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On the morning of January 6, Kathleen Hunt, a National Public Radio correspondent from the U.S., who had continuously reported on all the developments of my case in the past, came to see me. She was accompanied by Andrei Mironov and Nazifa Karimova, from the Tatar broadcast “Azatlyk” of “Radio Liberty”. We went by trolley bus to the “Novogireevskaya” Metro Station and then quickly reached “Komsomolskaya.”

On the way I read an article by Sergei Mostovschikov titled “Chemistry and Life” in the January 6^th issue of Izvestia.[270]He presented a detailed analysis of the past investigation and its groundlessness, which made the case without merit in his opinion. Judge Nikolai Sazonov declined to comment on the forthcoming trial, saying only that it would be held behind closed doors. The surprised journalist challenged the fact that none of the six witnesses that had to participate in the trial had yet received a subpoena from the court. He also suggested that the trial would be delayed because of the defense attorney’s illness. He wrote further that I was apprehensive about the whole situation. If the Ministry of Security brought the case to court, showing such an enviable obstinacy, and even managed to get away with a secret closed trial, it could easily declare that some grounds had been found sufficient for imprisoning me for 2-5 years.

We rose from the metro underground up to Komsomolskaya Square, where Building 43 housed the Moscow City Court.

The morning was frosty, but it had thawed a bit the day before, and so there was a lot of snow and ice under our feet. The entire time we risked falling under the city transport that was briskly weaving between the snowdrifts. We fell down several times, but didn’t injure ourselves, and safely reached the doors of the gloomy and rather dirty yellow three-storied house of justice. Although it was still half an hour before the trial, there were quite a lot of reporters on the street with TV camera crews, photojournalists, and microphones. The telegenic leader of the Democratic Union movement, Valeria Novodvorskaya, stood out among the rest. She was famous in the country for her courageous actions against Bolshevik totalitarianism, and had written several highly expressive essays on my case.[271]^,[272]^,[273] I gave one of them to Investigator Shkarin, at her request. He had known her when she was a prisoner at Lefortovo.

Although I tried, I still didn’t have enough time to answer all of the correspondents’ questions. Mostly they were asking about how I was doing, what forecasts I would give regarding the outcome of the trial, and what I felt right before going to the closed trial. Despite serious doubts and the suffering connected with them, I was resolute and didn’t feel any traces of fear or regret. I understood that I had a great moral responsibility, and I realized that I must not show any weakness at the trial. Otherwise my behavior would offend the memory of many thousands of fighters against the Fascist-Communist regime.

Apart from correspondents, there were a lot of ordinary people and former veterans and dissidents who had served their terms in the Bolshevik concentration camps. They came up to me, shook my hand, and asked me to believe that I had their support. It was extraordinarily touching, and I will be grateful to them for their warm words and support until my last day.

Then it was time to go inside the court building, up to the second floor, to Room 30, where two policemen stood by the doors. Surrounded by the constant flashes of the photo cameras and the rattling chatter of the TV cameras, I produced my summons, and a policeman went into the room with it. He returned with a young woman, the court secretary. She checked my passport, opened the door, and I entered the room. On the left was the seating for the judge and the two jurors. Opposite there were two rows of benches for the defendants. I went to the front bench, sat in the middle, and waited for the judge to appear. A middle-aged man was sitting near the armchairs of one of the jurors. I decided he must be the prosecutor. There was nobody else in the room. At 11.30 A.M. sharp the secretary coming into the room announced, “Rise, court is in order!” Immediately, the judge and two jurors, a man and a woman, entered.

The judge was a thickset middle-aged man, who had well groomed black wavy hair. He pretended to be an intellectual, but that didn’t match up with his poorly concealed expression of conceit and signs of treachery and slyness. The judge announced the beginning of the hearing of my case and added that he, Nikolai Sazonov, would conduct the session. He announced the names of the two jurors. I remembered that people called them “the nodders”, because they always nodded their heads as a sign of certain agreement. The judge’s tone of speech wasn’t flat. I would say that it had the intonations of a participant in a scientific debate. That was how he started his interrogation about my parentage, year of birth, educational background, etc., which was obviously a trivial introduction to the court session. I answered these questions, trying not to give the impression of an ingratiating defendant, and at the same time trying to respond appropriately. The judge asked who would defend me at the trial. I answered and asked for a two week postponement of the trial, in order to give my lawyer the time to recover his health. Then the prosecutor took the floor and said that he represented the Moscow City Prosecutor’s Office, however, another prosecutor, Leonid Pankratov, had prepared for the trial, but had caught a cold. The latter become familiar with my case at the request of the City Prosecutor, and he advised that it could take a considerable time to replace him. So he also asked the court to postpone the hearing until the State Prosecutor recovered.

Then the judge asked me what my preference would be for the composition of the court panel, and I answered that I would like to have the three independent judges to conduct the hearing. My choice was unexpected, but it seemed to me that three judges could have different opinions, which could give me some advantage in the long run. After this, the court adjourned for a short recess. Then the judge appeared, accompanied by “the nodders” and read their decision to comply with the request to have three independent judges and to postpone the next court session until January 24, 1994. That concluded the day’s business.

I remember that after the conclusion of that session, numerous correspondents entered the courtroom (the judge had dismissed security), and they interviewed Judge Sazonov. He answered their questions with apparent pleasure. In answering a question by Soni Efron from the Los Angeles Times, I said that I wasn’t going to remain mute during the trial process, and that I wasn’t happy at all about the hearing being conducted behind closed doors, because it created a bad precedent for potential dissidents who disagreed with the current regime. However, I didn’t know what I personally could do about it.[274]

The radio stations Mayak, Echo Moskva, Molodezhny Kanal, [The Youth Channel] and the TV channels NTV and All-Russia Channel Two reported on the beginning of the trial. Some newspapers published articles during the weeks that followed the beginning of the trial[275]^,[276]^,[277]^,[278]^,[279]^,[280]^,[281]^,[282]^,[283]^,[284]^,[285]^,[286]^,[287] and expressed concern about having a closed trial. The majority of them classified the goal of upcoming trial as an attempt by the Chekists to retaliate against me for telling the truth.