Dick Rodgers
Following the death of poetess Irina Ratushinskaya from cancer in July 2017 some excellent obituaries appeared. East-West Church and Ministry Report has kindly asked me to write something that is more of a personal reminiscence of campaigning for her release from prison. I spent the 46 days of Lent 1986 in Birmingham, England, in a replica of Irina’s punishment cell in a labor camp in the Perm Region of Russia. The purpose was to draw attention to her plight and her courage and to plead for her release from a 12-year sentence. Much of her time in Perm was spent in a punishment isolator cell defending her fellow prisoners, with her own health failing fast.
My Interest in Russia
I had been interested in Russia and Eastern Europe since childhood, having a godmother who was the daughter of a Scottish cloth merchant in Moscow. Following the 1917 Revolution, she escaped overland around the northern shore of the Baltic Sea. After medical training and a curacy in the Church of England I was asked to make visits to Moscow and Leningrad to families of Christian prisoners of conscience in labor camps, prisons, and psychiatric hospitals across the Soviet Union. Meeting these courageous people was a powerful, formative experience for me. It led me to set aside my surgical career to seek to change the situation. I felt, “Visiting the families of these courageous people isn’t enough. These people shouldn’t be in prison in the first place!”
Launching the Campaign
I found a worthy case to champion in Irina Ratushinskaya. Keston College, the study center in suburban London, knew quite a lot about her. There was a photo and biographical detail and a husband (Igor) who was carefully keeping in touch with people in the West. Irina seemed to be a feisty woman of great talent and self-discipline amongst a group of women who were sticking together in prison and defending each other. Her health was failing in the arduous conditions of the punishment isolator cell. The more we learned of her, the more we admired her, and the more we realized she should be the focus for my campaign, thence to highlight the whole tyranny of the GULAG system.
After some months looking for a suitable place to make a public demonstration on Irina’s behalf, the rector of St Martin’s in the Bull Ring in Birmingham’s city center allowed me to erect a replica of her cell in the back of the church. In solidarity with Irina I shaved off my hair, lived in my cell on a punishment cell diet of bread and water, and dressed in prison type clothes, for the whole of Lent, day and night.
Dissident Anatoli Shcharansky had been released the day before I started my vigil. BBC TV national news covered the start of my “imprisonment,” which included shaving my hair in the presence of the local rabbi. People rallied round and kept me company. British Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Communists – they all helped in one way or another. It became a heartfelt team effort. People remember it. At various stages I had lots of kind support from celebrities, including Frankie Howerd, Richard Briers, Susannah York, Dennis Waterman, and Jeremy Irons. Many people wrote to the Soviet Embassy urging Irina’s release.
When Easter came the vigil was over, and it appeared to have done no good. Irina was still in the labor camp. I developed contacts with others who were campaigning for her release, including the PEN club of international writers who were quite clever generating publicity for Irina’s case. People in the U.S., Canada, and continental Europe, as well as Australia and New Zealand, all worked together in support.
Lavrov and Shevardnadze
I took a petition for Irina’s release to the Soviet Embassy in London where I met with a junior diplomat, Second Secretary Sergei Lavrov. We talked for 40 minutes. “Priests shouldn’t get involved in politics – haven’t you got sick people in your own prisons in Britain etc., etc.” Still, it was a good conversation with Russia’s future foreign minister! Round at the Foreign Office, Minister of State Tim Renton MP also received me warmly.
Back in Birmingham we heard that the then Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze was coming to London. A group of us went looking for him and happened to be outside the Soviet Embassy Residence in Kensington Palace Gardens as he emerged. I couldn’t approach, but from some ten meters away I chanted loudly and clearly, “Osvoboditye Irinu Ratushinskuyu!” “Release Irina Ratushinskaya!” I continued loudly, clearly, and melodiously on and on, like an Orthodox priest chanting the liturgy. It reverberated around the big embassy buildings, not aggressively, but insistently. Just what I wanted. I am sure Shevardnadze heard me very well. The diplomatic police had to march me off, but ten yards down the road an officer muttered, “Brilliant! That was great!” I wasn’t arrested—just shooed off.
