He Finds Things Haven’t Changed Much

In the dim kitchen of Valery Sokolov’s shelter, 72-year-old Alexei Kuzmin, an energetic man with a sharp wit, paces angrily. “I have to stay here for the next two weeks, out of sight,” he said. “I’m afraid to go out during the Goodwill Games.”

In 1939, Kuzmin, then 17, asked at a workers’ meeting whether rumors that Stalin had freed the Georgian people of the obligation to pay taxes were true. The question cost him four years in a mental hospital, and then--when he was old enough to be tried--four years in a labor camp above the Arctic Circle as an “enemy of the people.”

Freed from jail in 1947, he returned to Leningrad (which this city was then called), hoping to get back his apartment, obtain a propiska and then find a job. But two days after he registered his arrival with the police, he was arrested and shipped “to the 101st kilometer.”

For the next four decades, he got by on odd jobs--repairing roofs, fixing cart wheels, chopping wood. He had difficulty getting hired because of his record of time in jail. A few years ago, he returned to Leningrad.

“I heard of this rehabilitation for political prisoners,” he said. “If I got rehabilitated, I could get a propiska. Then I could get a pension, medical help.”

Kuzmin turned for help to the KGB, the human rights group “Memorial” and the mayor’s office. “But they all open up my passport, see I don’t have a propiska , and that’s all they need to know, they throw me out,” he said.

“The police say, ‘OK, grandpa, get lost.’ I turn to (Mayor Anatoly) Sobchak’s office, but everyone’s too busy trying to please Ted Turner. If I could just get some legal advice on this rehabilitation, I’d be a happy man. But what help do we get?

“We’re told to stay out of sight . . . . Thanks, Sobchak.”