The point I think ought to be made clear, yes, sir, when it comes to keeping commitments with their own citizens, there is no liability. I do not think you can look at their relationship with their own citizens and make a translation to their relationships in their own affairs. There are different sets of constraints and powers who are around. These are people who respect power and other factors. Their own citizens are powerless. We have more leverage.

Mr. LEBOUTILLIER. That is the only point I was trying to make. I have found in my short time in Congress that on our Foreign Affairs Committee there is great agreement between members who are more liberal and members who are more conservative over distrusting the Soviets on certain issues. Yet when we get into this part about whether they will honor their agreements with us, we disagree. It seems to me if they will cheat their own citizens and they clearly do, and if they will perform medical experiments on people and sentence people to concentration camps and kill, as Solzhenitsyn says they have, 66 million of their own people the last 60-70 years, this is the most oppressive regime ever.

How we can think entering into an agreement with these people will be honored without the real constraints to force them or-Mr. FRANK. I would like to respond briefly to that.

Yes, sir, we have to be careful but I am glad that people were willing to enter into an agreement with them back when they were more barbarous which led to Austria getting its freedom and that was honored. Yes, sir, I think there were differences. Sometimes there will be and sometimes there won't be. It is a question of how you structure them.

I do not think the analogy holds as to how they mistreat one helpless or seven helpless of their citizens and what might be done in international treaties. I think we are talking about two very separate spheres.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BONKER. Thank you, Mr. Frank.

Mr. HYDE. You don't want me to question you? Do you want to leave?

Mr. BONKER. Did you want to ask questions?

Mr. HYDE. No. I'll talk to him later privately.

Mr. FRANK. I am in the phone book.

Mr. BONKER. The subcommittee will now hear from three witnesses who will constitute the second panel, Mrs. Jane Drake from the Society for the Vashchenko Emigration; Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Zakim, and Dr. Kent Hill.

Would those witnesses now come to the table.

You are in this panel because of your obvious concern and your personal efforts for those who are being held in Moscow and the subject of this hearing.

Ms. Jane Drake has been featured in Parade magazine and is quite notable for her work in behalf of the Vashchenkos. Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Zakim, are the New England directors of the AntiDefamation League for B'nai Brith, and Dr. Kent Hill, is a professor of Russian history, Seattle-Pacific University. My wife is an alumnus of that college. I am familiar with your fine institution. We shall begin with Ms. Drake. Would you please speak into the microphone?

STATEMENT OF JANE DRAKE, SECRETARY, SOCIETY OF
AMERICANS FOR VASHCHENKO EMIGRATION

MS. DRAKE. My testimony is quite long and there is much documentation in the written part about the different persecutions, sufferings and harassment of these people that have been going on since 1962.

Peter Vashchenko's story of emigration started over 20 years ago.

Mr. BONKER. Can those of you in the back hear her all right? You may want to move the microphone a little bit closer. I am sorry.

Ms. DRAKE. His story of emigration started over 20 years ago when he realized he was not going to be able to rear his family in the Soviet Union according to his beliefs. Always since he has been trying to emigrate the Soviets had told him that it was necessary to get an invitation of emigration. Someone had to invite him to leave the Soviet Union. Therefore, when he received an invitation from a Presbyterian Alabama minister in 1978, inviting him to leave the Soviet Union, he was elated and thought the emigration was close by but, contrary to what the Soviets had said all along, when he produced this invitation of emigration to the officials, they now told him that it was a trick.

Peter Vashchenko then planned his 1978 trip to Moscow. The day before he left, Maria Chmykhalov asked if she could go with the Vashchenkos because she also wanted an invitation of emigration. So in June they left for Moscow.

They arrived in Moscow June 27 at the entrance of the American Embassy. There were eight in the party but only seven made it into the Embassy because 16-year-old John Vashchenko was grabbed by the Soviet soldiers outside and at the entrance of our Embassy he was thrown to the cement, brutally beaten, and taken off by the KGB. The families ran into the Embassy. They were panicked and could not speak English. It was 9 days later before they found out he had been brutally tortured for 9 days and sent home with kidney damage.

Then they had to stay in the Embassy not only to protect the lives of the ones in the Embassy, but also the ones back home in Chernogorsk. So a visit to the Embassy only to inquire about emigration and to find out if the Williamson's invitation in fact was a real emigration, has turned into a 4-year nightmare for these families. They were at once declared traitors in Chernogorsk and warrants for their arrest were drawn up.

For 32 years the families lingered in the American Embassy waiting for the West to raise their voice to help them, but no help came actually until they went on their hunger strike in January of this year, and then there was much attention brought to their case. When Lidia Vashchenko reached a critical point, she was sent from the American Embassy to Botkin Hospital. She stayed there until about the middle of February.

The Soviets had now gotten so much bad attention drawn to this case they did not want to seem like the villains before the world, and so therefore they allowed Lidia Vashchenko to return to the Embassy to say goodbye to her family and then to go back to Cher

nogorsk. But it is very important to understand why Lidia chose to go back to Chernogorsk.

She chose to go back only as a test case because always the Soviets since the time they entered the Embassy on June 27, 1978, had told the Americans that the Vashchenkos first had to go back to Chernogorsk to apply for emigration. So Lidia left to return to Chernogorsk as a test case.

