Trying to Rejoin American Wives, Husbands : Soviet Spouses Cite Harassment by KGB

Soviet citizens married to Americans complained Saturday at the U.S. Embassy about stepped-up KGB harassment of their public campaign to try to obtain exit visas.

Several wives and husbands of U.S. citizens were warned by the security police not to travel to a Soviet-American conference in Jurmala, Soviet Latvia, to discuss their plight.

A few members of the “divided spouses coalition,” as their group calls itself, recently were detained for hours for questioning, they reported at an embassy meeting.

They were warned that two spouses who have been promised exit visas would have their departures delayed for months if anyone in the group traveled to the meeting in Jurmala to advertise their grievances.

In addition, KGB officers intervened to prevent another group of Soviet citizens married to foreigners from conducting a news conference Friday.

Reporters arriving at an apartment designated for the conference were told by a police officer that they could not enter the building because unspecified “measures are being taken.” At the same time, five people who called the news conference were detained by police in another apartment for five hours, according to Yuri Balovlenkov, one of the sponsors.

The KGB actions came after the coalition decided to do more to publicize the Soviet government’s refusal to allow an estimated 21 people married to Americans to leave the country despite years of waiting.

They hoped that their chances to leave for the United States would improve if Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev meets President Reagan in a summit conference.

Matvey Finkel, who is married to Susan Graham of Spokane, Wash., said he was once questioned for more than five hours by police about plans to go to Latvia with five other coalition members.

“It was my idea and I bought the tickets,” he said he told his KGB interrogators. “We wanted to put up a tent with a large sign saying that the coalition of divided spouses congratulates the Soviet-American open dialogue.” He and the others wrote to the Soviet conference sponsor requesting permission for their activity, he said, but did not get a reply.

Instead, the KGB officers told him to call off the trip and warned that exit visas for Roman Kuperman and Tamara Tretyakova would be canceled or delayed if they all went to Latvia. Kuperman, married to Fran Pergericht of Chicago, and Tretyakova, who is married to Simon Levin of Deerfield, Ill., have been told they may leave the country after years of waiting to join their American spouses.

Finkel, who has been refused an exit visa for seven years, said that his wife, who has visited him several times in Moscow since their marriage there, is pregnant. He wants to join her in the United States to see the birth of their baby, expected in December.

Kuperman and Tretyakova had planned to go to the Jurmala conference but dropped out in the face of the warnings.

Meanwhile, U.S. diplomat Warren Zimmerman said he raised the issue of divided spouses in a meeting Friday with a high official of the Soviet Foreign Ministry.

The session was part of preparation for a November meeting in Vienna on compliance with the Helsinki accords on human rights, economic cooperation and security.

“I just don’t know what the result will be,” Zimmerman said. “But there is a good opportunity to make progress, especially in the human rights area.”