"SAVE" Rt. I Box 49-A Pike Road, Al. 36064 USA. P3. Moscow. Embassy of the USA Dear Cecil, Janie and Babette, We, the Vashchenko family, ask and trust you to intercede for the emigration of our family. We trust you to express the opinion of our family to the people and governments on the religion as well as political questions As they arise and about which we will inform you. It is possible that our opinions sometimes will bar different from yours but we ask you to express our opinions as they are. We thank you very much for your kindness, work, prayers and intercession for the emigration of our family that you were doing during the past 40 months. We ask you please, continue to intercede before both governments, the American and Soviet, so that our whole family could come to your country. May God bless and help you. Respectfully Yours, Vashchenko. The Vashchenko family. This letter of attorney from Nov. 1st 1981 concerns to STATEMENT BY THE SOCIETY OF AMERICANS FOR VASHCHENKO EMIGRATION For the past 20 years Peter Vashchenko has been trying to emigrate from the U.S.S.R.. In 1962 he realized that it would be impossible to bring his children up under the Soviet regime. In the U.S.S.R. it is against Soviet law to teach one's children about God in the home. It is against Soviet law for a child below the age of 18 to attend the Soviet State Churches, and atheism is taught as a vital part of the curriculum of all Soviet children. Because of these three conditions existing in the Soviet Union, Peter Vashchenko along with a few of his family members made their first trip to Moscow in October 1962 to ask instructions from the Kremlin and the American Embassy on how a Soviet citizen might emigrate from the Soviet Union. The Soviet militia barred his entrance to the American Embassy and the Kremlin gave him and his family a KGB escort back to his Siberian home in Chernogorsk. Consequently, on his return home, Peter was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison. Throughout the following 20 years Peter and his family have continued through legal channels their struggle to emigrate from the U.S.S.R.. Instead of being granted emigration, he spent in addition to the mentioned three years in prison, a couple of months in a Soviet psychiatric hospital, used to contain those dissenting from the Soviet system, and two more years in a labor camp. His wife Augustina spent three years in prison and three of her daughters were taken from her and sent to state boarding schools for reeducation in the atheist doctrine for a period of eight years. In 1977 Cecil Williamson, pastor of the Cresent Hill Presbyterian Church of Selma, Alabama, became aware of the persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union. He was told that one way he could help these Christians was to send them an official invitation of emigration. This is a document the Soviet government requires a Soviet citizen to have, actually inviting the citizen to leave the U.S.S.R., before he may present himself to the Ovir Emigration office of the Soviet Union to "apply" to leave. The Vashchenko name was picked at random from a list of 1,000's by the Tolstoy Foundation in New York and was sent to Cecil Williamson as a Soviet family which wished to emigrate. The formal invitation to the Vashchenko family was prepared and filed through the U.S. State Department. Contrary to the rule, the Soviets delivered this invitation to the Vashchenko family in April of 1978. When Peter presented Cecil Williamson's invitation to the Soviet Ovir offices, the Soviets informed him that the invitation was a trick and that he should get further information about emigrating from the Americans in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Peter decided to make the trip. On June 27, 1978, he and seven others arrived at the entrance of our U.S. Embassy. Although Peter had a document given to him by an American vice consul in 1975 which should have allowed his entering the U.S. Embassy, Soviet soldiers attacked his family and two members of the Chmykhalov family, who had accompanied him to Moscow. Young John Vashchenko was brutally beaten at the entrance of our Embassy and was taken away by Soviet soldiers. He was tortured for a week, suffering kidney damage, and was returned home to Chernogorsk. 2. Because of this beating it was the decision of the remaining seven and of their family members back in Chernogorsk, that they should remain in the Embassy to protect their seven lives as well as the lives of those family members back home in Siberia. The Vashchenko and Chmykhalov families have now been living in refuge in a small basement room of our U.S. Embassy in Moscow for 3 years. The depressing conditions under which they have existed for these past years have caused them to doubt the sincerity of the U.S. government to aid and promote their emigration. In contrast, the families are much aware of the tremendous support they have of the American people and are conscious that the legislative branch of our government is primarily the voice of the people. For