VII. PROBLEMS AND MOTIVATIONS LEADING TO RETURN. 48. To give an overview and describe the reasons why émigrés and defectors return to their countries is in a way a complex undertaking because it involves for most of them a real human drama that has its roots in a multitude of deeply anchored feelings, emotions and expectations, which are usually put upside down by the destabilizing emigration and defection experiences. To return under those circumstances seems to many people of free and democratic countries a normal and acceptable choice. That 'normalcy' is also recognized in intemational declarations and treaties, but the failure to "make it" outside the Motherland and to return home is exploited and misconstrued by communist regimes so as to show that life on the native soil, shaped and determined by their principles, is superior to that of the so-called 'free world'. This additional political and ideological twist given by communist authorities to such returns transforms a basically human drama into a political game with high stakes. The problem does not become any easier when a high-level Soviet bloc defector reverses his decision to defect and gives his hosts the pink slip. One cannot deny that such defectors go through very tense moments, which again underlines the human aspects of the problem, but cloak-and-dagger considerations are not absent either. Unavoidably one ends up facing the 'bona fide' of the original defection, leaving behind a persistant question mark as to whether the defector was genuine or a plant. émigrés 49. Many problems seem to stem from a distorted and utopian vision of life in the West in general and in the US in particular. This vision has its origins mainly from the bleak picture of the West that has been painted in the official Soviet (bloc) press. The individual's reaction is often that such reports are twisted and that the West (or America) must be the opposite of the official propagated version: a perfect place with full employment, roads paved with gold where making money is easy and without too much effort. Many Soviet bloc émigrés do not realize the help they will need in their adjustment and how complex, alien, hostile and unfamiliar the new place can be at times. Reared in a paternalistic world that found the jobs and doled out their livelihood from birth to death, many such adults are at sea outside the managed Soviet (inspired) system, facing particularly a hard transition to a society that demands initiative and prizes property. Many of those émigrés have developed an 'entitlement mentality' that makes it harder to understand that they can get more in Western societies, but that they have to do it on their own. Not only do Soviet bloc émigrés find the freedom they were dreaming of but also indifference and the freedom to fail (or the constitutional right to be wrong). Problems are very often compounded by serious difficulties or an impossibility to find the old professional and social status back. This can vary greatly from one job category to another. Moreover, the past education tums out to be often worthless or of little value. Older émigrés stay 'eternally' in low-level positions or keep on reschooling themselves. Sometimes, the newly found freedom is not really trusted because of fear of oppression by the system ( authorities ), something that was inherited from living in Soviet bloc socie ties. 50. For a minority of Soviet bloc émigrés and defectors this will lead to disillusionment, despair and failure of human courage. This, on its turn, will produce social ostracism or withdrawal into small, tight communities where people keep to themselves ("America is too big an experiment" ). Not only are hopes for a better life seemingly not fulfilled, but old sores are revived or strenghtened; less positive aspects of life in the free-world societies are overblown and ideas about the latter are very often put in black-and-white perspectives: * nostalgia for security and camaraderie of Soviet (bloc) life; * homesickness = missing of country, culture, language, people, memories, etc... * divided families * loneliness; = separation from mother, father, wife and children; * unacceptable and unbearable crime rate; * violent and permissive society will destroy children, transform them * shocking pornography that turns freedom of speech into license for excess. For some returning émigrés living in an alien culture has also arisen feelings that Soviet bloc propaganda failed to inspire: a sense of being Russian (or other Soviet bloc nationality); a duty to the Motherland and a sense of guilt or shame for having left. Needless to say that the KGB keeps close tabs on the émigré community and KGB 'spotters' continuously are looking for disenchanted expatriates who might be persuaded to work for the Soviet Union ( other Soviet bloc country in case of other nationality) or who are willing -knowingly or not- to return in the frame of a big repatriation campaign as obviously has been the case with the returning émigrés at the end of 1986 and early 1987. It should be stressed though -and it is seldom done by the Soviet bloc media- that most Soviet bloc émigrés have integrated themselves well into their 51. new societies repeating an American story: the first generation of immigrants arrives and struggles to establish itself; the next one assimilates and worries about losing touch with its roots. A minority though cannot adjust and gets disenchanted. But as Alan Dershowitz noted recently, this is nothing new: "Every large-scale emigration -from the American colonists who came over on the Mayflower, to the pioneers who moved West in covered wagons, to the Irish, Italian and Polish immigrants who arrived at our shores in the late 19th century, to the Asians and Latin Americans who seek refuge here today- has included a small proportion of nostalgic returnees who can't cope with change. Some go back. The majority suffers through a difficult transition." (137) According to data obtained from the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (also called the Helsinki Commission ), an independent agency of Congress, approximately 100,000 persons emigrated between 1973 and 1986 from the USSR to the US: less than 1% returned. defectors Soviet bloc defectors distinguish themselves from émigrés in more than one aspect. Emigrés have usually been authorized to leave the country, while defectors went off of their own free will, a decision often considered a crime in most Soviet bloc countries. Returning entails a big, sometimes life-threatening risk, even if Soviet bloc authorities have promised otherwise. Problems and motivations that lead Soviet bloc defectors to change their mind and choose the way back home span a wide variety of situations, characters and personalities that very much acts like a wilderness of mirrors. Reality is very often blurred with real intentions masked or phrased as a Delphic oracle. Sometimes, the reason for returning will be apparent, although it should never 52. be taken at face value, nor does it represent necessarily the whole truth. The real motives for redefection can be as it also can be in the case of defection- hidden and never revealed, surrounded by vagueness and generalities. In other cases, the guiding hand of some Soviet bloc authorities will be present in a subtle way in either creating or exacerbating existing problems that will form the fertile ground for the decision to return. Finally, there will be cases where the defectors battling with their own psychological problems and feelings, will cause the redefection on their own. Some observers of the redefection phenomenon, such as Colonel Vernon Hinchley, consider redefectors, especially the high-level ones, as fake or plants: "[...] with the exception of a few such psychopaths as Lee Harvey Of course such view might seem too simplistic, however, the higher the Soviet redefector is on the 'value scale', the more questionable his bona fide becomes with regard to the original defection. In the cases of Igor Ryhkov and Oleg Khlan, the two Soviet soldiers who defected from the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the summer of 1983, the return mechanism seems to have been triggered off in Ryhkov by a letter received from his wife, mother and brother that also included pictures of his little girl he had never seen. Very likely, homesickness, a possible guilt of having left close family behind compounded by the terrifying prospect of never being able to see them again, formed a precarious balance easily broken by an emotional letter from home. Nikolay Ryzhkov, who left the US after a year at the end of 1934, was described by friends as "a homesick and undisciplined youth who showed little in |