50 Returnees, in Moscow, Tell of Hardships in U.S.

Fifty Soviet emigres returned home Monday from the United States, saying they wanted to escape constant fear of crime and economic pressures.

Radio Moscow broadcast the news almost immediately and emphasized that the returning Soviets said they found life in the United States unbearable.

Rebecca Kotsap, of Odessa, the first passenger off the Aeroflot jumbo jet from New York after it landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, wept and her voice broke as she described her feelings about coming home.

‘I Kiss My Native Soil’

“There’s nothing more important than your motherland,” Kotsap said, tears streaming down her face. “I kiss my native soil with happiness.”

Kotsap, in her 50s, said she had lived in New York in constant fear of crime.

“We cannot live there,” she said of the United States. “It’s a foreign people, a foreign language, a foreign life.”

Valery Klever, an artist who emigrated with his family from Leningrad in 1977, was asked if he believes the Soviet Union is freer than American society.

“Of course,” Klever answered. “What kind of freedom is there in the United States? It’s tough freedom--you have to worry about your life and your apartment, your bills every month, everything.”

Radio Moscow carried the group’s homecoming as the lead item on evening newscasts. The Soviets have said it was the largest Soviet emigre group ever to return to their homeland from the United States at one time.

‘Ruthless Competition’

In the United States, the state-run radio said, the immigrants found they could not cope with the “ruthless competition, the spirit of money making, crime and drug addiction” they found to be rampant.

The publicity given the returnees coincided with articles in the Soviet Union’s state-run press on the difficulties faced by Soviet citizens when they go abroad to begin a new life.

Such articles have been an apparent attempt to justify on humane grounds the severe restriction of emigration from the Soviet Union.

The welcome extended to recent returnees has been in strong contrast with the treatment once given emigres, who were accused of betraying their homeland.