Soviets Put a Political Era on Trial : Court Hears Corruption Charges Against Brezhnev Kin

A political era went on trial here Monday as Soviet prosecutors opened their bribery case against Yuri M. Churbanov, the son-in-law of the late President Leonid I. Brezhnev, who implicitly stands accused of ruling through widespread corruption.

Churbanov, who served under his father-in-law as the first deputy minister of interior affairs supervising law enforcement nationwide, is charged with accepting bribes equivalent to $1.1 million to protect other officials engaged in a massive, $6.5-billion fraud in the Soviet Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan.

Pale, tired and tense, Churbanov, 51, listened intently on the first day of his trial before a military tribunal in the Soviet Supreme Court as the formal reading began of the five volumes of charges against him and eight senior Interior Ministry officials from Uzbekistan.

‘Repeatedly Took Bribes’

“Abusing his official position, he repeatedly took bribes from Interior Ministry and Communist Party officials in Uzbekistan,” a court official said, reading an indictment that details more than 1,500 separate offenses over a decade.

If convicted, he could face death by firing squad, though his reported cooperation with investigators might be taken by the court as a mitigating factor. Under Soviet law, he is assumed to be innocent until the charges, even if supported by a confession, are proven to the court’s satisfaction.

Although the case is the biggest corruption trial in Soviet history, the charges against Churbanov and the others were described by one prosecutor as “only an aspect of the whole investigation” into corruption in Uzbekistan and into Churbanov’s activities nationwide.

Yet, as the lengthy indictment was read out on Monday, the vast scope and great depth of the corruption became clear. It reached from remote cotton farms and textile factories in Uzbekistan through the whole party and governmental hierarchy there to the upper reaches of the Soviet leadership in Moscow.

Every few months, according to the indictment, Churbanov would fly to Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, where envelopes full of money--sometimes as much as $300,000--were stuffed in his pockets, both for himself and for others, in return for preventing any investigation of the corruption, largely based on falsified figures of cotton production there and resulting state payments for non-existent cotton.

He also received regular air shipments of grapes, pomegranates, wine and cognac from Uzbek officials, according to the indictment, and he used state funds to build a country home for himself, to buy a gold watch for his boss and apparently to buy presents as bribes for others.

Profound Moral Decay

As prosecutors have outlined the case in the indictment, however, this was a regime that during Brezhnev’s long rule, from 1964 to his death in 1982, fell into such profound moral decay that it would appear to have lost much of its political authority--even its very legitimacy--and that functioned increasingly through the widespread corruption.

Churbanov’s attorney, Andrei Makarov, while demanding a fair hearing for his client, virtually confirmed such an interpretation of the case.

“Churbanov is a creation of the system, not its creator,” he told reporters as he entered the Supreme Court for the start of the trial.

From the time he came to power in March, 1985, Communist Party leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev has sought to make a full break from the Brezhnev era, now officially called “the period of stagnation,” and to re-establish the party’s political leadership and moral authority.

Trial’s Broad Purpose

The Churbanov trial, which has been a year and a half in preparation, appears calculated to demonstrate the party’s ability to correct its course, to reassert its original ideals of honesty and self-sacrifice and to overcome a general cynicism about its leaders and their policies.

About 100 members of the public with special passes along with Soviet and foreign journalists were allowed to attend the opening session of the trial, which lawyers say will probably take two months or more and involve perhaps 200 witnesses. Formal reading of the indictment is likely to take three or four more days, and then the nine defendants will be questioned one by one before other witnesses are heard.

Although still married to Churbanov, Galina Brezhnev, 58, did not attend the opening of his trial.

“She felt poorly (on Sunday) and therefore she didn’t come to court,” defense attorney Makarov said. “But if she feels better she will certainly come. She wants to give moral support to her husband.”