The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag

by Wladimir Tchertkoff

  “What message would you like me to give to your friends abroad?”

  “That they get an independent medical opinion about my health. I am a doctor, I know what our country is like, our own doctors will only say what the authorities tell them to say”.

  “But will they let someone come and examine you?”

  “I don’t know…”

  Galina does not know what else she can do. She feels powerless, close to having a nervous breakdown. Her blood pressure has risen to 18. I reminded her of the situation she found herself in, in July 1999, when Yury had been imprisoned for twenty two days and she saw him just for an instant through the bars in the prison courtyard, having lost 20 kg, stumbling about before being taken to an unknown destination. At that time she had sent a telegram to Lukashenko expressing her fear and asking him to help her to find her husband. He was found, close to death, in a police cell at Mogilev (200 km from Minsk and from Gomel) , and was transferred from there to the Ministry of the Interior hospital in Minsk. I told Galina that she must remain active, that according to her description, Yury’s state of health was at least as bad as it had been then, if not worse, because of this constant progressive decline brought about by “normal” prison life, and that this situation must be brought to an end by formally confronting the authorities with their responsibilities in writing. I suggested that she ask for an urgent meeting with the “nice” Friend, as the prisoner’s wife and as a doctor, because if the situation was not to become irreversible, action must be taken immediately. The authorities were, in fact, in the process of destroying a scientist of great value to their country ... I suggested that she also write to President Lukashenko. These letters could be transmitted to Sergei Kovalev, ex-Soviet dissident from Moscow, who was to preside over the meeting on November 24th of the sub-commission of the Council of Europe on the “disappeared” of Belarus. Kovalev’s assistant Valentin Mikhailovich Gevtor, has met Galina. He is the director of the Committee for the Defence of the Rights of Scientists in Moscow and he has said that he will make sure that Bandazhevsky’s case is heard. He suggests that his defence committee and the Human Rights Committee at PACE write to Lukashenko and ask him to modify Bandazhevsky’s prison conditions, so that he can work and stay in good health.

  I also asked the lawyer Garri Pogonyailo if asking Lukashenko for an individual amnesty for Bandazhevsky was a valid demand, given that it is a legislative measure. He told me that in fact, in their country, the President also exerts legislative power and is quite open about it. He makes his own decrees and it is he in the end that decides cases of amnesty. He calls up the president of the Supreme Court of Belarus, Sukalo, tells him what to do… and boasts about it on television. He freed an Italian spy sentenced by the court to four years in prison (it was not a pardon, but an individual amnesty), which was considered a humanitarian gesture. President Chirac could ask his counterpart, Lukashenko, to show humanity towards Professor Bandazhevsky and get him to understand how much this gesture would be appreciated.

  P.S. Galina took a walk around the showers close to the visiting room. There, sitting quietly, was a huge rat, weighing about 1kg. There are people with tuberculosis in this prison. She asked her husband if he was coughing. No, he wasn’t coughing. Not for the moment…

  5. MANIPULATION: SECRET PRESSURE EXERTED ON AN INDIVIDUAL

  9th DECEMBER 2002

  Thanks to my telephone conversations with G. Bandazhevskaya I am now in a position to imagine the sort of psychological torture to which her husband has been subjected. I am reminded of what the judge Terekhovich said after a two hour conversation with Yury. “If they wanted to get a confession out of him, they went about it the wrong way”. This time their efforts had been more effective. But even so, they failed. 196

  196 See Part Three, Chapter IV, p. 210.

  Today, Yury Bandazhevsky, born 9th December 1957, is 45. For his birthday, his family was granted, exceptionally, a special four hour prison visit by the governing board of the prison. Galina and her daughter Olga were expecting the visit to be painful or even dramatic given the information they had been receiving shortly before. But, once again, the meeting this time was very joyful.

  Since the prisoner had been transferred from the large dormitory to the room with three beds, the other detainees, who had been sympathetic, are now quite guarded towards him when they meet. Yury feels as if he is in quarantine.

