The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag

by Wladimir Tchertkoff

  Since the “improvement” in the conditions in which he was being detained last June, Professor Bandazhevsky has undergone an intense and systematic process of brainwashing and disinformation. This distorted his perception of reality. The politician who made out to Bandazhevsky and to the delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, directed by Behrendt, that he was receptive to the requests from the West, was using him as bait in the show of strength between the European Union and Belarus about the Bandazhevsky affair. We know now, from Behrendt, that releasing Bandazhevsky was indeed one of the conditions for admitting Belarus to the Council of Europe (the Belarus parliament wanted this to happen very much, but Lukashenko less so).

  The cell with the three beds, the television and the computer, in the area of the prison hospital, where Bandazhevsky was transferred in June, functioned in reality, far from the view of the other prisoners, as a laboratory of neuro-psychological repression and manipulation, aimed at dragging a confession of guilt out of him and a request for pardon. People who know something about (or have experienced) the totalitarian Soviet system are convinced that psychotropic drugs were administered to the prisoner to break his spirit and to confuse him. This is the only plausible explanation for the state in which his wife found him after three months in these “improved” conditions. On 17th September, she wrote:

  I have only once seen him in the state he is in today: it was the day he came out of the Prosecutor’s office, flanked by prison guards, when he had been informed of the accusations made against him. But then he had been alone, for a month, isolated from the world, with no contact, no lawyer. Under pressure from the “authorities” who wanted him to admit his guilt.

  I don’t understand what is happening to him today. I ask myself over and over again what has caused this brutal change in his state of health, this sudden deterioration over such a short period of time. He is suffering from insomnia, he complains of pains in his heart, and in his stomach. He says that he is incapable of making an objective or professional judgement about anything he is doing. He says “Even I don’t even believe what I am writing any more”. He feels useless and disempowered, which makes him feel even more depressed. In the state he is in at present, I think it is unlikely that he will even last a year.

  Thrown into confusion by the sudden improvement in his conditions at the beginning of June, and the renewed hope it inspired in him, by the promises that he might soon be freed if only he would take notice of the advice being given to him to suspend contact with his wife—because she “talks too much” and gives useless information to the West, by the harsh criticisms of Galina made by his own mother, who had herself been taken in by the “Friend’s” promises, telling her son that she was “taking advantage of Western support”, Yury kept his distance, adopted a cold attitude and refused contact with his family who did not understand him any more. This distance had been very painful for his daughters. He never wrote to them, did not invite them to visit (according to the regulations, it is up to the prisoner to invite those closest to them) even though their grandmother was permitted several unscheduled three day visits from the prison governor during which she criticised Galina harshly (Galina only learned of this by chance in July). Galina, already persecuted and humiliated at the Gomel Institute who had removed her from her post as head of department, and now unjustly slandered by her mother-in-law, somehow found the strength to rise above this manipulation. At the height of his confusion, Yury went so far as to say that he no longer trusted his wife, that her appeals for help were doing him more harm than good, that she and her friends in the West were perhaps even taking advantage of his imprisonment and of his scientific work.

  How much of this confusion was real, and how much a calculated pretence to protect himself and his family? Yury knows that when he speaks “they” are listening, when he writes “they” are reading. He cannot speak or write freely. When he opens his mouth or puts pen to paper to address those closest to him he has to think about “them” at the same time. We have to decode it: ostensibly turning away from those he loves may be to protect them. When, eventually, Yury wrote to his daughters inviting them to visit, the letter never arrived. His daughters, who were still very young, had no awareness of the way the system cynically manipulates people’s perceptions and feelings, could not understand his silence and were very hurt. Their immediate reaction was indignation. In any case, today, these machinations appear to have been thwarted. Galina and Yury have broken the vicious circle, regained their humanity and have found each other again.

  Of course, Bandazhevsky is still frightened. One of the two policemen, who sleep in his cell, has killed three people: “When I go to sleep at night” he confided to his lawyer, “I’m not sure that I will wake up the next morning. I don’t know what he’s doing here”. But he has pulled himself together and seems to have decided not to give in to his fear but to fight it. Galina, for her part, says that she would not be surprised if a car ran her over in the street. But she also is determined to keep us informed, despite her fear. She asked me: “Don’t forget my daughters”. She knows that her existence, her resolve, her freedom of speech is causing real problems for their enemies.

