We applaud your decision of June 18 to embargo the export of General Electric compressor rotors and Caterpillar pipelayers for the Urengoi pipeline and to prohibit the manufacture abroad on license of American equipment destined for it. At the end of May, however, your Under Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Seeley Lodwick, met with Soviet agricultural officials in Paris and, according to newspaper reports, offered to make available to them American grain over and above the 23 million tons your administration agreed last August to sell the U.S.S. R. during the current grain year. Mr. Lodwick is reported to have told his Soviet partners that he would encourage American banks to extend short-term credit to the U.S.S. R. for the purchase of additional grain." How can We of S.A.V. E. suggest that there be no summit meeting with the U.S.S.R. in October nor a renewal of the grain agreement in September, until this problem is solved and the Vashchenko and Chmykhalov family members in the Embassy as well as those at home in Chernogorsk, Siberia, are granted emigration. business as usual take place while such examples of violations of human rights guaranteed by the Helsinki Accords and the Declaration of Human Rights are living in our Embassy in Moscow? We urge the Committee's support of this position and ask that the Committee's support be communicated to the President. Again we express our gratitude for the Committee's concern and interest in the Vashchenko and Chmykhalov plight. We are most appreciative of your expedient passing of Resolution H. Con. 100 in March 1982 in their behalf and of this hearing today. Please continue your support. Moscow. Hospital Botkin. Open Letter. I would like to express my deep gratitude to the people and governments who took a part in the solution of the problem of my life during thehospitalization. It is true that the Soviet doctors have been kind to me during my stay in the hospital and I understand why. As I understand it their treatment relative to me was dictated by the top political leaders. If the order would have been different, then the treatment of the medical personel would have been different as well. The political leaders made the decision because people of the whole World have been watching how the question is going to be resolved. Of course, it is not for me to teach the top leaders but I believe that even now if the Soviets would consider the question of the emigration of my family positively, then they would receive the approval of the whole World. Since my family begining with my grandfather has never belonged to the Communist system, why now in front of the whole is it necessary to deal with us or to prevent us from emigration revealing in this the powerlessness of the atheistic system in the reeducation of such a small group as my family (16 persons)? For what reason is it necessary for the Soviet leaders to fight with us since we have been always been nothing in their eyes? But we have God who is leading us and is there anything stronger than Him? My request to all people and goverbnments who are concerned about us is that they please ask the Soviet government to allow the emigration of my whole family. Lidia Vashchenko. (Translated from the Russian text by Moscow. Embassy of the USA. Dear Lidia, I was pleased to receive the letter you wrote me from Botkin Hospital. I have followed Dr. Schadler's reports on your medical condition with interest and am glad that you are now well. Po assured that we in the Embassy will not abandon you but will continue to support the efforts of you and your family to emigrate. 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 three and one half years. Our best wishes and our hopes are with you. We were encouraged to read in your June 8 speech to the British Parliament: "[W]e know that there are even those who strive and suffer for freedom within the confines of the Soviet Union itself. How we conduct ourselves here in the Western democracies will determine whether this trend continues." Among those in the USSR who strive and suffer for freedom are six people immured in the American Embassy in Moscow: the Vashchenkos and Chaykhalovs, who have become living symbols of those Soviet citizens who strive and suffer for freedom of religion. They came to our Embassy in Moscow because they believed that Americans and their government uphold that freedom, as well as freedom of emigration, to which you referred so eloquently on June 8. On June 27, the Vashchenkos and Chmykhalovs completed four years in our Embassy. They, and all who are interested in the freedoms for which they strive and suffer, are waiting to see how you will translate into action the splendid words of your June 8 speech. Earlier this year, you sent President Brezhnev a letter requesting his help in solving this problem. Secretary of State Haig raised it subsequently with Foreign Minister Gromyko. With what result? On February 15, 1982, the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) published a commentary by its analyst, Yuri Kornilov, which, among other things, said: "Mr. Reagan, mildly speaking, got in an ... awkward situation and his 'concern' about the Vashchenkos looks a bit The President, The White House, Washington, D. C. remain in the family home in Chernogorsk, by threatening to draft Jacob Vashchenko and to arrest his sister Lydia, whom you asked to end her hunger strike last winter and whom you promised to help, and by attempting to place all the children in extreme economic straits. In a radio talk you gave on October 2, 1979, you said: "Detente is supposed to be a two-way street. Our wheat and technology can get into why can't the Vashchenko and Chinykhalov families get out?" Russia - We applaud your decision of June 18 to embargo the export of General Electric compressor rotors and Caterpillar pipelayers for the Urengoi pipeline and to prohibit the manufacture abroad on license of American equipment destined for it. At the end of May, however, your Under Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Seeley Lodwick, met with Soviet agricultural officials in Paris and, according to newspaper reports, offered to make available to them American grain over and above the 23-million tons your administration agreed last August to sell the USSR during the current grain year. Lodwick is reported to have told his Soviet partners that he would encourage American banks to extend short-term credit to the USSR for the purchase of additional grain. Mr. And you have talked about plans for a summit meeting with President Brezhnev in October. But the Vashchenko and Chmykhalov families still cannot get out of the Soviet Union. You introduced your October 2, 1979, broadcast by recalling the tragedy of Yuri Vlasenko, the Soviet merchant seaman who blew himself up rather than be taken alive by the Soviet police whom the American ambassador had invited into the Embassy. Your cautionary linking of Yuri Vlasenko's death with the effort of the Vashchenkos and Chmykhalovs to leave the USSR was fully appropriate. Construction of the new Embassy building is proceeding in Moscow. We do not know how soon it will be completed, but the question now arises as to what the American government will do when that time comes and the last Americans move from the old premises to the new. If construction of the new building is completed in the summer of 1984, according to schedule, will the Vashchenkos and Chmykhalovs be able to move to the new building? If they are not, what will happen to them? Speaking on June 8 to an audience at the Dumbarton United Methodist Church in Georgetown, Mr. Art Buchwald said that the current American ambassador to the USSR had told him how anxious he was to have the Vashchenkos and Chmykhalovs leave the Embassy. S.312 in A considerable number of Americans are interested in the fate of the Vashchenko and Chmykhalov families and in freedom of religion and of emigration and strongly support the passage of legislation the Senate and H. R. 2873 in the House of Representatives the Vashchenkos and Chymkhalovs permanent-resident status to grant retroactive to |