Information on Krymov. Afanasii Gavrilovich Krymov (also Evgenii Kyo, Guo Zhaotang, Ko Saotang, Guo Zhoutao, Zheng Zhitang) was born in 1905 in the city of Shanghai, a Chinese, and a citizen of the USSR. He finished his higher education at the Party History Institute of Red Professors. He is a candidate of history.

Concerning the letter from Afanasii Gavrilovich Krymov, currently serving a sentence in a MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs] USSR corrective-labor camp, with a request to look over his case and permit him to move to China.

A statement from A.G. Krymov, where he pleas for cancellation of his verdict to a labor camp and to gain permission to serve the Communist cause in either the Soviet Union or China. In March 1938 he was arrested by the NKVD in Moscow and exposed as an enemy of the people.

In this September 1986 excerpt, Gorbachev receives a report from KGB chief Chebrikov that he had requested on “what kinds of people are serving sentences for crimes, which Western propaganda calls political.” Obviously following Gorbachev’s lead, Chebrikov proposes to alleviate the prison sentences of two-thirds of the 240 persons he lists under this category; but, in response to a question from Gromyko, he notes two cases where the guilty parties had already received a sentence that could not be reduced—execution for espionage.