The Road to My Arrest
ORLOV, YURI
FORTHE RECORD The Road to ]Vly Arrest by YURI ORLOV Last February 10 the dissident Soviet physicist, Yuri Orlov, was imprisoned. Three years earlier he asked friends emigrating from the USSR (see...
...That came from her mother, who used to help her husband make a living by smuggling fabric into Russia from China and Persia...
...For two days they tried to persuade me...
...I went to school in Moscow, where I lived with my mother and stepfather, a very kind person but an absolutely unsuccessful artist...
...Idid not work for half a year...
...He was impressed by her red hair and her courage...
...He died of tuberculosis in 1933...
...I took part in their discussions, declaring against the "dictatorship of the bureaucracy" and for reforms that, in my opinion, would restore the original ideas of Marxism as I understood them...
...He was a laborer, then worked in archives...
...From the very start of the War I worked in a factory...
...At the beginning of 1956 I finished my dissertation, and my first article was published in Nuovo Cimento (this was the beginning of open publication on formerly secret themes that, as a matter of fact, were no secrets at all...
...At first I did not understand what they wanted of me...
...In 1968 the Armenian Central Committee approved my candidacy for the Armenian Academy of Science, and I was subsequently elected a corresponding member of the academy...
...These were her sole means of support...
...He was 30 years old...
...But many of our physicist friends collected money to support those of us who were fired, so we did not experience serious difficulties...
...Again I found myself very much surprised...
...After six months of difficult efforts, L. A. Artsimovich found a job for me in his institute...
...Soon the new Parasite law was passed and I had to find a job, so I accepted the proposal of A. Alik-hanian (the brother of Professor Alikhanov) that I develop an electronic circular accelerator in Armenia...
...However, in Moscow they had not expected the elections to turn out as they did...
...She also sold vegetables from her small kitchen-garden...
...January 1, 1974: I was fired...
...Iwas born in 1924 and spent my early childhood in my father's native village, in wooded country between Moscow and Smolensk...
...At the end of 1946 I was transferred to the reserves, and I graduated from high school...
...The order "to forget" was really fulfilled...
...My father was a chauffeur in Moscow...
...Within a few days Pravda published a major attack against those who had spoken that was, of course, slanderous...
...Then he became a lathe operator, studied at a workers' faculty (a special vocational school) that he did not complete, and got a job as an engineer...
...So my orphaned mother went to Moscow, where she met my father...
...Finally, they introduced me to a very high official who suddenly asked me: "Why do you think we are the same as the Gestapo...
...They started their pressure on me again, including the limitation of travel—they never allowed me to go abroad...
...In Moscow nobody wanted to give me a scientific or pedagogical position...
...I was treated very kindly in Armenia...
...While preparing for the exams to enter Moscow University, I worked as a stoker at a factory in Moscow...
...On the 40th anniversary of Soviet Armenia Nikita Khrushchev, who was visiting the Armenian Republic, gave orders "to forget the past" and I was again given access to secret work...
...Three years earlier he asked friends emigrating from the USSR (see "Between Issues") to try to have the following account published if he were ever arrested...
...But it turned out that they wanted me to become one of their secret agents...
...He was called up to the Army in the first days of the War and killed in 1942 near Kharkov...
...In 1972 I had to return to Moscow...
...I was immediately fired from my job and expelled from the Party on orders from "on high...
...I had two thick notebooks with seditious notes in them from the books of Engels and others...
...We did not touch upon these problems in our group...
...It may sound strange, but I did not know, could not imagine and nobody had told me about the real extent and nature of the repression in our country...
...I was very surprised to hear this because I knew from our newspapers and books, and from my teachers, that our country was the most democratic in the world, that ours was the only true democracy...
...After the War, a small group of three or four officers became very critical of the Soviet regime...
...I stayed with my grandmother, who earned her living as a rural midwife and quack doctor, and by knitting and sewing...
...One month before the end of the fighting I went to the First Ukrainian Front...
...In 1953 I started to work at the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, whose director was Academician A. I. Alikhanov...
...Incidentally, in 1951 when the Department of Physics was reorganized so that a special Physical and Technical Institute could be set up, all the Jews in the department were transferred to the universities of Ryazan and Kazan...
...My name was stricken from all scientific reports because it "disgraced Soviet science," as I was told officially, and I was forbidden to defend my dissertation...
...Here Orlov, who apparently became concerned about the time it was taking him to complete his personal sketch, broke off the narrative and hastily listed what he considered to be key events for the slightly more than a year that remained to be covered—Ed...
...My mother's family died of typhus during the Civil War...
...It was dangerous even to ask...
...In 1941, a friend of my uncle's who was working at the same factory told me: "I hope this wartime alliance with the democratic countries will bring democracy to our country after the War...
...Once, when I was called to the military division of KGB, I bumed both notebooks...
...I also contributed to five reports for a conference in Geneva...
...In 1952 I graduated from the Department of Physics of Moscow University...
...When I realized what they were asking, I completely rejected their proposal...
...The job gave me a lot of spare time to study, and it enabled me to get ration coupons for bread...
...In 1948 I had been obliged to assume full membership in the Communist party, but during my years at the university I forgot about my political doubts...
...One of the officials contemptuously told me I should work at a factory for "reeducation...
...Later, while serving with the Army in the Northern Caucasus, I seriously studied the "classics" of Marxism and Hegel, trying to find the "correct ideology...
...Ambartsumyan (president of the Armenian Academy of Science) couldn't give me any job, even in Armenia...
...I could not imagine myself asking about such things, probably because I was afraid...
...Then a closed letter was sent to the Party members asking them to give their evaluation of our speeches...
...My work there progressed very well, and at the end of 1958 (with a little pressure) I managed to defend my dissertation...
...Without this access I could not even read my own secret reports, I couldn't enter most of the institutes in Moscow to use their libraries, and at times I suffered other incredible restrictions...
...My grandfather on my mother's side served as a ship's mechanic on the Kama River...
...It is interesting that among seven students who lived in one apartment at the scientific institute, three were secret police agents...
...October, 1973: Join the initiative group of Amnesty International in the Soviet Union...
...As a result of this action, one young and very talented scientist named Eskin threw himself out of the seventh floor window...
...In 1963 I became a doctor of Physics...
...After he had an accident —he ran over a homeless child?he gave up driving...
...I said that we had lost our honesty and morality, and I spoke about the need for democratic reforms...
...the Russians were left in Moscow, at the university and the new institute...
...September 16, 1973: Open letter to L. I. Brezhnev about the campaign against Andrei Sakharov...
...The meeting enthusiastically supported my statement and speeches by others of a similar nature...
...At the beginning of 1944 I was called up for Army service and sent to a military school, where I had to join the Communist party as a candidate...
...February 13, 1974: I signed the appeal protesting Solzhenitsyn's deportation...
...In April 1956, at a Party meeting, I criticized the policies of the Party prior to the 20th Congress...
Vol. 60 • March 1977 • No. 6
