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will through the kind of psychological torture which this government knows how to apply with unrelenting brutality.

As I stated earlier in my testimony, our country has a history of respect for religious freedom, and I am of the belief that we should act at every possible opportunity to secure the release of the Vashchenko and Chymkhalov families from the Soviet Union. The Senate has already acted on one of the next important steps that we can take in expressing our commitment to obtaining the release of these two families--the passage of a bill to grant permanent residence status to the Vashchenko and Chymkhalov families retroactive to the date when they first entered the embassy. The adoption of this bill would allow the United States to grant citizenship to these families upon reaching the five year residence requirement. Although Soviet recognition of their American citizenship is unlikely, it is important that we provide the protection of the American constitution to these people and that every possible form of leverage be utilized on their behalf. I will be working in the Immigration Subcommittee to see that the House version of this bill is

passed.

I find it distressing that one of the most powerful nations in the world has chosen to direct the full velocity of their authority against these two families whose simple desire is to leave the Soviet Union to worship their Pentecostal

faith in freedom. These families obviously have no desire to seek recrimination against the Soviet Union and it would be a small gesture of goodwill on the part of the Soviet government to allow these people to leave.

Mr. Chairman, it is my hope that today's hearings will serve to further this goal and that the Soviet Union will come to understand that the commitment in this country to securing the release of the Chymkhalov and Vashchenko families is widespread--as demonstrated by the diversity of those here to testify today--and that the American people will continue to press for their release by whatever means will yield the result we all desire; the departure of the Vashchenko and Chymkhalov families from the Soviet Union allowing them to pursue the religious beliefs which guide their lives and which have led them to endure this ordeal which has lasted

entirely too long.

Mr. BONKER. Thank you, Barney. We are always encouraged by your appearance before the subcommittee.

Are there any questions?

Mr. LeBoutillier.

Mr. LEBOUTILLIER. I want to ask a couple of questions.

You are a very intelligent person separate from being a Congressman.

Mr. FRANK. They are not entirely unrelated.

Mr. LEBOUTILLIER. Just your personal feelings on why the Soviet Union attempts to eliminate religion in their country?

Mr. FRANK. I don't know. Obviously I think it is a very relevant question. In answering it, I want to be clear. I don't in any way subscribe to this. I guess they have problems on two levels.

The fundamental level I would like to address would be to change the whole system. It is a system which it seems to me has consistently denied individual rights. Beyond that, I think given their commitment to maintaining that overall system, they are convinced, I think incorrectly, that if they concede the slightest point to people like this, the whole thing will unravel.

I must say from a pragmatic standpoint I don't see why they continue to oppose these people unless, and I guess they know their system better than any of us do, it may be that there are in fact tens of millions ready to leave for these reasons. Perhaps that is the case.

The specific objection to religion obviously is that these are people who have abrogated to themselves the view that they understand better than anybody else how to order the lives of their citizens from top to bottom. There simply is no room in their style of

government for any kind of dissent. Religion is to them disseminated because of their world view.

Mr. LEBOUTILLIER. In other words, they try to strip people of their humanity and make them robots that the government can control.

Mr. FRANK. I don't mean to quarrel specifically with that. I feel that metaphors in politics more often mislead us than not but it does go to control. These people appear to resent-because there are analogous presentations with regard to people who want to write or paint. This is a system that simply is premised on the view that there is one way to do everything and that anybody who tries to do something a different way is, in fact, subverting their system. Mr. LEBOUTILLIER. I think you used the word "right". Any time a seed of dissent is planted, the Soviet Government gets worried, and perhaps the lesson of this present Pope and the rise of Solidarity immediately following his ascension to the papacy worries Soviets that the same thing could happen in the Soviet Union.

Mr. FRANK. It is a concession by this implicitly that there is a massive unhappiness in their society.

If, in fact, this kind of dissent were confined to as few people as they would like us to believe, it would not be frightening. If it were really abhorrent, it would not be so threatening to them.

I think they do feel that freedom might be catching and if one person decides to practice it, someone else might.

Mr. LEBOUTILLIER. Just one more thing.

Senator Levin said this but I'm sure you heard it. The lady who was on a hunger strike and went to the hospital.

Mr. FRANK. Lidia Vashchenko?

Mr. LEBOUTILLIER. She went back and the Senator said the Soviet Government did not honor their commitment to her. She honored her commitment to them and went back and they did not do it and she is still trying to get the applications and so forth. That does not surprise you that they did not honor that commitment, does it?

Mr. FRANK. To one of their own citizens, no. These are not people who respond I think out of a sense of moral commitment to their own citizens.

Mr. LEBOUTILLIER. Do you think they honor their commitments to noncitizens any better than they do to their own citizens? Mr. FRANK. Yes, sir, anticipating that question.

Mr. LEBOUTILLIER. I told you he was smart.

Mr. FRANK. I think it is incumbent upon us to structure agreements so that they have mutual consent. I don't want to see agreements in favor of them. I want to see them because they are in our interest.

I think you could look at that. I think your President's decision to apparently extend the grain agreement, looked at in this light, might be something we would want to look at.

Mr. LEACH. He's your President too.

Mr. FRANK. Yes, sir, yours and his.

Mr. HYDE. Who is your President?

Mr. LEBOUTILLIER. Senator Kennedy is your President?

Mr. FRANK. But I do think he is doing a better job than yours is.

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 orMr. 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

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