Expectant Mother Appeals to Gorbachev : American Links Visa for Soviet Spouse to Summit

Susan Graham, a Russian-language scholar from Spokane, Wash., is expecting a baby and a Soviet-American summit by the end of the year, two events that she hopes will induce Soviet authorities to grant an exit visa for her Soviet husband.

Graham, who began studying Russian at the age of 12, is certain about the baby and fairly confident that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and President Reagan will meet in 1986. But she can only hope that her husband, Matvey Finkel, will be allowed to join her when she returns to the United States in time for the birth of their first child.

For reasons not clear to either of them, Finkel has not been allowed to leave the Soviet Union since their marriage nearly seven years ago despite dozens of requests carried to the highest level.

New Theme Sounded

In her latest appeal made directly to Gorbachev, however, Graham sounded a new theme.

She said that her child was conceived after the first summit in Geneva last November, “encouraged by the warm atmosphere of your meeting with President Reagan.” Now, she said, she wants Matvey to be at her side when the baby is born at her family home in Spokane.

“The world now hopes that you and President Reagan may meet again in December, the month when our child is due,” she wrote to Gorbachev.

“Perhaps his birth and your meeting will even coincide,” she added. “I wish you the success in your dealings with Mr. Reagan that Matvey and I have had in our personal relationship.” Graham said she has thought of naming their child “Ronald Mikhail” or “Mikhail Ronald” in honor of the two leaders if her husband gets a visa in time to be present.

School Tour

“After all, our child is an example of Soviet-American cooperation in its purest form,” Graham added in an interview. “I hope that cooperation between our two countries will bring results as miraculous as this child soon to be born.” Graham, who began studying Russian in junior high school at Golden, Colo., first visited the Soviet Union three years later on a school tour.

She met her future husband in 1977 while she was a student at the University of Leningrad, and they were married Dec. 11, 1979, in Moscow’s Wedding Palace No.1.

Since then, Finkel’s applications to go with his wife in the United States have been refused without any explanation, and in the first four years of their married life it was only possible for Graham to visit him in Moscow three times.

Visit from KGB

Once, when she was awaiting a reply on her application for extension of her visa, KGB officers came to Finkel’s home and gave her 10 minutes to pack before she was put on a plane and expelled from the country.

“We were told that our being together was undesirable,” Graham recalled. “What sort of a government allows a young man and a young woman to marry and then tells them for four years that it is undesirable for them to live together?” she asked Gorbachev in her letter.

In 1983, Graham got a job taking care of children for a Western journalist that allowed her to remain here with her husband.

During that time, however, there was no progress on her husband’s quest for permission to leave the country. Finkel, 37, and Graham, 30, are one of 20 couples in the same circumstances--Soviet-American marriages where the Soviet partner for years has not been able to get an exit visa to join his or her spouse in the United States.

‘Divided Spouses’

They are known as “divided spouses,” and the Soviet Union resolved nine such cases before the Geneva summit last November.

“It’s hard to believe this couldn’t be solved in some reasonable way,” Graham said. “But a summit this year is about the only chance we have. I can’t imagine Gorbachev coming to the United States without resolving these cases.

“After all, what would the American people think if husbands or wives of American citizens are stuck here and cannot leave ?”

So far, however, there has been no reply from Gorbachev.