Translation of Notes on a Conversation with Valeriy Senderov 

In August 1987 Valeriy Senderov met with some Western tourists visiting
Moscow and answered their questions.  Here are some of his answers written from
memory several days later.

(About political prisoners)

	We presently know about a thousand political prisoners by name, and
there are probably many others.

	At least 20 are imprisoned under the "special" regime, about
which it is said that it is "not a corrective regime but a punishment
regime".  The death rate there is about 30 percent, and this is larger
than in Hitler's camps (not counting the extermination camps).  One
person, who had been both in German camps and under the special regime,
used to say that here the crematoria aren't smoking, but the rest is
worse.  The special regime prisoners are mainly Ukrainian, and many of
them are in for trivial "crimes" - for things which today one can do
unpunished.  For example, for poems.  It's simply that in the Ukraine,
the regime was especially cruel.  Consequently, these people are now
classified as recidivists, i.e. as dangerous criminals, and are not
being released.

	It's hard to get information about the psychiatric prisons.  We
know they contain political prisoners, but few names are known, and we
have no idea of their number.

(Are they continuing to free political prisoners?)

	Yes, but in very small numbers, several people per month.  There
is hope for an amnesty in connection with the 70th anniversary of the
revolution.  It would be the first amnesty affecting political
prisoners.

	Formerly the majority of those freed wished to emigrate.  Now the
situation has changed, although the authorities are still interested in
our leaving.

(About Gorbachev)

	He is perhaps even less a humanitarian than Brezhnev.  He
liberated a small number of prisoners, but on the other hand, the number
of executions became larger.  (For example, they more often shoot spies
- real ones).  His reforms are explained not by humanitarianism, but by
a wish to save the country from catastrophe.  Even Hitler and Mussolini
worried about their countries.  Only Stalin was an exception.

	But the advantage of the present situation is that there are now
greater chances for real changes in the system under pressure from below
and from the side (from the West).

(About the economic reforms)

	Today workers get less if their enterprises don't produce high
quality output.  We explain to them that this system is aimed at raising
the efficiency of production and that one can't object to that.  The
workers say "We understand, but the others are dissatisfied".  Even if
workers suffer on account of things that aren't their fault but from
the bad work of the suppliers of the enterprises, nevertheless the new
system can lead to positive results, since there will be pressure on
the suppliers.

(Is a joint struggle of workers and intellectuals possible as in Poland?)

	Only on a small scale.  The Pole sees himself first of all as
a Pole and a Catholic, but for Russians class differences are important.
When the Russian intellectual jokingly calls the worker a "hegemonist", he is
under the influence of Marxism.

	In Poland at the time of their struggle with Solidarity, the
authorities gave the workers vodka, and the workers, understanding why
this was done, smashed the vodka bottles.  Is this possible in Russia?

(About elections)

	In some places there took place elections to the local Soviets
with two candidates.  Such elections are called "with alternatives".
But such elections "with alternatives" took place neither in Moscow nor
Petersburg, and many people openly expressed dissatisfaction with this.
People now fear less, there is less terror left over from Stalin's day.
Formerly, people who didn't want to vote and not have it noticed got
absentee ballots and didn't use them; now many just don't go to the
polls.

(About the expected changes in the civil code).

	They have released certain prisoners, but they evidently don't
intend to change Article 70 - so that the system thus remains unchanged.
They allowed Mother Teresa to take up charitable activities in Russia,
but they don't want to change the law about cults, which forbids
charitable activities to the Church - again so as to not change the
system.

(About anti-semitism)

	In the Mathematics Faculty of Moscow University, they give Jews
special very difficult problems in the entrance exams to make them fail.
Recently the "Jewish problems" have become somewhat easier, but the
barrier still remains high.  I will send these problems to the West, in
order to show the discrimination that exists.

	Jews who are not accepted to the university enter other
institutions.  We'll send the names of these young people to the West,
so that Western countries will demand their inclusion in the programs of
exchange of students now being organized.  It is still unclear whether
we will succeed in this, i.e. whether these students will get visas.

	There is nothing bad in organizing scientific contacts with
Soviet scientists.  There were even contacts with scientists of the
Third Reich.  But it's necessary to understand that facing you is a
racist.

(About the draft of students into the army)

	Now they take students of the junior courses into the Army from
almost all institutes.  But the authorities, it seems, are beginning to
understand the effect this has on the preparation of specialists, and
the number of institutes from which they don't draft students is
intended to increase.

(What should we bring from the West?)

	Books, bibles, vitamins. And bouillion cubes - not only for
prisoners, but for people living on tiny salaries.  (If I had to live on
my salary of 70 rubles per month, I would also use bouillion cubes).

	We also need money badly.  In particular for paying telephone
bills.  It's necessary to spend a lot of time on the telephone
transmitting information abroad, and we have to phone ourselves, because
it's difficult to reach us by phone from abroad.  They try to drown us
in financial problems.  Money sent to us is used to influence by
peaceful means the development of the country in good directions.

(How have you been getting along since your release?)

	I'm working as an elevator operator, and this is satisfactory;
there's a lot of free time.  I'm writing up the results in functional
analysis that I got in camp.  I hope my articles will be translated into
English and published.

	I don't pay attention to the surveillance.  Their sole reason
for the shadowing today is to make people nervous - to interfere with
their living.  When foreign journalists visit, the agents on duty near
my apartment don't interfere - on the contrary, they show the visitors
where to go.  Once a woman rang the doorbell and said that the was a
"member of the public".  When we let her in she produced documents - a
KGB officer.  She was interested in whether there were any Tatars
visiting me.  (This was at the time of the Tatar demonstrations).  I
asked her why she had called herself a "member of the public".  She
said, "Otherwise, you wouldn't have let me in".

(Do you want to emigrate?)

	No. Let "them" leave.

Translator's notes for American readers.

1. Senderov is a mathematician.  He was imprisoned for documenting
the discrimination against Jewish applicants to universities and
was recently released.

2. Senderov properly emphasizes the prisoners in "special regime"
conditions whose lives are in danger.

3. There has been nothing in the press to suggest that Western spies
have been caught recently in the Soviet Union.  Senderov may be
referring to Chinese spies --- Soviets who escaped across the Chinese
border and were then recruited as spies.  Perhaps the communist
countries play rougher with each other than with the West.

4. Senderov's use of Petersburg for the city officially called
Leningrad goes beyond the fairly common use of Petr in referring
to the city.

5. Article 70 makes ``anti-Soviet propaganda'' punishable by a
long prison term.

6. Soviet universities have individual oral entrance examinations.  The
applicants visit for a month in the summer, and large numbers of
committees examine the thousands of applicants in turn.  This it makes
it possible to assign particular applicants to particular committees
that ask particularly diffiicult questions.  Discrimination in getting
into good mathematics departments is especially painful to those Soviet
Jews who have family traditions in mathematics.

7. The word "hegemonist" refers to the Marxist jargon "hegemony of the
proletariat".

8. The need for money refers to the dissident movement.