The Confession Yevgeni Turchik

After his confession, several conversations were held with Turchik, two of which were tape recorded. The conversation below was held in the city of Kirsanov at the apartment of an activist of an Orthodox revival group. Two weeks after his confession, Turchik was transferred to work at the site of agricultural con struction in the city of Uvarovo. Rasskazovo, where he used to live, is 20 miles from Tambov, where he traveled every day (although only visits to one's close relatives were permitted, and no more than twice a month). Uvarovo is 80 miles from Tambov. Thrchik has not been able to get permission to leave Uvarovo. We, Yevgeni's friends, visited him later in Uvarovo. Yevgeni was not allowed out of the dormitory the day we arrived at his job. We were able to talk with him for five minutes in the presence of police functionaries, who heard literally every word. Yevgeni informed us that Colonel Khilko, having learned of Turchik's public confession, came to him and tried again to get him to cooperate. He threatened Yevgeni that the statement/confession he had made would be considered slanderous or made under the influence of drugs. Yevgeni answered: "I only told the truth."

TeD us about yourselfYevgeni. I, YevgeniTurchik, was born in 1954 in the city of Donetsk. My parents ... I didn't know my fa ther. They were atheists and they taught me from the time that I was a child that if I wanted to get anywhere in this world I had to learn to deceive and to rob others. My mother told me straight out: "Take what you want from people who are smarter." So that's what 1did. And then, for steal ing somebody else's property, a camera, I was ar rested.... When did you first become acquainted with re ligiousbelievers,Yevgeni? I did not believe in God-probably because everyone around me was an atheist. And I per sonally did not know any religious people. I had heard about believers. In the newspaper Tambovskaya Pravda there was an article about believers-"Sufferers in Christ"-and our in structors showed it to us. The assistant director of the political section of the colony held a meeting at which he spoke about this article. He said that there is a certain group of people here, believers, called "Initia tors," who work for the CIA and have connec tions abroad, that they receive literature from 390 THE FREEMAN • OCTOBER 1989 abroad and·are involved in anti-Soviet propagan da.

Not long after that I happened to meet one of them. I was really rather surprised; here we had just been talking about them, and suddenly along comes Ivan Tolstopyatov. It was, of course, inter esting for me to get to know him. At first we all laughed at him and thought that this peasant was a little dim-witted. But he was very different from everyone else. He was always ready to help and to make suggestions, and he was very honest. He first told me about Jesus Christ-that He is God, that He loves me and that He died for me. The bosses weren't pleased that Tolstopyatov had been talking to us about God, and they split up our section. I ended up in another section and didn't see Ivan any more. I corresponded with him and with other believers. I thought that my letters were being read, and only about a year passed before I was summoned to the office of the director of the colony. Two men in civilian dress were waiting for me there. At first they said that they were journalists and then they started asking me if there was any way they could help me. I asked them straight out: "What do you want from me?" KGB Colonel Yuri Khilko told me who they were and where they were from. They told me: "We chose you, one in a thousand. You must help the moth erland. We'll help get you transferred to compul sive labor where you'll be able to visit Tambov without any problems. You must help us fight the Baptists. We know that you correspond with Lyudmila Tolstopyatova, the daughter of a Bap tist minister. That's very good. They'll accept you and you can tell us what they do and what they say. Try to find out if they print anything and to determine if you can where G. V. Kruchkov, the leader of the Council of the Evangelical Christian Baptist Churches, is."

How fast did they do everything they promised you? After about two months I was transferred to compulsory labor and I found myself in the city of Rasskazovo. And then you started attending the meetings of believers. How did the believers receive you? They accepted me as one of their own. I didn't think that such a thing was possible-they accept a stranger as a close member of their own family. And that started me thinking about wl;1atColonel Khilko had said. He told me that bJlievers hid behind their religiosity, that they oppose all that is good and that everything they do is constructed on hypocrisy and lies. How did you pass information about the be lievers to Khilko? I would meet them [the KGB] in the Rasska zovo Hotel, unless it was in Tambov, where they had a special apartment. We would arrange the meetings over the phone at the following num bers: work 99-427, home 291-47. These numbers are in Tambov. I would give them written reports about the believers and sign them with the pseudonym "Kashtanov." I would write: "Sources report that. . . ." and so on, where I had been and what I had seen and heard. It went on like this for half a year.

