‘See How Most People Live,’ Young Emigre Says : Girl Who Visited Russia Gets Travel Tip

Walter Polovchak, the Soviet boy who refused to return home with his parents, has some advice for Samantha Smith, the 12-year-old American schoolgirl who visited Russia.

“I suggest if Samantha Smith plans to visit the Soviet Union in the future, she should try to go without government guides to one of the smaller cities or villages and see how most people live,” Polovchak wrote in a Wall Street Journal review of Samantha’s book, “Journey to the Soviet Union.”

Polovchak, who refused to go back to the Soviet Union five years ago when he was 12, said Samantha was duped in a Kremlin scam that gave her a distorted view of life in his homeland.

The girl from Maine was invited to visit after writing to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov in December, 1982, to tell him of her worries about nuclear war between his country and the United States.

After a two-week trip to Russia with her parents, she praised the Russians’ life style and peaceful intentions.

Noting that Soviet officials put Samantha up in a plush Moscow hotel during her visit, Polovchak recalled when he and his family stayed in a Moscow hotel before emigrating to Chicago.

“It had cockroaches and mice,” he said. “There was no bathroom or shower in the room. In the common washroom there was no toilet paper, so you had to use newspaper. There weren’t any phones or room service, and most of the food in the restaurant was spoiled.”

Polovchak also wrote that the Pioneer youth camps the girl visited are “impossible to get into unless your mother or father is a high-ranking member of the Communist Party. . . . You have no choice but to join the Pioneers, who must wear uniforms to school every day of the year.”

Polovchak’s petition to be allowed to remain in the United States without his parents is still pending in Chicago’s federal courts. He now lives with his sister, Natalie, 21.