Esenin-Volpin's legal issues for
dissident activity began on 21 July 1949, less than a month after his arrival in Chernovtsy, when he was arrested by the
MGB, sent on a plane back to Moscow, and incarcerated in the
Lubyanka Building. He was charged with "systematically conducting
anti-Soviet agitation, writing
anti-Soviet poems, and reading them to acquaintances." Apprehensive about the prospect of prison and
labor camps, he faked a
suicide attempt in order to initiate a
psychiatric evaluation. This resulted in psychiatrists at Moscow's
Serbsky Institute declaring him mentally incompetent, and in October 1949 he was transferred to the Leningrad Psychiatric Prison Hospital for an indefinite stay. Imprisonment in a
psikhushka (
psychiatric hospital) was a common form of punishment for dissidents in the Soviet Union. However, a year later, Esenin-Volpin was abruptly released from the prison hospital, and sentenced to five years exile in
Karaganda in the
Kazakh SSR as a "socially dangerous element." He found employment as a teacher of evening and
correspondence courses in mathematics. He was released from exile in Karaganda in December 1953 as part of an
amnesty following the
death of Joseph Stalin, and returned to Moscow. Soon he became a known mathematician. In particular, he adhered to the philosophical theories of
ultrafinitism and
intuitionism and worked on development of these. In the summer of 1959, Esenin-Volpin was invited to mathematical
symposium in the
Polish People's Republic (a Soviet
satellite state) to be held the following month. He applied for a
passport to travel to Poland, but his application was immediately denied and he received a reply stating that mentally ill
Soviet citizens were not permitted to travel abroad. Instead, Volpin forwarded the text of his paper to
Warsaw, which was read out in his name at the symposium, with the explanation that he had been prevented from attending in person. That year, Esenin-Volpin was arrested for smuggling
samizdat (illegal literature) to the
West and again placed in a
psikhushka. The works were a collection of poems and his
Свободный философский трактат (
Free Philosophical Tractate), which he had signed with his own name. He was diagnosed with the
pseudo-scientific disorder "
sluggish schizophrenia", though
Yuri Savenko would diagnose him with only
cyclothymia. He spent two years in the psychiatric hospital, and continued to smuggle
samizdat to the West after his release.
1965 Glasnost demonstration In 1965, Esenin-Volpin organized a legendary "
glasnost meeting" ("митинг гласности"), a demonstration at
Pushkinskaya Square in the center of Moscow demanding an
open and
fair trial for the arrested writers
Andrei Sinyavsky and
Yuli Daniel. The leaflets written by Esenin-Volpin and distributed through
samizdat asserted that the accusations and their closed-door trial were in violation of the
1936 Soviet Constitution and the more recent RSFSR Criminal Procedural Code. The meeting was attended by about 200 people, many of whom turned out to be
KGB operatives. The slogans read: "Требуем гласности суда над Синявским и Даниэлем" (We demand an open trial for Sinyavski and Daniel) and "Уважайте советскую конституцию" (Respect the Soviet constitution). The demonstrators were promptly arrested. In the following years, Esenin-Volpin became an important voice in the
human rights movement in the Soviet Union. He was one of the first
Soviet dissidents who took on a "legalist" strategy of dissent. He proclaimed that it is possible and necessary to defend human rights by strictly observing the law, and in turn demand that the authorities observe the formally guaranteed rights. Esenin-Volpin was
again hospitalized in February 1968 as one of those protesting most strongly against the trial of
Alexander Ginzburg and
Yury Galanskov (
Galanskov-Ginzburg trial). In 1968, Esenin-Volpin was again imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital, prompting the
Letter of the Ninety-Nine to be sent to the Soviet authorities asking for his release. This fact became public and the
Voice of America conducted a broadcast on the topic; he was released almost immediately thereafter. That year, he circulated his famous "Памятка для тех, кому предстоят допросы" (Memo for those who expect to be interrogated) widely used by fellow dissidents in the Soviet Union. In 1969, Esenin-Volpin signed the first
Appeal to The UN Committee for Human Rights, drafted by the
Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR. In 1970, he joined the
Committee on Human Rights in the USSR and worked with
Yuri Orlov,
Andrei Sakharov and other Soviet human rights activists. == Emigration ==