How many reports did you write in this half year? There were a lot of them. After all, I wrote one every week. They wanted to know literally every thing: who dresses how, who is friends with whom, do any of the believers go to the cinema or' to a disco, who had a fight, what do they preach, what do they talk about after the meet ings, what topics are discussed at the youth ses sions for the study of the Word, etc. Did you give them the books that the beHevers gave you? Yes. They were especially inter~sted in books pUblishedby "The Christian," but they wanted to see others as well. When I gave Colonel Khilko a copy of FatherArseni,a book that I had been giv en by Orthodox believers whom I had met, he photographed the whole thing. They were even interested in religious calendars and bookmarks. Basically they were interested in all religious lit erature. Were the KGB agents interested in Orthodox beHevers?

Yes. They were especially interested in what the Orthodox were preparing for the 1,OOOth anniversary of Christianity in Russia. They were also interested in religious conversations among the Orthodox held outside of the church and how THE CONFESSION OF YEVGENI TURCHIK 391 the Russian Church clergy behaved. Did they pay you for your activities? They didn't exactly shower me with money. Every time I received a sum of money I had to sign a receipt, which was also signed with a pseudonym. There was an interesting occurrence once-Colonel Khilko took a receipt from me for 50 rubles but gave me only 25. He said that he had expenses for photographic materials. That seemed a little underhanded to me, but I didn't ask any questions, of course. When did you first want to break with the KGB agents? Sometime in March I prayed aloud at a meet ing. It wasn't hypocrisy; it was a real prayer. I had already started believing in God then. When Colonel Khilko found out about this he told me: "You were right to pray out loud, you're a real actor. But if it was serious, it was psychological stimulation and there is nothing blessed about it.

In general, there are no gods and no devils." Sometimes after a meeting I would feel the close presence of God and of the Holy Spirit, but when I met with them [the KGB] again or called them on the phone I would lose everything and become completely empty, and this scared me. And then, at such times, I started to think that I couldn't go on like this. Which of your friends was the KGB especially interested in? Sasha Chernev. They asked me to make copies of the keys to the Chernevs' apartment. The Chernevs entrusted me with the keys, but I Leninon Religion copied them and gave them to Colonel Khilko. He asked me to describe the Chernevs' apart ment and to tell him when the Chernevs were usually not at home. I think that the KGB opera tives made visits to the Chernevs' apartment and maybe bugged it. How did your confession come about? My position was weighing down on me and then, finally, I told Tolstopyatov's wife every thing. I thought that they would hate and despise me, but I saw that they still loved me and they were compassionate. You won't believe it, but when I left them after that I thought that they would throw rocks at my back, but they said: "May God bless you, dear." After that I didn't wonder anymore about whether I had to end my relationship with the KGB. I ended it for good.

I'm still a convict and they'll use that against me, of course. They'll try to get me to work with them again, but I won't go back into that hell again. I'm weak and it's possible to scare me, but God, my God, is strong. I don't think the Lord will abandon me anywhere. What do you think scares the KGB more than anything else? Glasnost, glasnost, glasnost. That's what they're all afraid of. And I believe that if the Christian world learns about my turning to God, these enemies of Christians, these KGB agents, will be limited in their activities against us. I ask all Christians who read this confession to pray for me; that will be the strongest support. Dear Christians, pray for me, God's sinful slave, Yevgeni. D Every religious idea, every idea of God, even flirting with the idea of God, is un utterable vileness, ... vileness of the most dangerous kind, "contagion" of the most abominable kind. Millions of filthy deeds, acts of violence and physical con tagions are far less dangerous than the subtle, spiritual idea of a God decked out in the smartest "ideological" costumes.

-from Lenin, Works, Vol. 35 392 The Real Child Care Crisis by J. Brian Phillips T h.e st.atisticsare familiar. More than half of all women with children under the age of six have jobs outside the home; almost 40 percent of all working mothers are single, wid owed, divorced, or married to men who make less than $15,000a year; and the average cost of day care is $3,000 per child. The conclusion is also familiar: government must do something. But the private sector already is providing a wide range of child care services. National child care chains, such as La Petite, Kinder-Care Learning Centers, and Childr~'n's World Learning Centers, aim primarily at middle-income families. Lepercq de Neuflize, a New York investment bank, recently put $3 million into ·14 preschools targeted at the upper-income market. And, across the nation, thousands of people operate for-profit child care facilities.