Gulag_ A History - Anne Applebaum [334]
Nevertheless, a few sentences later, Chebrikov acknowledged that things might have changed. One has to read closely to understand how dramatic the change actually was: “The current conditions of the democratization of all aspects of society, and the strengthening of the unity of the Party and of society, make possible a re-examination of the question of amnesty.” 28
What he meant, in fact, was that the dissidents were so weak they could not do much harm anymore—and in any case they would be watched, as he had said at a previous Politburo meeting, “to be certain that they don’t persist in their hostile activity.”29 In a separate statement he added, almost as an afterthought, that by the KGB’s calculation, ninety-six people were being held unnecessarily in special psychiatric hospitals. He suggested that those among them who “do not present a danger to society” should be released as well.30 The Central Committee agreed, and in February 1987 it pardoned 200 prisoners convicted either of Article 70 or of Article 190-1. More were released from camps a few months later to mark the Millennium of Russian Christianity. Over 2,000 (a good deal more than ninety-six) would be released from psychiatric hospitals in the coming two years.31
Yet even then—perhaps out of habit, perhaps because it saw its own power waning along with the prison population—the KGB seemed strangely reluctant to let the politicals go. Because they were formally pardoned, not amnestied, the politicals released in 1986 and 1987 were at first asked to sign a piece of paper disassociating themselves from anti-Soviet activity. Most were allowed to invent their own formulas, evading apology: “Thanks to worsening health I won’t engage in further anti-Soviet activity,” or “I was never an anti-Soviet, I was an anti-communist, and there are no laws prohibiting anti-communism.” One dissident, Lev Timofeev, wrote that “I ask to be freed. I do not intend to harm the Soviet state, not that I have ever had such an intention before.” 32
Others, however, were asked, once again, to renounce their beliefs, or ordered to emigrate.33 One Ukrainian prisoner was released, but sent directly into exile, where he was held to a curfew and made to report to a militia station once a week.34 One Georgian dissident remained for an extra six months in his labor camp, simply because he refused to put his pen to any formula the KGB could invent.35 Another refused to ask formally for his pardon, “on the grounds that he had committed no crime.”36
Symptomatic of the time was the plight of Bohdan Klymchak, a technician from Ukraine, arrested for trying to leave the USSR. In 1978, fearing arrest on charges of Ukrainian nationalism, he had walked over the Soviet border into Iran, and had asked for political asylum. The Iranians sent him back. In April 1990, he was still being held in the political prison at Perm. A group of American congressmen managed to visit him there, and discovered that conditions in Perm were virtually unchanged. The prisoners still complained of extreme cold, and were still sent to the punishment cells for crimes such as the refusal to button the top buttons of their uniforms.37
Nevertheless, creaking and cranking, groaning and complaining, the repressive regime was finally grinding to a halt—as was the entire system. Indeed, by the time the Perm political camps were finally closed for good, in February 1992, the Soviet Union