Remembering the Darkness by Shapovalov Veronica;

Author:Shapovalov, Veronica;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2001-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Irina Zalmanovna Tsurkova 1959–

Born in Leningrad, Irina Zalmanovna Tsurkova (b. Lopotukhina) graduated from high school in 1976. She applied to a medical institute but was refused admission because she is Jewish. She then enrolled in evening classes at the Leningrad Textile Institute (1977–1978) while working days as a typist at the same institute (1977–1979). During this time, she also participated in the publication of a samizdat journal, Perspektiva (Perspective).

In 1979, she married Arkadii Samsonovich Tsurkov, a student in the department of mathematics at the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. The marriage ceremony took place in prison where Tsurkov had been under arrest since October 1978. He was sentenced to five years in the camps followed by three years of exile under Article 70 of the RSFSR Criminal Code (participation in an anti-Soviet organization). Summoned as a witness in the trial of her husband Arkadii, she refused to testify, and was sentenced to three months of corrective labor at her place of work.

Tsurkova worked actively for the Fund for the Aid of Political Prisoners.1 After her father’s death she lived alone in a three-room apartment in Leningrad. Her friends and acquaintances often met at her place and those from out of town often stayed there with her. That her apartment was the locus for informal meetings was one of the main reasons for her arrest, which occurred on December 20, 1982. On March 20, 1983, Leningrad City Court sentenced Tsurkova to three years in corrective labor camps under Article 190 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (failure to report crimes). She spent her sentence in the camp in Bozoi (1983–1984) and in Plishkino, in the Irkutsk region (1984–1985). Following her release, she lived in Troitse-Pechersk, where her husband was in exile. She returned to Leningrad in 1987. In 1990, Tsurkova emigrated to Israel, where she lives now with her husband and three children.

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