Soviets Approve Visas for Spouses of Americans

The Soviet Union has approved nine exit visas for Soviet citizens who were promised permission to emigrate to the United States by Moscow before the Geneva summit, the State Department said Friday.

The department would only confirm that nine people had received confirmation that their permits are approved. A spokesman declined to give any names.

But Kazimierz Frejus of Pomona, Calif., and another American married to a Soviet woman said in telephone interviews that they expect their wives to arrive in the United States soon.

Tony Bartholomew, of Fountain Valley, Calif., said he originally thought his wife, Tatyana Bondarev of Moscow, would arrive Christmas Eve, but she called Thursday and Friday, saying there were delays.

Many Roadblocks

“It’s just a nightmare,” he said. “I wanted her home for Christmas. Now I’m hoping for New Year’s Eve. It’s been one roadblock after another.

“I’m glad I’ll probably get to spend New Year’s with her, but she’ll probably be so dead tired we’ll just spend a quiet evening at home,” he said.

Bartholomew met his schoolteacher wife when they shared a taxicab in Moscow in 1981. They married in 1982 and have been separated 3 1/2 years. He has been able to see her several times--the last time 14 months ago--when he was in Moscow on business, he said.

Frejus, 82, said he learned about two weeks ago that he would be reunited with his wife, Helle, 50, on Sunday.

He said he will be “thrilled” to see her, but their time together will be limited because a recent bout with pneumonia has left him very weak.

Already in U.S.

The New York Times, quoting U.S. diplomats, reported that a longtime Jewish activist who was not on the list, Alexander Rozman, received an exit visa recently and has reportedly already joined his wife, Jan Feldman, in the United States.

In addition, Mikhail Iossel, a Leningrad resident who is married to Edith Luthi, of Holiston, Mass., told the paper he had received his exit visa and plans to leave the Soviet Union in early January after a brief stop in Moscow.

He also said another Leningrad resident, Leonid M. Ablavsky, who is married to Robin Rubendunst, of Somerville, Mass., was waiting for the arrival of a formal invitation from his wife, one requirement for his exit visa.

The diplomats said, however, that movement in emigration requests remained minimal and there was no sign of a general relaxation of the Soviet position on exit visas for Jews or others who want to leave.

10 on List

The week before President Reagan met Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Geneva, the State Department released a list of 10 cases involving people living in the Soviet Union with links to the United States who were seeking to emigrate.

State Department officials said then that one case was contested, that of Abe Stolar, a Chicago native who was taken by his family to the Soviet Union in 1931 at the age of 19. But they said Friday that Stolar’s case had been resolved.

Stolar said recently that although he has permission to leave, he cannot emigrate because Soviet officials refused to grant an exit visa to his son’s wife and the family would not leave without her.

Stolar’s father disappeared in the 1930s during Stalin’s purges, and his mother died in 1949.