this reason they wait, anticipating with much hope the favorable passage of such resolutions as Resolution Con. 251 and bills in their behalf by the U.S. Congress. In October of this past year 1981, PARADE MAGAZINE took me to Moscow to cover a story on the families. It was then that I was able to meet in person the people that I have learned to love in the past three and one-half years. They are the bravest and purest human beings I have ever known. As they quietly told me that if and when they should have to leave the Embassy, that some of them will probably die, they were calm and resolved. I was the only one shaken. Two of the Vashchenko daughters who were taken from Peter and Augustina and sent to Soviet boarding homes for 8 years, were up until January 30, 1982, in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with their parents. On January 30 Lidia Vashchenko was sent to a Soviet hospital when her condition, as a result of her hunger strike for freedom, became critical. Because of the deteriorating stability of these two brave and courageous families, we of the Society of Americans for Vashchenko Emigration urgently ask that Resolution Con. 251 be quickly passed to the floor of the House for a vote. Please give these families a confirmation of American support. Jane Drake* * In the Leningrad airport, on leaving the Soviet Union, my possessions were thoroughly searched. Some of my film along with my extra passport pictures were illegally confiscated. There could be no reason for this harassment other than the fact that I had gone to my own Embassy in Moscow to see the Vashchenko and Chmykhalov families. Besides my belongings being searched, I was taken to a small room and was rudely interrogated by two Soviets. Mr. FRANK. I think it is essential that we continue to show our concern, even more now than ever. I appreciate the expedited treatment that the subcommittee is giving this subject. With Lidia Vashchenko now in a Soviet hospital outside the protection of the Embassy, we are at a critical point. It has been a situation that has existed for over 3 years now. But we really are at a critical decision point. I think it is essential that we do all we can to see that the hunger strike does not become the event which leads to the imprisonment or further persecution of Lidia Vashchenko, or a tightening up. I am hoping that the Soviet Union will understand the spirit in which we approach this. It is a spirit, not of trying to make political points, but of simply recognizing, we hope, what ought to be a universal human right, the right of people who care deeply about their religion and their right to practice it. These are not political people. These are not people who are trying to engage in cold-war polemics of any sort. They are straightforward, deeply religious people, who are simply asking to be allowed to practice their religion. I don't think any superpower ought to feel threatened by so simple a request. First of all, the decision to live in the basement of the American Embassy-I am not sure that I would want to live in the living quarters of the American Embassy in Moscow-seven people in one room-ought to dispel any question about the dedication of these people. No one engages in gestures or polemics and rhetoric for 32 years of privation, of living in that one room in the Embassy. I am glad to learn that the Embassy has recently given them another room. That may be the only instance within the American jurisdiction in which people's housing problems have been alleviated. The dedication that these people have shown is unquestioned. The hunger strike itself is a desperation tactic. It is a tactic, not of a politician, not of a polemicist, but of a deeply religious individual who was driven to this by her need to express herself, to express her religious faith. I would hope that the very act of the hunger strike would get across to the leaders of the Soviet Union the legitimacy and the genuineness of this protest, and they would, in fact, use this as an opportunity now to resolve this situation in a decent way, mainly by letting these people leave. The resolution was, of course, drafted back in March. It is similar to the initiatives of Senator Levin and others and my predecessor, Father Drinan, who worked so hard in this area. It does need some updating. After conversations Mr. Leach and I, our staffs, and the State Department have had, we have a set of amendments which I believe are acceptable to all concerned, which take account of the current situation, which take account of the fact that Lidia Vashchenko is now in Botkin Hospital, and the fact that we do not know what the Soviet authorities are going to do. So I would hope that the subcommittee would act on the resolution. Simply, what it says is that we ask the U.S. Government, in essence, to continue its efforts. It is clear that the executive branch, the President, the Secretary of State and the Embassy have been supportive. This is not meant in any way to suggest there has been a lack of support. Addressing this to the President, |