  Bandazhevsky’s mother has also understood that she was wrong to believe in the politician’s promises and to follow his advice to sever the links between her son and Galina. I was present during one of the many conversations between Galina and her mother-in-law, when she apologised for the wrong she did to her son, and asked Galina to forgive her for having slandered her. She also recounted that on one of the last of the unscheduled visits she had been granted, she witnessed an attempt by his gaolers to wrest a confession of guilt from Yury and a request for pardon. Twice, the text that Yury had written himself was rejected by the prison governors and sent back to him on the grounds that it was insufficient. On the third occasion, Yury was called into the governor’s office, and after a lengthy period, he came back, afraid he might have committed a folly, in signing a third option. The lawyer went to see him the day before yesterday and asked him if it was true. Yury confirmed the facts adding that he had rewritten the text in front of five (five!) uniformed colonels who demanded in a threatening manner that he sign a complete confession of guilt. Yury dictated to the lawyer the main part of the text that he had signed:

  During my time at the centre for re-education through work I have reflected a lot about my destiny and about everything that has happened to me. Having analysed my situation and perceiving it now as a divine punishment for the sins that I committed in my life, I am using all my strength now in expiating them. I am asking that the act of remission be examined with humanity, if only in a minimal way, and to be relegated from the re-education centre to the penal colony. In pursuing my scientific work to protect the inhabitants in the Chernobyl region and in order to preserve the nation, I would be of more use than I am in the re-education colony where I am detained.

  GOING BACK IN TIME TO RECONSTRUCT THE FACTS

  On 16th July 2002, Galina, who was visiting her parents in a village near Grodno, receives a message by telephone from the son of Yury’s secretary: he says that she needs to take 500,000 roubles to Yury in prison, by the 18th July at the latest. She is told that it is very important. Galina does not have that amount of money. She does not understand but asks her brother Sasha who lives in Minsk, to find it. Sasha borrows, gets together 400,000 roubles and takes them to the prison at the required time. The young prison officer in charge of Yury has never handed over so much money to a prisoner and does not dare take it. Sasha asks him to go and ask Yury. The officer said he can’t do that because it is the last day of the prisoner’s extended visit from his mother. This was the occasion on which Galina learns that her mother-in-law has been given permission to make unscheduled visits without the knowledge of the family. Several weeks have gone by during which Galina has not received any letters from Yury whereas before she would get one every two or three day
s. Later she will learn from her repentant mother-in-law that in mid July (when the demand for money was made), the Friend had promised her that Yury was going to be got out of prison soon and extradited abroad. An absurd promise that never came to anything but that kept Yury in a state of impatience and exhausted stress, in expectation of favourable events. It was like banging your head against the wall, like a cat playing with a mouse.

  To avoid despair in prison, one needs to give up any hope in the short term. It is only in these last few days that Yury has broken free of this psychological blackmail.

  On 26th August, Galina obtains an interview with the prison governor and reproaches him for the way he has organised visits to Yury without his wife or his children’s knowledge. She demands an explanation. The governor, his face red with anger, denies vehemently that any meeting took place between 16th and 18th July and forbids her from asking him this sort of question in the future. The same day, he allows Galina a brief visit to Yury where she speaks to him by telephone through the glass screen. It was at this moment that Galina who has not seen Yury for three months notices the physical and psychological deterioration in her husband’s health. (On 6th September she will write her appeal for help to the UN Commission on Human Rights. The letter has since been widely disseminated195.) During this meeting she learns from her husband that the twice yearly three day visit with his family, planned for 5th September, will not now take place, because he has already “used up” his allotted visits with his mother.

  195 Request for urgent action to be taken at the UN. “[…] After 5th June (the date from which conditions improved), letters from my husband arrived less and less frequently, he did not want to talk about science, he was no longer interested in his children, in family affairs. When I saw my husband again after an interval of three months (during which time he had no visiting rights), I did not recognise him. The man in front of me was a stranger, someone who had been crushed, indifferent to his surroundings. His eyes were empty of all emotion and expressed only extreme suffering. His identity had been crushed, split in two. He asked me for a divorce but added that I should not believe anything he said or did at the moment. He begged me to remember the situation he was in and the plotting that was going on all around him. I could see his suffering and that he could not talk to me as openly as he wanted. But in any case he seemed incapable of expressing his thoughts clearly. He told me that his thoughts were jumbled up inside his head and that the same ideas would keep coming back like a record that has got stuck in a groove. “I don’t know what’s happening to me, I can’t think clearly about myself” he told me… ”

  Yury has lost a lot of weight since the last time: his eyes are staring and have dark rings around them. His teeth are crumbling and falling out. But it is his psychological and emotional state that she is most worried about. He is in a state of deep depression, indifferent to everything, even his scientific work. He just keeps saying during their meeting “I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care... I can’t explain the enormous pressure I’m under here. My brain is like a broken record that has got stuck in the same groove. I’ll never write anything again. I am not going to work on Chernobyl again.

  He tells her that his two cell mates are cops. One of them is a murderer. The promised telephone call to his family, granted to him during the visit of the delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, has been cancelled. His daughter Olga has never received the letter he wrote inviting her to visit.

  Galina is struck by his strange indifference to everything. By his leaps of logic—he contradicts himself several times during their meeting. He says “You’re working for the KGB. I don‘t believe you want to help me”. At the same time, he begged her on bended knee to bring his two daughters on 17th September, the day that had been fixed for a visit by telephone through the glass screen.

