Depressed Soviet Woman Killed Self, Canadians Say

The death of a Soviet woman Tuesday was a suicide that apparently resulted from depression over being separated from her teen-age son and friends in Moscow, police said Thursday.

There had been speculation here and in the United States that the death of Svetlana Dedkova, 48, might be linked to the case of KGB officer Vitaly Yurchenko, who was said by CIA officers to have returned to Moscow after defecting to the United States because of a broken love affair with a Soviet woman living in Canada.

Neighbors of Dedkova said they remembered seeing a man resembling the 50-year-old, mustachioed Yurchenko in their apartment building. But Canadian and U.S. officials denied that there was any connection between Dedkova and Yurchenko.

Meanwhile, a sergeant in the Toronto Police Department who asked not to be named said Thursday that Dedkova, the wife of a Soviet trade representative, had written a note to a female friend in Moscow before she jumped Tuesday morning from her 27th-floor apartment in suburban Etobicoke.

Lonely at Separation

“There was no mention or any other indication that she killed herself for any other reason” than her separation from family and friends, the sergeant said. He added that a coroner’s autopsy found that Dedkova had died of injuries from the fall.

“There were no signs that she had been pushed” or otherwise forced to jump, the police officer said.

Dedkova and her husband, Boris Dedkov, last saw their 15-year-old son in August while on vacation in the Soviet Union, according to employees at Stan-Canada Inc., the joint Canadian-Soviet company where Dedkov was market development coordinator.

However, these employees, who also asked not to be identified, said they had not known of any depression on the part of the wife. The police sergeant said other Soviet citizens in Toronto who knew Dedkova said she had been depressed in recent weeks.

In Washington, American officials also are confident “but not 100% certain” that Dedkova’s suicide is unrelated to the Yurchenko incident, a White House official said.

A Diplomat’s Wife

The official, who spoke on condition that he not be identified, said Yurchenko’s love affair apparently involved the wife of a Soviet diplomat, not a businessman’s wife such as Dedkova. Law enforcement sources who also spoke on the promise of anonymity agreed that the suicide was unrelated to Yurchenko, saying Dedkova had been despondent for some time.

There were reports in Washington that Yurchenko had visited Canada in the last three weeks in an effort to persuade his mistress to join him in the United States, but he had been rejected.

Eugene Pozdnyakov, a spokesman for the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, told the Toronto Star that “according to embassy records, Yurchenko never set his foot in Canada.”

Jerry Cummings, a spokesman for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Canadian equivalent of the CIA, also said Thursday that “there is absolutely no connection between Yurchenko and Mrs. Dedkova.” The External Affairs Ministry and the Solicitor General’s office in Ottawa have taken the same position.

Although these assertions were unqualified, Cummings was far less forthright when asked whether the intelligence agency knew if Yurchenko had been in Canada recently.

“I can neither confirm nor deny his presence in Canada,” the spokesman said. He also declined to discuss the possibility that Yurchenko had been involved with another Soviet woman living here.

Residents Unsure

Statements by other residents of Dedkova’s apartment building who said they might have seen Yurchenko in the building also clouded the situation.

George Kilgour, who lives four floors below the Dedkov apartment, said he and his girlfriend had been watching television news Tuesday night when Yurchenko’s picture appeared. “We remarked to each other that he looked very familiar,” Kilgour said.

But, he continued: “I can’t say if I rubbed shoulders with him in the elevator or the lobby, but he had a very familiar face when I saw him on television. It’s very possible I could have seen him in the building, but I can’t put a day on it.”

The Toronto Star quoted another resident of the building as saying he may have seen Yurchenko in an elevator about two weeks ago. “I can’t really be sure,” 25-year-old Gina Vottero told the Star. “I only saw him for a few moments, and he got kind of a common-looking face, but there’s a possibility it may have been him.”

‘Looked Like Walesa’

She added that the man in the elevator “looked a lot like Lech Walesa,” the Polish labor leader.

The Soviet couple had lived here for two years and carried special work permits. Their apartment building housed a dozen or so Soviet families, most of them living on the 27th floor, but none answered their doors Thursday.

Dedkov could not be found for comment, and the apartment was emptied of all belongings Wednesday night by three Russian-speaking men, according to other residents. Soviet officials in Ottawa said Dedkova’s body will be flown to Moscow on Monday by the Soviet airline Aeroflot.