  This time the meeting between Yury and his family took place under heavy surveillance and was quite eventful. Before entering, they had to undergo a whole lot of formalities. Never before had Galina been searched so minutely, after waiting for an hour and a half, out in the cold in temperatures of minus 15 degrees C. The official in charge of surveillance emptied her handbag on the table and scrutinised the piece of paper she had brought to make notes on, against the light of the lamp, for a lengthy period of time. He rummaged around in the bag containing food and presents.

  THE VISIT

  When Galina, her daughter Olga (Natasha, the youngest, had a cold and didn’t come) and her mother-in-law enter the area into which Yury would be brought, the deputy governor of the prison, a man called Los, goes with them. He is a hard man, feared by the inmates, who only makes an appearance when physical threat or intimidation is needed. Yury finds himself outside at the other end of the corridor and hearing their voices, calls out to them, through the open door. Galina starts to answer and is brutally reprimanded by Los: “Shut up! You’ll speak to him when he is here!” Once they are alone, Yury tells them immediately that the room is most probably bugged. He is impatient to see them and very happy. Galina has brought him some presents: his latest book, containing three monographs put together and printed by his brother, a present from colleagues at Belrad, not to be opened until New Year’s Eve (some caviar, a chocolate Santa, a little tart and some candles) and a copy of CRIIRAD’s Trait d’Union, (the bulletin produced by CRIIRAD three or four times a year) which she has hidden under her clothes. They have a good conversation. Yury talks non-stop. Having been alone for so long, his head is bursting with things he needs to tell them. After half an hour someone knocks at the door and in comes an official from the sentencing board: “I have come on orders from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”. Bandazhevsky went white.

  “What’s the matter? What do they want from me?”

  “I have come to give you a health check”.

  Galina asked if he was a doctor.

  “No”

  “Then how can you give an assessment of his health? Even if, from the outside, his health might appear more or less normal for a prisoner, I can tell you, as a doctor, that he is not at all well. This man is ill”.

  Yury knows the man and starts to talk to him: “Why are you doing this to me, why are you hounding me? You know I’m innocent. Why destroy my brain, when it could be still useful to my country? Why are you punishing me so badly?” The man says, in a kindly way: “I understand what you’re saying, but what can we do? We are not the judges, we are not the court... Is anyone bullying you here, insulting you? ” “No”. And off he goes to write his report.

  Three quarters of an hour later, the door is opened again, and the guard shouts: “Bandazhevsky, out here!” Yury is very tense “Why so soon? We were given a four hour visit! ” “You’ve been called to the governor’s office. The women can wait for you here”. Anxiously, Yury asks if Galina can come with him. “No” Once more in a state of distress, at the end of his tether, he goes to see the governor. He comes back after half an hour, looking amused: “I don’t understand anything. It was the political Friend’s deputy who interrogated me: “How is your family? Are there any disagreements between you and your wife? Are you thinking of separating?” “No. I love my family. I have grown up children. I love them. I would never do that..”. “Good, we are pleased to hear it…” It seems clear now that the aim of these “protectors” had been to break the couple up. With Galina�
�s help, we were able to piece together the little game they have been playing over the last few months.

  THE NIGHTMARE OF THE LAST SIX MONTHS

  Although we have no proof that they used psychotropic drugs, what we can be certain of, and can prove, is that Yury was subjected to a form of brainwashing and psychological suggestion techniques. Throughout the summer, they “worked” on Yury, destabilising him by exploiting his psychological vulnerability, his anxiety, the panic attacks that overwhelmed him, by giving him false hope, making promises that could never be fulfilled.

  Already by the winter of 2001, among the many letters of support he was receiving, came a letter from someone called Orlova. She had begun by writing to Galina, saying how moved she had been by what had happened to Yury and pledging her support. She wanted to send parcels to Yury. She wrote to Yury saying that she predicted an improvement in his situation very soon, that she had the gift of clairvoyance and that she could help him from a distance. She started to send him mystic literature and doling out comforting advice and predictions about the future. If he behaved in the way she suggested, she could guarantee that he would bear up well in prison and that he would soon be freed. She copied out prayers and incantations that he must learn by heart… A mixture of religion and magic, which blended subtly into the state of unreality and mental confusion from which he was already suffering. “I am losing contact with reality”, he had written.

