The Final Statement

‘I will no longer waste my time arguing with the prosecutor, because an argument can only be made against certain theses supported by evidence. I simply do not know how to respond to insults with insults.’

Citizens of the Court!

I must confess that I have been an incorrigible optimist all my life, and I will probably die one. At first, I sent petitions to the highest authorities, naively hoping for some positive results. Even the entirely unexpected result–imprisonment–did not completely disillusion me. I still had a little of my rosy optimism left this very morning, at the beginning of the court hearing. My innocence seemed so obvious to me. But gradually, as the hearing proceeded, my rosy optimism began to turn into black pessimism. I saw clear signs of prejudice and realised that I would not be able to stop this operation or prove that I was not a camel. My motion to summon witnesses and admit documents was rejected without any reasoned explanation; the evidence I presented at the beginning of the hearing was left undiscussed; every effort was made to avoid addressing the substance of the case, relying instead on a limited arsenal of labelling terms. A heavy atmosphere gradually descended upon the courtroom, culminating in Prosecutor Sadovsky’s closing speech, from which I even learned things I had never heard before, either from the investigator or from the indictment.

It turns out that I am also a nationalist. I would just like to clarify–a bourgeois nationalist or perhaps a socialist one? I did not touch upon the national question in my statements. This conclusion is based solely on the fact that I wrote about violations of the law committed in Ukraine. But if I lived in Tambov and wrote something similar, what kind of nationalist would I be then–a Tambov nationalist? Lviv prosecutors cannot help but associate nationalism with cases of this kind, like mine. They probably see a bourgeois nationalist in every other person.

The prosecutor frequently quotes Lenin’s oft-repeated words about the ‘unified cooperation of the Great Russian and Ukrainian proletarians’. But one cannot rely on a single quotation all the time; Lenin’s nationalities theory must be considered as a whole. I must remind the state prosecutor that, already in Soviet times, when the USSR existed, Lenin repeatedly emphasised that local nationalism does not arise on its own, that it is always a reaction to great-power chauvinism, and that the best way to combat nationalism is to eradicate its root cause–chauvinism. These instructions from Lenin were reflected in the resolutions of Party congresses until the very beginning of the 1930s, when Stalin finally began implementing his own nationalities policy.

The prosecutor has made another discovery: apparently, I am merely repeating someone else’s ideas. He identifies some American named Ewenstein as the source of my thoughts. Perhaps the state prosecutor could tell me where I might read the Ewenstein he has quoted? After all, under Article 62 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR, people here are prosecuted merely for reading such books, regardless of whether they share the opinions expressed in them. The state prosecutor simply cannot imagine that a person might form their own thoughts and convictions without the help of Ewensteins or anyone else. Apparently, I am also guilty because my covering letter to Shelest was broadcast by Radio Liberty and published in the journal Suchasnist. This fact is being dwelt upon with particular relish, although it has not the slightest bearing on the charges before the court today. The state prosecutor even speculates that perhaps I personally handed over these materials, and that the inaccurate information about my identity published alongside them was merely a clever ploy. What are these assumptions based on? Nothing but a desire to create a tense atmosphere in the courtroom.

The prosecutor also recalled Shelest’s speech at the 23rd Congress of the CPSU, in which the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine named several talented young people working in the arts and sciences. The state prosecutor insists that I have nothing in common with these young people. But does the esteemed prosecutor know that the works of the individuals Shelest named, whether published or unpublished, also appear in those journals and are broadcast by those radio stations, regardless of their authors’ wishes? Yet these people are not prosecuted for it and are even praised from the rostrum of a Party congress as among the best.

There is very little of substance in the prosecutor’s lengthy and ‘biased’ speech that requires a response. Expressions such as ‘raised a frenzied uproar’, ‘spreads libellous pamphlets throughout the world’, ‘sneering’, and ‘like a drunken hooligan’, among others, can hardly be called arguments. I do not wish to insult the person of the esteemed prosecutor, as he insults me. Nevertheless, I must express my regret that, when he was studying the art of Demosthenes at one of our law schools, albeit briefly, no attention whatsoever was paid to formal logic. The state prosecutor makes the same logical error as the indictment: he elevates the particular to the universal, or draws general conclusions out of nothing, based solely on his own subjective assumptions. The prosecutor repeatedly emphasises that, through my ‘slanderous statements, I sought to influence and did influence certain unstable sections of the population’. Yet the investigation established not a single instance of my distributing the statement ‘Woe from Wit’, apart from sending it to official republican authorities. Thus, according to the prosecutor’s logic, the ‘unstable sections of the population’ include Shelest, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Nikitchenko, Chairman of the Committee for State Security under the Council of Ministers, and other republican-level officials. Building a prosecution on the prosecutor’s subjective assumptions about my intentions is a legally contemptible tactic.

