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.

Pe 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.

Sincerely,

из

Warren Zimmermann

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 Chmykhalovs, 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
absurd;" "All this fuss at the presidential level
looks unsa-

...

vory." One American newspaper headlined this story, "Tass mocks Reagan
on Pentecostalists," and it is hard to avoid the impression that the
story was calculated to convey Soviet contempt for official U. S. repre-
sentations. Moreover, the Soviet authorities have shown how little
weight they give to American concern for these families by intensifying
their persecution of the children of Peter and Augustina Vashchenko who

The President,

The White House,

Washington, D. C.

remain in the family home in Chernogorsk, by threatening to dratt 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?"

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 Chnykhalovs 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 Erbassy.

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 retroactive to

S.312 in

-

to grant

the date of their entry into the Embassy, i. e., June 27, 1978. The passage of this legislation would presumably inhibit the pressure brought upon the Vashchenkos and Chmykhalovs by the ambassador to leave the Embassy and return to Chernogorsk as the Soviet authorities wish them to. It would also lay the basis for further action to give

American citizenship to the Vashchenkos and Chmykhalovs, thereby offering the Soviet authorities a face-saving means of permitting them to leave the Soviet Union. In the enclosed statement, Ambassador Davies notes how the Soviet government availed itself of such opportunities in the cases of Leonid Rigerman and Simas Kudirka.

But the State Department opposes this legislation and has worked to defeat it. Clearly, the most desirable way of dealing with this case would be compliance by the Soviet government with its obligations under international law and the granting of passports and exit visas to all the members of the Vashchenko and Chmykhalov families, both in the Embassy and in Chernogorsk.

It is now clear, however, that the Soviet government will not do that without the application of serious pressure from outside. If, for example, the Soviet government had been discreetly advised early in 1981 that you were anxious to lift the embargo on the shipment of American grain to the USSR, but could not act so long as this matter remained unresolved, we believe the Vashchenkos and Chmykhalovs would have been released.

Now, Lydia Vashchenko, who returned to Chernogorsk after her hunger strike last winter, is growing desperate as a result of the persecution to which she and her eight sisters and brothers are being subjected. On top of everything else they have done to persecute the Vashchenko children, the Soviet authorities have made it impossible for any of them to find work. This means that the children will soon be without any means of procuring food. Those who are old enough to work, but are prevented by the authorities from doing so, will soon be subject to prosecution under the "anti-parasite law."

Small wonder that Lydia has grown desperate and is once again determined to begin a hunger strike. She has not, however, recovered her strength following last winter's strike. Her parents and sisters in the Embassy fear that, in the hostile environment of Chernogorsk, Lydia may do irreparable damage to her already precarious health.

These, then, are the reasons which impel us to address this letter to you, Mr. President, and to appeal to you for help for the Vashchenkos and Chymkhalovs.

Only your support and a determined effort by your administration can now assure passage of S.312 in the Senate and of H.R.2873 in the House during the current Congress.

Following passage of this legislation, only your discreet, but firm, insistence that all the members of the Vashchenko and Chmykhalov families those in Chernogorsk as well as those in the Embassy in be permitted to emigrate before you can consider meeting

Moscow

with President Brezhnev, can convince the Soviet government that it must solve this problem. For you to meet with President Brezhnev in the absence of such a solution would constitute acquiescence in a situation which, as time passes, grows increasingly desperate and which can end in terrible tragedy.