  For us, who are on the outside, fighting for his immediate release and moving from one initiative to the next, we cannot say with confidence that we will ever succeed! But Yury, with no bearings to guide him about the reality of any action, has no escape from the daily hopes and expectations, and it is inevitable that he will find himself in free fall. He was responding to Orlova, who was asking him questions and drawing him into her logic. Once she had his attention, Orlova began to suggest that Galina had a negative influence on his destiny, that she was ambitious and was profiting from his fame, and that she would end up losing him. He should not trust his wife, and her behaviour would damage him. If he had the courage to break up with her, he would get out soon. Galina learned all this, first through her mother-in-law and through Yury himself, then through Orlova’s letters, when she began attacking Galina directly. Yury, while he rejected the more outrageous suggestions, was influenced by this woman: “You work for the KGB. I don’t believe you are really helping me” he said to Galina in one of his confused moments. We can say, in fact, that Orlova had finally won his confidence. Then, in June, grafted on top of this, the promises and advice arrived from the political Friend, explaining to Yury in a rational way, how Galina, by informing the West, was not furthering their cause to get him released. From that moment on, Yury’s behaviour was divided. On the one hand, he tried to keep up his links with the West in the hope that he would find support there, and on the other, he was cultivating his friendship with the Friend and being subjected to Orlova’s insinuations. His mind was constantly being pulled in different directions and this led to a crisis of confusion, bordering on depersonalization: “[…] I am not able to make a sober assessment of myself. I no longer believe in what I write […]” He was and still is very aware of losing his mental equilibrium. Galina describes it as a split personality: two parallel personalities expressing themselves alternately, the friend and the enemy, one minute trusting, the next doubting, against a background of depression and exhaustion. This passionate, sensitive and demanding man, who has always sought obsessively to verify his intuitions as a research scientist, is now as deeply buried in his suffering as he was in his science. His thoughts spin round endlessly. He is simultaneously strong and weak.

  In the pleading letter Galina writes in September to the UN, she says:

  It is clear that this man is ill, a victim of our system: they have managed to divide his personality, to make him doubt himself, to disorient him. He has become incapable of resistance, a sort of clay that can be modelled into whatever anyone pleases. In his letters, he says one thing to me, to my questions he replies another. I have before me another man, a broken man, indifferent to everything around him. His eyes, emptied of expression, reflect immense suffering. This is a man whose mind has been broken.

  If Orlova is not a KGB collaborator, she works along curiously similar lines, increasing the pressure on him gradually, until she lost all sense of boundaries. In the winter of 2001, she had presented herself initially to Galina as an Estonian from Tallinn. She said she had learnt of Yury’s case in an article published in Argumenty I Fakty. Galina went to meet her in St Petersburg to accept a parcel from her that had been prepared for Yury by doctors in Estonia, or so she said. Afterwards, Orlova sent food parcels directly to Yury, which the prison accepted quite happily, even though, according to the regulations, only the family had this right, and only at specified times. It is a question of security because who knows what could be smuggled in by unknown people within the food products? When Galina suggested over the telephone that she send Orlova one of Yury’s books, there was now uncertainty about her address: she did not live there any more, there was a friend staying there at the moment, she had changed her passport… in the end, Galina let it go.

  After her attempt to convince Galina that she was harming her husband, Orlova began to insult and curse her, writing that she would lead Yury to his doom if she continued to be involved with him. At the same time she continued to flatter and indoctrinate Yury, who said and wrote to Galina that Orlova was a good person. But ultimately, this manipulator made a fundamental error: she asked Yury to give up his scientific research on the problems of Chernobyl. When he wrote that he could not abandon his science, she blurted out: “You’re an obstinate ass. Your science is shit (sic)”. That was in September. She has not written to him since.