  Galina had a long telephone conversation with Yury’s mother to tell her the news and ask her why she had said such terrible things about Galina to her son. Yury’s elderly mother was very shaken by Galina’s description, recognised her mistake and asked Galina to forgive her. It is the sad old cliché of the difficult relationship between a mother and her daughter-in-law. Bandazhevsky’s enemies made the most of the situation to incite him to break his links with the West.

  On 6th September, we meet the lawyer, Baranov, coming out of the prison. He confirms what Galina has said about her husband’s state of health and tells us we need to get him out quickly: “By next year, we could have lost Professor Bandazhevsky”, he claims. Yury has given Baranov a short letter, written in his presence, to give to us.

  Dear friends!

  An enormous thank you for your support. I am aware of it all the time, it helps me to live. I am working as much as I can on the problems I was involved with before. The lawyer, Baranov, will tell you about my health. In spite of a series of difficult circumstances, including some of a family nature, I will never abandon my task. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your understanding.

  With profound gratitude, I remain always respectfully yours.

  On the other side of the paper in larger writing:

  If you need any objective information about my case, please ask my lawyer, A.P. Baranov.

  Bandazhevsky

  The lawyer Pogonyailo asked if he could visit. This was refused. Besides, Bandazhevsky is afraid of having contact with him: he was vice president of the Helsinki Group of Belarus…Lukashenko did not like him.

  On 17th September, a brief scheduled visit. Galina has decided to confront Yury with the underlying situation, to reason with her husband explaining how he has been duped, and manipulated. She was afraid that he would refuse to hear it, but he listens attentively and begins to share her analysis. “Carry on, carry on, I’m beginning to see more clearly, I agree with you, I think your analysis is right”. After this meeting, Yury gradually frees himself from the psychological grip of his gaolers, cautiously accepting the risk of communicating more freely with his family, of showing his attachment to them.

  On 3rd October. Yesterday, on 2nd October, the lawyer, Baranov, met Galina at the station in Minsk, after he left the prison. Galina says he was very agitated, worried, even fearful: “They are putting pressure on him, seriously ill-treating him”, he told her. “A few days ago, he was taken out of his cell while they searched it top to bottom. They are looking for something in his papers. They haven’t found anything. Letters arrive rarely. Nothing from Galina. He has written to Olga, but the letters never arrive”.

  Galina had given a letter to the lawyer to give to Yury. Baranov took it reluctantly, because it could have been confiscated and its contents were controversial. Yury read it, wrote his reply on the spot and gave it back to the lawyer. Baranov was not searched but he is frightened. He is very concerned about how important the Bandazhevsky case is to the authorities. He warned Galina: “I will not be going next week; I need to get myself together”.

  Galina tells me that she has just had a conversation with the cultural attaché at the French embassy, Sylvie Lemasson, who told her: “Your letter of appeal to the UN has come at the right moment. The European ambassadors sent a telegram to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Belarus, , who replied by telegram saying they would look into the case and that they would allow one of the ambassadors to visit Professor Bandazhevsky”.

  What to do? Inundate Alexander Lukashenko with letters asking him to grant an individual amnesty? The President of Belarus has that prerogative. This humanitarian gesture (towards his own people as much as the scientist) would have a good effect on public opinion in Europe and all over the world.

  4. HIS STATE OF HEALTH DETERIORATES

  7th NOVEMBER 2002

  Yesterday evening I talked to G. Bandazhevskaya.

  On 4th November, Bandazhevsky had been allowed to see members of his family for three days, during the regulation extended visit. This time, a larg
er room had been provided with three small beds. Yury’s mother had stayed for two days, his two daughters two days, and Galina stayed two hours, giving up her place so that the others could stay (the regulations stipulate a maximum of three visitors at a time).

  In spite of the joy she felt at seeing how happy Yury was when he saw the three of them approaching him, Galina has not yet recovered from the feeling of anxiety that remained after the meeting. She sees a young and dynamic man fading away. “It’s difficult to say at what point I noticed the change that has come over him in a very short space of time”. she told me “He is ill. He is very weak; he has no energy any more. At the end of our two hours together, he was covered in sweat and needed to lie down because he had no more strength. He has a headache all the time; he has got used to the pain in his heart; he has no appetite any more and forces himself to eat but the reality is that he hardly eats anything. He is continually depressed. He is constantly afraid of the murderer who sleeps in his cell and keeps him under surveillance.

  There is still a lot of pressure being exerted on him. He has confessed to his wife that his gaolers have made him sign a false declaration”: a statement saying that he does not want to meet anyone outside his family, no human rights defenders, no representatives from NGOs, no politicians. On the other hand, the notorious Friend continues to visit frequently, with no prior notice, and has convinced him that he really does want to help him, but that his “powers are not limitless”.

  The one positive element of the meeting last Monday was that after long months of silence and incomprehension, Yury and his two daughters have been completely reunited. The two girls came home reassured that they have not lost his love. But the meeting left them with feelings of fear, anxiety and pain. Because the father they saw is unrecognisable. Galina still does not understand what it is that is wearing him down so badly. She asked him: