Fasting Refusenik Balovlenkov Says He Is Near Death

Girls with big white bows in their hair played hopscotch and jumped rope in the warm sunshine Saturday on one of Moscow’s best spring days.

Inside a darkened apartment room not far from the children’s laughter, Yuri V. Balovlenkov reclined on a bed, emaciated after nearly seven weeks on a hunger strike.

“Today I almost died,” he said in a calm, weak voice. “My temperature went up to 105 degrees Farenheit and my blood pressure was very low. It’s very difficult for me to stand up and my head is dizzy, dizzy.”

Balovlenkov, 35, has gone without solid food since last March 25 to to call attention to his application for an exit visa so he can join his American wife, Elena Kuzmenko Balovlenkov, and their two daughters in Baltimore. He said the authorities will not let him leave, so his fast will continue.

His mother, her eyes red from crying, told how she went Saturday to the visa office at official request but was told only that it will take two or three months more to examine her son’s application documents.

“I told them my son can die at any moment, and I can die at any moment,” his mother, Nina Petrovna, told a visitor. She suffers from a heart ailment.

The latest official rebuff came just after the holidays celebrated here to mark the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Balovlenkov’s mother and father both were veterans of the Great Patriotic War, as the conflict is called here, and they recently received medals to honor their service.

“Thank you for the big present,” she said she told the official who gave her the medal. “All the people are celebrating, and we are crying.”

In the past, Balovlenko, a former computer programmer, has said he has been promised an exit visa but never received it. In 1982, Soviet authorities barred his emigration ruling that his job gave him access to state secrets and used that reason to bar his emigration. At the time Balovlenko had not worked as a computer programmer for more than 8 years.

In protest, Balovlenko staged two hunger strikes--the first lasting 43 days, the second 36--to draw attention to his plight. In August, 1982, with his condition deteriorating from liver and kidney damage, his wife came to Moscow and persuaded him to break his fast.

On leaving Moscow for the United States after the brief visit, she was quoted as saying that the Soviets had promised her husband an exit visa by January, 1985.

“I’d like to think we can trust them, but I’m not 100% sure,” she said.

Balovlenkov has spoken about his case to House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.) and other American officials. He is one of about 20 people--all married to Americans--that the U.S. Embassy here has tried, and failed, to help.

The hollows under Balovlenkov’s eyes show the rigors of his extended fast. He said that he has lost about 50 pounds since he stopped taking anything but mineral water.

“My tongue is very dry, and it’s not easy to swallow,” he said. “If I die, I want to be buried in Baltimore. Even if it’s impossible to be with them now, I want to live after my death with my family.”