Another equally speculative tactic is shifting the focus onto Karavansky. I wrote about twenty convicted individuals, not just one Karavansky. But most of those convicted were young people, whereas Karavansky’s past can be exploited to play the prosecutor’s favourite tune–nationalism. Yet I never wrote that I justified Karavansky’s past. I merely stated, and continue to maintain, that the renewed imprisonment of Karavansky, a gifted translator and linguist, five years after his amnesty was legally unjustified, and that a 25-year prison sentence was truly cannibalistic.

The prosecutor’s speech could have been half as long had he not directed at me accusations concerning Valentin Moroz’s work Report from the Beria Reserve. I never wrote or stated what my attitude towards the contents of Moroz’s statement was. I did what any decent person would have done in my place: at Moroz’s request, I forwarded his statement to its intended recipients–members of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR. The fact that, as far as I know, the administration of the Mordovian labour camps does not allow prisoners’ statements and complaints about camp conditions to pass through, and that prisoners therefore have to resort to uncensored means of sending their complaints to higher authorities, also provides moral justification for my actions. During the investigation into my own case, I learned that Valentin Moroz, a political prisoner, had been charged again with a criminal offence for writing Report from the Beria Reserve. Prosecutor Sadovsky therefore has an opportunity to offer his services, appear at Moroz’s trial, and address him with the same accusations he has levelled against me here.

However, I fully agree with certain points in the prosecution’s speech. For instance, I agree that buses bearing the name ‘Lviv’ can be found in many countries, that considerable quantities of oil and gas are extracted in Lviv Oblast, and that the economy of Kazakhstan needs to be developed. I agree that the friendship of peoples is a great thing, and not only the friendship of the peoples of the USSR. Provided, of course, that this is friendship between equal peoples and that it spiritually enriches them all. I also agree with many other well-known truths. I simply fail to understand what any of this has to do with the charges brought against me. It seems that the state prosecutor has once again been let down by the formal logic he failed to master during his studies.

I will no longer waste my time arguing with the prosecutor, because an argument can only be made against certain theses supported by evidence. I simply do not know how to respond to insults with insults. I will not repeat the evidence of my innocence. I have spoken about it at such length today that there is no need to go over it again. Besides, I associate myself with what my defence counsel, Vetvinsky, has said.

Instead, citizens of the Court, let us take a moment to step away from the very serious investigations into which of the two epigraphs I used was more libellous, and whether I added anything to them when reprinting Osadchy’s prison poems. Let us also stop speculating, as the prosecutor has done, about what I wanted to do and what I might have done. Let us leave this sophistry aside and look at what is happening in this courtroom from the outside.

I believe that my trial is far from an ordinary one; in fact, it is a landmark case to some extent. This is because it is not only me as an individual who is on trial here–an idea is also being put on trial. That is why the verdict you deliver will concern not only Chornovil as an individual, but also certain principles of our public life. I believe I am among the very first people in Ukraine to be tried under Article 187-1 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR. From prison, I wrote to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR that, as my arrest had demonstrated, the article added to the Criminal Code in the fiftieth year of Soviet power did not represent further progress in socialist democracy. On the contrary, it placed unjustifiably broad powers in the hands of investigative and judicial authorities, allowing them to interfere in ideological matters beyond their competence and forcing them, as we have witnessed today, to become philosophers and literary critics, economists and sociologists–and to deliver final judgements on all these questions, which are sometimes subjects of debate even among specialists. As my trial demonstrates, Article 187-1 opens the door to a direct assault on a person’s right to have their own thoughts and convictions.

Let us really think about what slander against the Soviet system or Soviet reality means in today’s interpretation. What slander is in general is clear enough. If I say that Major Galysky of the Lviv KGB is a latter-day Unter Prishibeyev because he resorts to physical violence, and that investigators Sergadeyev and Klimenko of the same KGB directorate do not hesitate to use threats and foul language to obtain testimony, and if these facts are not confirmed upon investigation, that would constitute slander. If I knowingly made all of it up, it would constitute deliberate slander. But this would be slander against the major and his two colleagues personally, not against Soviet reality. There is an article in the Criminal Code that deals with that. If, on the basis of these two fabricated facts, I were to conclude that foul language and beatings were generally the working methods of the Lviv KGB Directorate, that would constitute deliberate slander against an institution, but certainly not against the Soviet system. So what, then, should be considered slander against the Soviet state and social system?

If, for example, I were to argue in an academic article or in a speech from a podium that centralisation under socialism is not the best principle for political and economic life, and that decentralisation and the broadest possible industrial and territorial self-government would be more effective within the framework of socialism and the Soviet system, and if I supported this position with economic calculations and referred to the experience of other countries, such as Yugoslavia, could I be prosecuted for slandering Soviet reality, even if my arguments were rejected? What would that be–slander or my personal convictions? If, having carefully studied Lenin’s works, I were to argue that, in theory, we adhere to Lenin’s correct guidelines on the national question, but in practice deviate from them, and if I supported this thesis with Lenin’s own principles and an analysis of specific data concerning contemporary cultural development, the economy, and other matters, would that constitute my worldview and personal convictions, or slander against Soviet reality?

