Defecting U.S. Family Talks to Gromyko

President Andrei A. Gromyko met today with American scientist Arnold Lockshin and his family and told them that the Soviet people understand why they decided to resettle in the Soviet Union, Tass press agency said.

Gromyko assured the Lockshins that they “are now among friends,” Tass said.

Gromyko’s meeting with Lockshin closely paralleled the reception that President Reagan extended this week to Soviet dissident Yuri Orlov, who arrived in the United States after being freed from internal exile in Siberia.

Lockshin, 47, a cancer researcher who was fired in August by a Houston hospital, later told a news conference that he was once an organizer for the Communist Party.

Claims Persecution

“In Texas, to stay alive, we didn’t broadcast that,” he said. “Both my wife and I have been for socialism all of our adult lives.”

Lockshin claims that he left the United States because he was persecuted for his political views.

His wife, Lorraine, sat beside her husband but seldom spoke. Their three children also attended the news conference.

Lockshin said he and his wife visited the Soviet U.N. mission in New York on Aug. 13 to seek asylum but were told to go to the Soviet Consulate in Washington. He said he returned to his workplace, St. Joseph Hospital, the next day and found all his laboratory work destroyed.

He was dismissed and given two days to clear out his possessions, he said.

‘Rather Disbelieving’

Lockshin said he and his oldest son, a sixth-grader, went to the Soviet Consulate in Washington later in August, where Soviet diplomats were “rather disbelieving at first.”

He said his family was told Sunday that they would be given political asylum, and they quickly packed as much as they could. They arrived in Moscow on Wednesday, he said.

St. Joseph Hospital has denied Lockshin’s claim that he was fired for his political views, and said his performance had deteriorated. The State Department has dismissed the allegations of official persecution as absurd.

Tass said the meeting between Gromyko and the Lockshins at the Kremlin “passed in a warm atmosphere.”

Soviets ‘Fully Understand’

“Andrei Gromyko declared that those in the U.S.S.R. fully understand the attitudes and thoughts of the Lockshins,” it said.

Tass said Lockshin told Gromyko that he “disagrees with the U.S. government’s home and foreign policies and he had come to the conclusion that the forces which are shaping the country’s policy course do not express the interests of the American people, and serve big business alone.”

It quoted Lockshin as saying he and his wife were followed and blackmailed. The daily Sovietskaya Rossiya today published what it said was one of several threatening letters sent to the Lockshins before they left their home in Houston.

It published a picture of an envelope addressed to Lockshin and a sheet of paper with the words: “Death to traitors, Dr. L.” in letters cut from magazines.