Then news came from Keston College. Irina had been moved from her labor camp to a prison in Kiev. She was being offered her freedom as long as she would sign an agreement to behave better and curb the content of her poetry. Of course, she would not sign. It looked as if she might be returned to her remote labor camp.
The Iceland Summit, Release, and Emigration
Campaigning churned on. The art world organized a reading of her poetry in central London which included actors, poets, and a government minister. Then we heard Reagan and Gorbachev were going to meet in Iceland for an historic summit meeting. It was at this 1986 conference that Gorbachev made his momentous offer to make a major reduction in the Soviet nuclear arsenal. I had to be there. I was there—but not before telling the Americans and the Russians I was going. It was a big push. The Church Times kindly made me a temporary journalist. At a pre-summit press conference I asked the Soviet delegation whether Irina Ratushinskaya would be released as a gesture of goodwill during the meetings. They gathered together laughing and then replied, “Irina Ratushinskaya will not be on the agenda of the summit.” It was another put down!
Early next morning I was dozing in bed at the Salvation Army hostel when the manager knocked and told me there was a call from England. It was my wife. “Michael Bourdeaux of Keston College has just rung. Irina was released last night and without signing any agreement!” Well, I was overjoyed! I even splashed out and treated myself to soused herring for breakfast.…and essentially I have never quite been the same again after that moment.
At the Kiev apartment, Irina was still being harassed by the KGB and wanted to come out to the West, which she and Igor were allowed to do. BBC TV main national news covered their arrival at Heathrow Airport. Next day was coffee with Mrs. Thatcher at 10 Downing Street, including me, which was nice! Later, we put the replica cell up again at St Martin’s and Irina and Igor visited to a tumultuous welcome, with a huge crowd in Birmingham. They made a home in London for many years and returned to live in central Moscow in 1998 when they judged it safe to do so.
Campaigns for Other Dissidents
I am so glad to have had this contact with Irina and other dissidents of immense courage. With a team I continued to work for the release of remaining prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union, one by one. These included Alexander Ogorodnikov (for whom Aidan Hart, the icon painter, managed a prolonged caged vigil in London), Anna Chertkova (a Baptist for whom my plumber friend Ray Davies conducted a prolonged vigil at a Southampton Church), and then Vasili Shipilov. In 1988 I conducted a Lenten Vigil at St Martin-in-the-Fields Church, London, managed to collect him in person from a Moscow Psychiatric Hospital, and flew him to an Orthodox community in New York State where he lived out his remaining days. Finally, our campaign helped free samizdat historian Deacon Vladimir Rusak, and lastly, Mikhail Kukobaka.
In fairness to Mikhail Gorbachev, they all came out some three or four months after we made it clear that each in turn was the next one on our list. Then there were just 210 people left on Keston’s prisoner list, which I took round to many of the Soviet and Western government teams at the Vienna on-going “Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.” Then the list was reduced to 100 prisoners by the time of my next CSCE visit. Then there were none left. And then in 1989 the Berlin Wall came down, and I had run out of people for whom to campaign. At that point I had to go out and get a proper job!
In the meantime I had offered Ogorodnikov (who is still my friend) an offset printing machine. People contributed. I took it to Moscow on a British Airways flight as my excess baggage – it was a big machine. The baggage handlers dropped it, possibly on orders of the KGB, and customs refused it admission, at which point I had to take it back to England. Eventually we sorted it out with David Alton’s help (now Lord Alton). In the end we think it was the first officially imported samizdat (independent) printing machine. Alexander used it to print journals, but also later, leaflets urging the tank commanders in 1991 to refrain from firing upon the Russian Parliament—and they did refrain! Thirty years later I am once again reading up on Russia. It seems there are still some matters that need attention.
♦ Rev. Dr. Dick Rodgers is the author of Irina (Triang, Herts, England: Lion Publishing, 1987).