Prisoner of Conscience Anatoly Shcharansky suffers intensive headaches in the Chistipol Prison but his spirits are “higher than the sky,” according to just released fellow inmate Hillel Butman, in information obtained from Moscow by the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) and Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ). This is the first eyewitness report on Shcharansky, who has been barred from receiving visitors and is allowed only a trickle of censored mail with his parents.
Shcharansky was sentenced to 13 years last summer, and Butman, along with five other 1970 Leningrad Trial defendants, were suddenly released last week 14 months before their 10-year terms were to have ended. Butman and Shcharansky were both moved last fall from the Vladimir to the Chistipol Prison, evidently because the Soviets feared embarrassing questions from the increasing number of tourists visiting the historic city of Vlodimir before the 1980 Olympics, the SSSJ and UCSJ noted.
The two groups reported Butman as saying that Shcharansky and other Chistipol inmates produce potato sacks in their cells. Shcharansky deliberately works slowly because of his excruciating headaches and because even an experienced worker as Butman could not produce more than three sacks a day of the eight-bag quota.
Since Chistipol prisoners are kept isolated in their cells, ingenious methods of communications were devised. Messages hidden in tobacco wads or wool bails were attached to strings and swung from cell to cell. Others were placed in soap bars and hidden in the communal bathrooms. Some were attached to magnets taken from closets and fastened to table legs or other metallic items. Toilets were emptied of water when guards were not looking and messages were shouted through the pipes.
Each of these methods were discovered by prison authorities, but others are now being used. Two months ago, Shcharansky was sentenced to 15 days’ isolation for passing messages. Butman said Shcharansky retains his normally optimistic spirits, and this outlook will better his chances for survival.
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