Finally, if, standing firmly on the platform of the 23rd Congress of the CPSU, I were to argue, following Palmiro Togliatti, that the democratisation of Soviet life, which began with the 20th Congress of the CPSU, is progressing too slowly, and that some citizens have still not entirely shed the mentality of the cult era; if I were to say that we still occasionally make regrettable excursions into the past; if, following the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, I were to ‘appeal to our government with a request: double, triple the guard at this wall, so that Stalin does not rise again, and the past does not rise with him’ (this poem was once published in Pravda)–what would that be on my part: my constitutional right to address the leaders I have elected with my views, or the ‘dissemination of slanderous fabrications’?

And even if I were mistaken in all three cases (for, esteemed prosecutor, even the Supreme Court can make mistakes; only gods are infallible, and, as we know, there are no gods), and if my arguments could be countered with another set of arguments that proved more convincing, would that mean I should be put on trial so that neither I nor anyone else would dare to think in the future?

Yet I made no such sweeping statements in my petitions. My conclusions were considerably narrower and addressed specific recipients. And still, I am being tried for just two or three generalising sentences, while not a single one of the dozen facts on which I based those conclusions has been deemed worthy of examination. Immediately after my arrest, I spent days and nights thinking through the contents of my statements in every detail, recalling all the facts and asking myself: where could I have committed slander? Certainly not deliberate slander, but where might I have been misled? During one of the first interrogations, I said something like this to the investigator: ‘You know, the surname given here is incorrect, and I am not certain about this particular fact because I heard it second-hand.’ But investigator Kriklivets brushed me aside: ‘I am not interested in these facts at all, even if every one of them is true. What interests me is what exactly you had in mind when you gave your statement that title…’ How, then, can I avoid concluding that I am being tried for my convictions, that someone wants to dissect my mind and fit it into a pre-prepared standard mould?

I say that my trial is not an ordinary one and may have far-reaching repercussions also because I cannot recall a single case in recent years in which someone was so openly put on trial for their convictions. This did not even happen at the trials I wrote about in my statements. When, in June 1966, I asked Captain Klimenko of the Lviv KGB: ‘Please tell me, why exactly was Candidate of Sciences Osadchy sentenced to two years in a strict-regime labour camp? Was it really just for reading those two articles?’ the captain replied: ‘Ah, if only you knew what he had written in his diary.’ Yet the diary was not mentioned in the verdict; instead, the two subversive articles were. In my case, however, I am being tried, even formally, for my convictions, although this word is shamefully replaced with the word ‘slander’. I am certain that both the prosecutor and the judges understand deep down how absurd the accusation of disseminating slanderous fabrications by the unusual means of sending them to the Party Central Committee and the KGB really is. And yet you are putting me on trial…

Finally, one last point. When, in the summer of 1966, I explained to a judge of Lviv’s Leninsky District why I considered the closed trial of the Gorin brothers unlawful, he asked me directly: ‘Chornovil, who are you to decide whether something is being done lawfully or unlawfully? There are appropriate authorities for that.’ Today, the same argument was put forward plainly and unambiguously by both Judge Nazaruk and Prosecutor Sadovsky. I am a Soviet citizen. Apparently, that is not enough. If the shortcomings of investigative and judicial authorities that I noticed had been noticed by another Soviet citizen like me, but one holding the position of republican prosecutor, the errors would have been corrected and those responsible might even have been punished. I, however, am the one being punished…

When the revolution triumphed and the construction of a new type of state began, Lenin constantly demanded that as many citizens as possible participate in governing the state and society. He saw this as the only guarantee of socialism’s successful development. His famous statement that a cook should be able to govern the state should not, of course, be understood in a vulgar sense: that a cook must necessarily be seated in the prime minister’s chair, or that the ability to govern a state means knowing when to raise one’s hand in response to the question ‘Who is in favour?’ These words should be understood to mean that under socialism every ordinary citizen must learn to think in terms of the interests of the state, and ‘must be able to formulate their own point of view in every complex situation’, rather than wait for someone to programme yet another opinion into them. This is borne out by other words spoken by Lenin during the first months of Soviet rule: ‘Citizens must participate universally in the administration of justice and the governance of the country. And what matters to us is the universal involvement of all working people in governing the state. This is an enormously difficult task. But socialism cannot be introduced by a minority–the Party. It can be introduced by tens of millions, once they have learned to do it themselves.’ I tried to act in accordance with these instructions from Lenin–and you are about to inform me of the results of that attempt.

Lviv Regional Court, city of Lviv, Ukrainian SSR
15 August 1967
Source: Chronicle of Current Events, Issues 14–15
More about the case: parlament.ua
Photo: archivelviv.gov.ua