Orlov Vows to Continue Rights Fight : Soviet Dissident Arrives in U.S. Amid Roses, Tears

After almost a decade in a forced labor camp and exile in Siberia, Soviet human rights activist Yuri Orlov arrived in the United States on Sunday to a joyous welcome of roses and tears from other emigres.

Orlov, whose departure was made possible by the agreement allowing U.S. journalist Nicholas Daniloff and Soviet U.N. employee Gennady F. Zakharov to return to their homelands, pledged to continue his long struggle “to go on defending the rights of people in the Soviet Union.”

He revealed that fellow dissident Anatoly Marchenko has been on a hunger strike in prison since Aug. 4. “He is in very difficult condition,” Orlov said, dedicating the celebration of his own freedom to Marchenko.

“Today is Anatoly Marchenko day,” he proclaimed.

A Suit from the KGB

With his wife, Irina, at his side and speaking through an interpreter, Orlov addressed a packed news conference at Kennedy International Airport after his arrival at 2:30 p.m. EDT. He wore a new gray suit given to him by the Soviet KGB secret police before his departure from Moscow, and he appeared to be in good health.

“Oh, dear friends, I think you can understand I experience very complicated feelings,” he said. “I have left my homeland. I’ve left behind people who are still in prison. In fact, I probably feel guilty in regards to them. Why am I here, and they’re there?

“On the other hand, I am very glad I have begun a free life,” said the 62-year-old physicist, who was deprived of his Soviet citizenship and had never asked permission to emigrate. “ . . . I can say whatever I want freely.”

Orlov was one of the Soviet Union’s best-known dissidents before his arrest in 1977. He was a founding member and chairman of the Moscow Helsinki group, which monitored human rights violations in the Soviet Union after the 1975 Helsinki accords, signed by 35 nations, linked trade and security with a country’s respect for human rights.

‘Anti-Soviet Agitation’

He was charged with “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” He was released from a labor camp in February, 1984, and sent into exile in Siberia, where he lived in almost complete isolation in a primitive hut.

The Moscow Helsinki group disbanded in 1982 after all but three of its original members were imprisoned, exiled abroad or banished to remote regions of the Soviet Union. Marchenko, to whom Orlov paid tribute, signed the Moscow Helsinki group’s first statements. He was transferred from a labor camp to prison in 1985.

“I must say I hold no anger in my soul,” Orlov said, while vowing to continue his work to help human rights activists in his homeland.

Responding to a question about his health, Orlov said, “ . . . The last year I have been in exile, I have been doing my own housework. I had a garden. I raised potatoes, so I’m feeling better now.”

Orlov thanked all those who helped him over the years.

“I am grateful to those who have defended human rights as I have in the Soviet Union,” he said. “I am thankful to everyone who has helped me attain freedom. I am grateful to your country and to your President Reagan.

“I should have, first of all, thanked my wife for everything. Twice, she was warned by the authorities, last summer by the KGB and a year ago by the prosecutor’s office. If it hadn’t been for her courage, perhaps I wouldn’t even be here today.”

“I’m just happy,” said Irina Orlov with a smile. “I’m just so happy my husband is free.”

The Orlovs flew to New York from Moscow aboard an Aeroflot jet. Irina Orlov, 40, held a tearful farewell with half a dozen friends at the Moscow airport before she boarded the plane. Until then, she had not been allowed to see her husband since the announcement that he was to leave the country.

Orlov was brought to Moscow from the Siberian town of Kobyia on Saturday.

Irina Orlov told friends she was worried about leaving her ailing mother and hoped to return to Moscow to visit her someday.

The dissident’s three sons from a former marriage, Alexander, Lev and Dmitri, visited their father for 40 minutes Saturday at Lefortovo prison in Moscow, Alexander told reporters in Moscow.

“He looked much like he used to look . . . ,” Alexander said. He added that at the prison, they talked “mostly about our family, and the possibility that we will not see each other again.”

The Orlovs were accompanied on the flight by U.S. Charge d’Affaires Richard E. Combs Jr., who praised the Soviet activist after the New York news conference. “I have known him for a long time. He is a marvelous, marvelous man,” Combs said of his traveling companion. “It was a real privilege.”

Orlov said that his plans, except for another news conference on Tuesday, were uncertain. But he said he hopes to continue research and teaching. For the time being, he will stay at the home of a Soviet exile at an undisclosed location.

As the Orlovs were escorted by a cordon of police to a room at the Pan American World Airways terminal in New York, they were greeted by a handful of activists who had previously been released from the Soviet Union. “I am so excited, I cannot speak, I cannot write, I cannot hear,” said Svetlana Pavlenkov, who carried roses for the Orlovs and who waited with her husband, Vladlem, for the flight from Moscow to land.

As the Orlovs walked through the terminal, Pavlenkov wept with joy. Once Orlov was seated behind the table at the news conference, she greeted him with a kiss.