Soviets Expel Five Envoys, Pull Out Embassy Workers

The Soviet Union, retaliating for Washington’s expulsion of 55 Soviet diplomats, on Wednesday ordered five American diplomats expelled and withdrew 260 Soviet employees from the U.S. missions here and in Leningrad.

The withdrawal of the Soviet workers at the U.S. Embassy here and the U.S. Consulate in Leningrad, the latest in a series of tit-for-tat moves between the superpowers, will make daily life more troublesome for the 250 American diplomatic personnel who remain. But it also will remove some employees regarded as little more than informers for the KGB secret police.

The Soviet order means that American diplomats will no longer be able to use Soviet drivers, janitors, cooks, translators and other locally hired service employees. The only exceptions are a dozen household workers.

‘Such Impudence’

In a nationwide television speech after the announcement, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev said the latest American expulsion--the most sweeping in U.S. history--was “outrageous.” He added, “We cannot be impassive in the face of such impudence.”

Pointing out that the move came within days of the superpower summit in Iceland with President Reagan, Gorbachev said the U.S. expulsion “to the normal human mind appears simply wild after such an important meeting. . . . Of course, we had to take reply measures, very tough measures. . . . We are not going to allow 55 of our diplomats to be eliminated just like that.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov, who made the Wednesday announcement, described the latest measures as “resolute but moderate” responses to the U.S. order Tuesday ordering 55 Soviet diplomatic personnel out of the United States by Nov. 1.

Gerasimov also announced that the United States will not be allowed to use third-country nationals to replace the withdrawn Soviet workers and can bring Americans into the country to take over those jobs only if the missions remain within the overall limits set by the Kremlin.

The number of official Americans within the Soviet Union will be restricted to 225 at the embassy and 26 at the consulate--the same ceilings the State Department set on the Soviet missions in Washington and San Francisco.

Controls on Visitors

In addition, he said that limits will be established on the American personnel assigned to temporary duty in Moscow and Leningrad, and that new controls will be imposed on the number of visitors from abroad that U.S. diplomats here may entertain.

Gerasimov pointedly called for an end to the tit-for-tat expulsions, which began last month when the United States ordered 25 Soviet diplomatic personnel at the United Nations, all identified as spies, to leave the country. The last five Soviets left last week, and on Sunday, in retaliation, the Kremlin ordered five Americans out of the Soviet Union.

“Let us draw the line now,” Gerasimov urged, “or otherwise it will go on indefinitely. . . . It’s not our game and we didn’t start it.”

But, he added, “if the United States wants to continue the escalation of such measures, we will have to continue with such measures in response.”

Gerasimov said the expulsion of the 55 diplomats by the United States was a “provocative act” and an “anti-Soviet action” that forced a response by the Kremlin. He accused unidentified forces in the United States who oppose improved Soviet-American relations of trying to wreck the chances for an arms control agreement.

Of the 55 Soviets ordered to leave their embassy in Washington and the San Francisco consulate, five were declared persona non grata by the State Department in retaliation for the Sunday expulsion of the five U.S. diplomats. U.S. officials said the 50 other Soviets were ordered home to reduce the size of the Soviet missions and establish “parity” between the Soviet and American diplomatic complements.

The five Americans expelled Wednesday were ordered to leave the Soviet Union by Nov. 1. They were accused of carrying out “impermissible activities” against the Soviet state.

They were identified as Capt. Thomas Holme Jr., the naval attache in Moscow; Col. Richard Naab, the military attache; Second Secretary Michael Morgan; Third Secretary Michael Materam, and Daniel P. Grossman, a vice consul in Leningrad.

The loss of most Soviet employees at the embassy and the Leningrad consulate--the only other U.S. mission in the Soviet Union--may prove to be a harsher blow to day-to-day operations.

Under the Soviet order, all but 12 Soviets who are classified as servants will be prohibited from working at the American Embassy.

Many Soviet employees have been on the American payroll for a long time. In general, they do the heavy hauling of mailbags, maintenance work, driving, cleaning, running the embassy snack bar and other chores.

Asked whether the embassy will be able to operate without the Soviet employees, a U.S. diplomat replied, “We’ll soon find out.”

In Washington, one former CIA official said the loss of the Soviet employees will make it extremely difficult for U.S. diplomats to get anything done in the bureaucratic and secretive Soviet society. Without Russian-speaking drivers, he said, “you couldn’t arrange a trip, you couldn’t get anything done.”

Reporting to KGB

It is widely assumed here that the Soviet employees, however friendly, were expected to report to the KGB on what they observed inside the U.S. missions.

Their withdrawal “is a two-way street,” affecting Soviet intelligence operations as well as the missions’ efficiency, one Reagan Administration official said in Washington. “It was worth something to them to have Igor, the sweeper, always listening in the back of the room.”

Gerasimov defended the withdrawal of nearly all Soviet employees from the embassy in Moscow and the consulate in Leningrad, saying the United States employed 260 of them while the number of Americans employed by the Soviet diplomatic missions in the United States totaled only eight.