I have two documents enclosed in my testimony, one from Lidia, written from Botkin Hospital, in which she vows she will continue her effort with her other brothers and sisters to emigrate, and one from Warren Zimmerman, who is the Deputy Chief of Foreign Missions in Moscow. And in his letter he wrote to Lidia in the hospital: We view your return to Chernogorsk not as an end but as a beginning. It is a test of Soviet good will and of the course the Soviet Government has recommended to your family for 31⁄2 years.

But when Lidia returned to Chernogorsk she was again caught up in the Soviet bureaucracy and she was sent from office to office, never being given an answer to her emigration.

Finally, all of her efforts culminated in a serious beating of all the family members. The 12 children were beaten on April 23, even the 8-year-old Abraham and 11-year-old Sarah. Six-year-old Dina's teeth were knocked out and Lidia Vashchenko was choked until she was unconscious. The family members were then put into jail for a few hours and returned home. It was only a few days after that that the Soviets placed all the children under house arrest.

This house arrest continued for about 4 or 5 weeks. During this time they were not allowed to go to Chernogorsk. They were not allowed to work. Their house was under surveillance 24 hours a day. The Soviet police were in and out. The electricity was turned off. Their garden was destroyed. By May 22 they had run out of food and they started going into the local garbage heaps to search for food to survive on and still there was no answer to their emigration.

Finally, the answer came on June 2. The Soviets said no, there will be no emigration until your parents leave the Embassy. We feel like this is a trick only to get everybody out of the Embassy and then they will be kept away from the eyes of the press and the eyes of the world, and the story will be closed. Therefore, now the family is still facing annihilation. No one is working. I don't know how they are eating. We have sent boxes by registered mail, hoping that they will get there for some relief.

Lidia Vashchenko promised that if she did not hear a favorable report from emigration on June 27, she would start another hunger strike, which she did. I talked to the families today in the Embassy. They had talked to some of the family members in Chernogorsk only yesterday. Lidia is taking only water and tea. She is so weak she cannot get out of bed. Vera, her sister, is weak and cannot go to the phone either.

In the Embassy, the mother has joined the family in order to show support. Lilia, 25, whose birthday was July 16, also joined her mother to show support for the children in Chernogorsk.

This is the first time that Lidia has not come to the phone in months. She is too weak to come to the phone. We face a very seri

ous situation. I called last week to the Soviet Embassy to complain about this situation and spoke to first Secretary Boris Davydov; he denounced them as criminals and said the Americans should throw them out of the Embassy.

Lyuba today asked me to please read a letter that the children have written to Brezhnev and which I would like to take the time to do now. The children promised in May that if they were not given their emigration they were going to continue this struggle until their deaths:

Until this day you have not wanted to listen or resolve the question of our emigration from the U.S.S.R. which we have been trying to obtain for the past 22 years. The picture of you together with your granddaughter was published recently in newspapers and spread all over the country. We, the children of the Vashchenko family, have begun to doubt that you have the feeling of pity, love or humanity. We conclude that you lost them a long time ago.

We also desire to be together with our parents, but we are forced to be separated from them and live in prison camp orphanages, or under pressure of the Soviet atheistic state of this country. It has become the destiny of our life in the U.S.S.R. Now we are forced to conduct once again a hunger strike that has already been continued for 10 days.

When at last will humanity appear in your consciousness? When will you resolve positively the question of our emigration? We are waiting for your answer. Below are listed 12 names, the 12th one being Ludmilla Sasha's wife.

Again referring to Warren Zimmerman's letter written to Lidia: Be assured the Embassy will not abandon you but will continue to support the efforts of you and your family to emigrate.

Now we, the Society of Americans for Vashchenko Emigration, strongly ask that this country pass the permanent residency bill. As Senator Levin said on July 13, it is the hope of the Vashchenkos and the Chmykhalovs that it now pass also the House and become law before Congress adjourns in 1982. If it be within the bounds of this subcommittee, we ask that some action be taken, some positive action be taken for this bill.

We also urge that there be some kind of linkage between trade in the United States and the issue of human rights in the Soviet Union, some linkage including technology and grain. It is inconceivable to us that in the past 4 years this problem could not have been solved in view of the fact that the Soviets are so desperately dependent, especially on our foodstuffs.

If I please can quote from a radio program in which President Reagan was speaking before the election, he said:

"Détente is supposed to be a two-way street. Our wheat and technology can get into Russia. Why do the Vashchenko and Chmykhalov families do not get out?"

Now we are also asking this question: Why do our technology and our wheat get into the Soviet Union and the Vashchenko and Chmykhalov families do not get out?

We also suggest that there not be a summit meeting in October and no renewal of the grain agreement in September. Until this emigration is resolved and the family members of these two families, both in the Embassy and in Chernogorsk, Siberia, are allowed to emigrate from that country.

We appreciate so much the interest and concern of this subcommittee, this hearing today, and the passing of House Concurrent

Resolution 100. in March, and we ask for your continued support of these two families.

Mr. BONKER. Thank you very much, Ms. Drake, for a moving statement and I know you have a lot to say on this subject. You have involved much of your life with these families. Be assured that the documentation that is attached to your formal statement will also be included in the record and we will be anxious to ask questions as soon as the other panelists have testified.

[Ms. Drake's prepared statement follows:]