U.S. Citizen Wins 8-Year Struggle to Leave Soviet Union

A 55-year-old American citizen who has lived in the Soviet Union since the age of five finally got his wish Friday and flew out of Moscow with his family, bound for his native New York.

Bernard Lampert’s joy in leaving the Soviet Union was evident in his farewells to friends who had come to Moscow’s international airport to see him and his family off after they won an eight-year struggle for Soviet permission to leave.

With him on the flight to the United States were his wife, three daughters and his mother-in-law.

Lampert was one of 20 people with American passports the U.S. Embassy has been trying to get out of the Soviet Union.

“I can’t say it’s a trend because one swallow doesn’t make a summer,” an embassy official said.

Still, Lampert’s departure touched off a new wave of hope within the community of so-called refuseniks who have been trying for years to emigrate.

There have been persistent rumors, but no verification, that the Soviet authorities have increased the number of exit visas for this month. Western diplomats say they have seen no evidence of any change.

Lampert, a physician who was engaged in biological research, had kept a low profile here, declining to be interviewed by Western correspondents about his efforts to leave.

But he has been nonetheless persistent. In 1980, he enlisted the aid of the U.S. Embassy to press his case.

Lampert was brought to the Soviet Union by his parents who were among a number of American Communists who came here in the 1930s to help build communism in the Soviet state.