Methods of KGB Work with Youth on Example of Siarhei Ushakou

The deputy chair of the foreign sales department of the closed corporation Babruiskmeblia (Babruisk furniture) Siarhei Ushakou was surprised when a KGB worker Aliaksadr Kharashkevich came to him and introduced himself as the ‘curator of the plant from KGB’ (such position really exists, though in reality the plant curator is not Kharashkevich). Ushakou already knew Kharashkevich from talks with his form-mate Maksim Buinitski who had been summonsed to interrogations concerning the Young Front case this spring.

The KGB worker said that he came on purely professional affairs and was interested in shipments to foreign states and the reasons for their cessation. However, he also asked some questions that had no relations to it: ‘Do you have any oppositional groups at the plant, what are you doing and how do they appear?’, ‘What do foreigners say of our president when they come to you?’, etc. At the end of the talk the KGB worker told Ushakou to prepare to him information about the main partners from distant foreign countries. Siarhei Ushakou informed the plant director about this talk and received an answer that the enterprise had a legal right not to present any information without an official inquiry.

Next time Kharashkevich visited the plant on 7 July. He insisted that he had a right to know everything. He started asking Ushakou about Babruisk activists Ales Chyhir and Maksim Buinitski. Siarhei Ushakou answered that in 2006, on the eve of the presidential election, he had really collected signatures for the candidacy of Aliaksandr Milinkevich, that Buinitski is his former form-mate and that he did not meet with Chyhir.

Finally, in order to get rid of the annoying company, Ushakou invited Kharashkevich to the commercial director so that the letter could ask for information about foreign partners. The commercial director discontentedly answered that such information could be received only by means of an official inquiry to the director general.

Two weeks later Kharashkevich phoned to Ushakou on his mobile and asked for a meeting. Siarhei refused and asked to serve him a summons if necessary.

In the morning of 27 July, on the way to his job Siarhei found in his postbox a paper that did not even resemble an official summons: it had no emblem, was produced on Xerox and had no signatures. That’s why he did not come to the KGB in the specified time. Kharashkevich kept on phoning to Ushakou for some more days, but the latter did not answer.

On 1 August the commercial director summonsed Siarhei and told him to go to KGB because otherwise he could be taken there in hand-cuffs and given a fine. The commercial director dialed a number and stated that Ushakou would come at 10 a.m. tomorrow.

On 2 August a talk at the KGB office took place. Kharashkevich was accompanied by another KGB agent, Akhreyenka. They asked him about some parishioners and the whereabouts of a priest Akalatovich. They also proposed to him to contact the priests and find who financed them.

Ushakou refused from collaboration referring to the bad state of health. However, it was not that easy to escape from the obsessive KGB. At the end of August Kharashkevich came to Babruiskmeblia again. Such importunity indignated Siarhei Ushakou and he told to other workers of the enterprise: ‘Look, here’s a KGB agent and I don’t know what he wants from me!’. Then the offended KGB worker left Ushakou and came to the commercial director to complain on the ‘intractable’ worker.

At present Ushakou is left in peace, but he can face trouble at work because of this story. Recently we also learned that Siarhei’s father, police veteran, applied to Babruisk inter-district KGB office and was advised to tell his son to abstain from any oppositional activities as soon all opposition activists would be fired.