union.”

“All the same, you mean yourselves,” Rudnitsky said, yawning.

“Since you’re so perceptive, you understand perfectly well that we have no freedom, and that’s why you won’t let this telegram through.”

“We have different understandings of freedom,” Rudnitsky said, already irritated. “We believe that for you, there’s more than enough freedom. So this telegram isn’t going anywhere. It will be attached to your future criminal case. Well, all right,” he continued, calmer now, “now I want to talk to you simply as one person to another. You know, I grew up in an orphanage, without parents. My father was shot under Stalin, but I don’t hold a grudge against Soviet power, because I know my father didn’t understand the spirit of the times. Now I work for the system that destroyed my father. Now is a new time, and I strengthen this system and consider it the most just.” I looked at Rudnitsky and thought: “What a terrible man sits before me. They killed his father, robbed him of his childhood, made him an orphan, and he became the heir of the murderers and even prides himself on it.”

“So, you haven’t been abroad,” he went on, “but I’ve been four times: to Japan, America, Australia, and Canada, and I saw homeless people there, unemployment, and hunger. What do you lack here? What do you need? You have a good apartment, a car, work, you’ve got everything.”

“Yes, you’re right, all the unemployed and homeless are in prison, and there are no problems. And I do have everything, and the KGB is always near, and prison is always waiting.”

I understood that he was drawing me into conversation to catch me out in my words.

“Man shall not live by bread alone,” I replied. “Excuse me, I have no further desire to talk.”

1978 arrived. In Moscow, arrests came one after another. Almost every month, I had to write protests in defense of someone who had been arrested.

And, surprisingly, in the last three years, none of us had been imprisoned. The authorities, leaving us alone, had shifted their blow to the human rights movement. We understood that once the KGB dealt with the dissidents, they would thus isolate us from the West and from the global Christian community, and then thousands-strong stages of believers would be sent to the camps. But the authorities failed to account for one thing and were mistaken: we ourselves had already become part of the human rights movement, we could now act independently. After each arrest in Moscow, the Nakhodka KGB, despite the fact that we were so far from Moscow, conducted ten or twelve searches a day.

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