Savin [. . .] has been found guilty of making twelve anti-Soviet leaflets on May Day in 1955 while at the apartment of citizen Radvillo (at the 101st kilometer of the Omutninsk district, Kirov region). In his leaflets, he maliciously slandered the living conditions of the Soviet people and the peaceful policies of the Party and the Soviet state and called on others to overthrow the Soviet state. On May 2, 1955, Savin posted one such leaflet on the door of a store in Peskovka village and dropped another into a mailbox, where it was found by postal employees. [. . .]

Savin has admitted his guilt. During the preliminary hearing and in court, Savin explained: “I wrote an anti-Soviet leaflet and made a total of twelve copies while at the 101st kilometer of the Omutninsk district, in Radvillo’s apartment, on May 1, 1955. To do this, I took a school notebook with twelve pages, put carbon paper between the sheets, and made twelve copies of the anti-Soviet leaflet with a marking pencil, in block letters. . . . When I was in Peskovka on May 2, 1955, I dropped one leaflet into a mailbox and stuck the other on the door of the grocery store. . . . I did this so that policemen would run around and look for the person who could have done it, because I had gone to the police several times asking them for a residence permit, and I was turned down everywhere, so I decided to take revenge.”

Later Savin testified that he had forged his identification documents and for this reason could not get a residence permit, and also that he had listened to broadcasts of Voice of America and, being angry with the state, decided to write and distribute the leaflets.

The content of the leaflets is as follows:

“Comrades! We are broadcasting the latest message from Voice of America. We are celebrating May Day, drinking and having fun, but meanwhile a thousand poor Russian people don’t even have bread. Look at train stations; look at how many miserable people just released from imprisonment are dying from hunger there because no one will hire them. And think how many of them are dying in the camps from backbreaking labor and hardships. They have rebelled several times, in different places of imprisonment, and every time they were shot in a country that prides itself on its humane values. Isn’t that so? Do you know that during construction on the Amur River, ten thousand young men and women died? And at a time when the Communist head honchos are making loud claims about peace and banning the bomb, that’s when they bring their armed forces up to the borders and produce atomic and hydrogen bombs. For example, Ashkhabad was destroyed by an explosion at an atomic facility. In Norilsk, a hydrogen facility is running; its number is 503/1.

“Down with Communism, that plague of the people! Long live true democracy!

“MOAC agent Sinichkin.”

As Savin explained, MOAC stands for “Militant Organization of Anti-Communists” and was borrowed by him from Voice of America broadcasts.

In his appeals (in particular, the appeal of January 2, 1957), Savin stated that he wrote anti-Soviet leaflets under the influence of his father, I. P. Savin, who turned out to be a British spy. After Savin’s arrest, I. P. Savin committed suicide for fear of being exposed.

During his February 29, 1956, interrogation, Savin testified that that statement about his father’s treasonous activities was a lie that he invented to get his verdict rescinded or his sentence reduced.