The Orlov trial
John Macdonald
The trial of Professor Yuri Orlov in Moscow and the parallel 'trial' in London — have fpcused attention on the abuses of human tights in the Soviet Union in a way which would have been beyond the wildest dreams cf Orlov and his friends, when in May 1976 they founded a group to see how far the Soviet Government was keeping the promises it made in the Helsinki Declaration. his can hardly have been the result that the Soviet authorities hoped to achieve when they arrested Professor Orlov and his colleagues Alexander Ginsburg and Anatole Scharansky on the eve of the Belgrade Review Conference. The Kremlin leaders Must be regretting today that they did not quietly expel Orlov. Yuri Orlov's trial in Moscow followed a familiar pattern. The doors of the Moscow court were firmly closed to western journalists and to Professor Orlov's friends. Dr Andrei Sakharov was turned away. Mr Richard Coombs, a diplomat from the American Embassy, arrived at the court' two hours before the trial was due to begin but was told that he needed special perMission to get in and that there was no space for him. Only Professor Orlov's wife IrMa ans his two sons by his first marriage were allowed inside the courtroom.
Professor Orlov conducted himself with quiet dignity but he was not allowed to call a single witness to speak in his defence and was repeatedly stopped by the presiding Judge, Valentina Lubentsova, from questioning the prosecutor's witnesses.
It is clear from Tass reports that the essence of the charges against Professor 19rlov was that the reports which he pubshed about the abuse of human rights in the °oviet Union were slanders against the Soviet state. Under Soviet law it is a comPlete defence to this charge that the reports Which Orlov published were true. Professor Orlov's trial is unique because fm the first time the defence did not go by default. Twenty-two witnesses outside the Sovit Union who could confirm the accuracy of the Orlov reports wished to give
evidence at his trial. They were not allowed to go to Moscow, so their evidence was pre
sented at a parallel hearing in the Institute of Physics in London. The Soviet a.uthorities were not pleased to find that this time the world heard both sides of the story.
.Orlov had reported that prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union were subject to torture by hunger, cold and lack of sleep.
While in Moscow the Professor was being st°1)Ped from questioning a prisoner doctor ircnt Moldavia, in London Andre Amalrik w. as describing his experiences in a punishment cell. He told how he was made to
wear specially thin clothes. '1 was given warm food only every other day and then it was of very poor quality. On other days I just had bread and water. The heating was very low and there was a window, but it had no glass in it so that the intense cold came right into the cell. It was impossible to sleep. You had to keep moving about all night in order to keep warm.'
Another issue in the Moscow court was whether people are confined in psychiatric hospitals and given neuroleptics which they do not need, without the appropriate correctives to reduce the side effects. Orlov had said that the doctors who inflicted this inhuman treatment on their fellow men were guilty of crimes against humanity comparable with the Nazi war crimes.
Leonid Plyusch, one of the witnesses who was not allowed to go to Moscow, spent three and half years in the worst psychiatric hospital in the Soviet Union. In his statement which was sent to the investigator in Moscow he said, 'I was given haloperidol in large doses and I was not given any correctives to reduce the side effects. For me this was absolute torture. I writhed and couldn't sit down, I couldn't sit still, then when they took me back to the ward I continued to writhe in pain. The physical effects of the drug are that it makes your tongue loll out and your eyes bulge. I simply couldn't do anything, there was no way I could get any relief.'
At the parallel hearing in London Mrs Plyusch described how she went to see her husband in prison. In a quiet and undemonstrative way she described how month after month she watched her husband deteriorate; how the drugs made his body swell to almost twice its normal size, how he could barely talk to her. It was testimony that those who heard it will never forget. Mrs Plyusch was followed by Doctor Gerry Low-Beer, the London psychiatrist who examined Plyusch in Austria the day after he was released from prison in the Soviet Union, and found him to be sane.
Professor Orlov was arrested on 10 February 1977. When his trial opened he had been in prison for fifteen months. During that time no one had been allowed to see him. His wife had not even been allowed to write him one letter. Professor Orlov has already paid a heavy price for his unswerving commitment to the truth. No one has ever been acquitted of the offence with which he is charged and at the time of writing it looks as though he will be given the maximum sentence of seven years in prison followed by five years in exile. Perhaps the cruellest part of Professor Orlov's ordeal is that he has no means of knowing that through his actions he has brought a fresh insight into the reality of Soviet life to millions of people throughout the world.
The trial and conviction of Yuri Orlov is bound to have a serious effect on relations between the Soviet Union and the free world. If the Soviet Government cannot allow Professor Orlov, whose only offence is that he faithfully reported abuses of human rights in the Soviet Union, the basic elements of a fair trial, it is idle to suppose that they can be trusted in matters of wider concern.
Some respect for basic human rights is of the essence of détente. The time has come for Western governments to reconsider their policy on trade credits and scientific exchanges. Diplomatic protests are no longer enough. If the Soviet government does not improve its record on human rights then, in the words of Senator Robert Dole, of Kansas, 'Let them eat their own wheat'.
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