  A little before the meeting on 9th December, an orthodox priest from Gomel, Father Andrei, visited Yury in prison. After the interview, the priest told Galina: “Life is very complicated. Yury is well, he is calm and lucid. He offered me tea with biscuits and French chocolate. He told me things about you: “Galina does not believe in God. Galina does not love me. Galina is using my name. She wants to steal my fame, my brain. She wants to be Bandazhevsky’s Bonner (the wife of Sakharov)… I believe in the friend, he is my anchor and my salvation” During the visit on 9th December, Galina repeated these phrases to her husband. Yury told her he had never said these things, that the priest was lying, that it was monstrous what they were trying to do to them. He was being sincere. His daughter Olga, who came to see him, forewarned and angry (She said, “Don’t play cat and mouse with us”, and was prepared to break off relations with him) is also certain that he is telling the truth. As they left, they said to one another that the man who had stood before them was Yury, the loving husband and father he had always been. When Galina called his mother in the village near Grodno, she told her that Olga had recounted the meeting to her over the telephone, in happy and jubilant terms. This priest is probably another tragic case within the Soviet system, a soul-destroying machine.

  Galina has needed incredible courage and inner calm to withstand these storms, to avoid falling into the contemptible traps that have been laid in her way for months. Her daughters, young and intransigent, as young people are, rebelled against their father, and then resumed the relationship, but Galina herself has the difficult role of providing a solid anchor. Very few people know what it has cost her, is costing her now, and will perhaps cost her in the future. Her attitude recalls the old myth of Ulysses, crossing the Messina Straits, attached to the mast of his boat, resisting the charm of the sirens. Galina is prepared for anything, so long as Yury remains in prison.

  Galina has confirmed to us that everyone in Belarus, including Bandazhevsky’s own prison guards, knows that an enormous injustice has been committed. But it does not change the situation. The decision is and will always be political and depends on Lukashenko.

  As for Lukashenko, Bandazhevsky respects hi
m. He thinks the President is badly advised by those close to him. In a way, he is right. This peasant, ex-director of a kolkhoze who has become head of state, knows nothing about nuclear physics, or medicine. Chirac, Putin, Bush, Schröder and Blair…do not necessarily know any more. All these statesmen, upon whom the future of humanity largely depends, get their information about the subject from the nuclear lobby that has infiltrated all the international institutions responsible.

  17th AND 18th MARCH 2003

  LETTER FROM GALINA BANDAZHEVSKAYA

  You know that we were supposed to have had an extended visit from 17th to 19th March but it was cut short because of a flu epidemic. My youngest daughter and I spent two days at the prison. The visit was very painful for both of us. Especially for Natalia because children feel things differently from adults. She was so shaken and upset when she got home, that she vomited. She asked me not to take her to the prison again because she cannot bear to see her father suffering any more.

  When I saw my husband, it almost made me ill. This man, who used to be full of energy, cheerful and strong, has been transformed into a creature turned in on himself, weak and humiliated. Yury has visibly deteriorated in the short period of time since my last visit (20th January). He has lost between 5 and 7 kilograms, he has aged, his hair is completely white. The problems with his teeth are worse. During the conversation, which was just small talk, our voices seemed too loud and our conversation too fast and too difficult for him to follow. The first day of the visit, he kept saying: “Speak more quietly and slowly, I beg you”. I understood why when I learned that for the past two months he has been alone in his cell. His cellmate was transferred somewhere else. I think that in this situation, being alone has a negative effect. Yury has turned in on himself, closed up, he can stare fixedly at something for a long time murmuring something to himself, or laid out on the bed with his eyes closed. He says: “Pay no attention to me. Talk amongst yourselves. I’m listening”. He has started to believe in God, almost fanatically. He prayed four times during the day. He says that his faith is a great help to him. That only God is just. He refused to change lawyer or to ask for a new trial. “All that is just vanity. In any case, there is neither truth, nor justice”.