The system rotted from within and dognila before disbanding

Soviet-era dissident Yosif Zisels told why refused amnesty in the Gorbachev era, what regrets today about whether modern Ukraine may repeat the mistakes of the Soviet regime

Yosif Zisels – human rights activist, dissident, head of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Ukraine. In 1978 he joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. He spent six years in prisons on charges of “slanderous fabrications discrediting the Soviet state and social system.”

Every dissident own destiny. For example, a man wrote a poem. As my friend, the Ukrainian dissident, a former teacher in the Ternopil region kultprosvetuchilische Mikola Grobal, wrote a poem called “Dumi moї, Dumi”. For this was sent to prison. For the poem. Simply laid out thoughts on paper. Or Semyon Gluzman, which persecuted for their professional activities. He made the correspondence psychiatric examination for General Pyotr Grigorenko and mathematician Leonid Plyushch and promulgated it.

The dissent came for different reasons: national, democratic, moral, emotional. The reasons were not so important to us. Most importantly, we together fought criminal imperial communist system.

I actually grew up without parents. So I have virtually no such an important element of the psyche as a “social instinct of self-preservation,” usually brings up children in a normal Jewish family. Simply no one to create it. I started very early to read samizdat. I think it is no coincidence. The fact that we were surrounded by then, and what we have been taught do not match. Not everyone is dissonance when life does not match with the pictures, which are described in textbooks. Some quietly absorbed in itself is doublethink, I called it “social schizophrenia.” Some do it quietly. Some resisted.

The Soviet government constantly demanded confirmation of loyalty. A variety of ways. Those who have studied, passed the party’s history, scientific communism. Was political information was the Komsomol, and other institutions, which are constantly monitored by the people through an extensive network. Not only controlled the KGB people were the party, trade union, Komsomol and Pioneer organizations. And I went multilevel selection. Revealed disgruntled, obstinate. Once a person has manifested itself, it was a signal that we should look at it.

I went to the dissidence almost deliberately. I drew it. I wanted to know the truth about life, about history, about relationships. And find the right answers in samizdat, as permitted by the literature is almost impossible to find the truth. It was important that others know the truth. Not immediately, at first reading itself, and then you want to share with others. Then you become it a little.

An important stimulus was originally a private confrontation lies and violence. You try to realize his need for truth is not simply to distribute this literature. Then there is the need to sign any appeals, appeals to protest against human rights violations. I’m talking about the way. Some stop at reading the literature, some – at that distribute other books, some do not sign the appeal and appeal, and others pass this hurdle and continue to develop. Then there was a real help to political prisoners, in which I was involved.

The apogee of my dissident activity can be considered as 1978 , when I was actively engaged in case of using the power of Soviet psychiatry to persecute dissidents and investigated more than 80 such stories, in the summer became a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, and in December he was arrested for the first time.

I do not consider myself a victim. I tried to do something as far as possible. I tried something to counter the Soviet regime and its powerful repressive apparatus. Authorities responded to me quite “adequately”. I knew I was not alone in this, but the dissidents are not many, only a few thousand to two hundred millionth Soviet people. Nevertheless, it was more personal fulfillment, not an illusory calculation somehow undermine Soviet power. It was clear that our efforts it was impossible to destroy. She was rotting from the inside and dognila before disbanding.

The fact that the dissidents were known all over the world, destroyed the Soviet myth. 220 million people live happily, moving towards communism, nothing else is willing, but there are several thousand people who by the very fact of its existence, argue that a false myth. Here I was among those people. It was my way. I chose him and he went through it. And, fortunately, I did not meet with an obstacle that would have made me turn back.

I was already an inveterate “recidivist”, when I was offered an amnesty, it was in January 1987, went a second three-year term of my imprisonment, I had to sit 9 months. As for all the forced dialogue with the authorities, with the KGB, with investigators from the prosecutors, I did not sign any paper, any evidence not given, I do not want to change his principles when I needed to sit 9 months. I calmly refused the amnesty. She was so very communist. We had to sign a document that You shall not engage in political activity. Some signed, and then continued to work.

I did not believe that engaging in political activities. It was a formality, but I took it very seriously. If I sign it, then break its principle “not to cooperate with the authorities.” I was not sorry, and now do not regret it.

I’m sorry about the other. Going your own way, you are doomed to suffering families. With time comes the understanding that your free choice causes suffering of others: family, friends. KGB worked very well. They covered not only the one who resists, but all its surroundings, creating an inconvenience to them in life, to put it mildly. This was done to set up against the man his environment. I lost a few people who thought their comrades in these years. Some stayed, we’ve been friends for 50 years. They passed the test with me.

In total I spent in prisons and zones 6 years and the year at home under the administrative supervision of the refusal to accept the “Gorbachev amnesty.” Both times I was accused under Article 187 (approx.) Of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR, in the “slanderous fabrications discrediting the Soviet state and social system.”

Any authoritarian regime, the more totalitarian, based on the fact that there is an external enemy, there is internal, and it is necessary to deal with them. And for people to explain who the external enemy – the imperialists, capitalists, the NATO military. And the internal – dissidents “fifth column”, which does not want to go to the general structure of communism. It was a massive propaganda against such people. We tried to turn public opinion against these people. Isolate, to make their lives uncomfortable, unbearable. Even when you see that article in the newspaper against you false from beginning to end, it is embarrassing to you, the residue remains. And there are articles about the dissidents, whom the authorities deemed “outcasts” were enough.

I lived in the city of Chernivtsi and did not face persecution for the use of the Ukrainian language. For too active promotion – possible. It is already considered nationalism. And only the KGB decided what distinguishes patriotism from nationalism. On the other hand, I grew up in a Jewish environment, and only a student came to understand many issues, including national.

Can modern Ukraine to repeat the mistakes of the Soviet regime? Ukrainians are already very difficult to build as they were built in the Soviet era. Once upon a time this would have killed millions, and intimidate others and build. Most of destroying a part buy, this was done in the 20s, 30s. Soviet authorities or killed or drove out, or bought. So to build “our elites.” Therefore there is nothing surprising that she is today. I think that the repetition of history is impossible. It is impossible to kill 5.7 million people, to build a line of others. But the fact of the formal independence of the country does not guarantee the economic prosperity of the people and democratic development, respect for the law, eradication of corruption and the development of a new system of values. As mathematicians say, a necessary but not sufficient condition.

Recorded Jan Goncharenko

See. Also Special Project “Dissidents” edition Fokus.ua and STB for the Suppression of dissidents in the USSR

Source: focus.ua , 25.08.2016

Sourse, 25/08/2016