Good News Arrives From Soviet Union

Inessa Weintraub has tried for 10 years to get her brother out of the Soviet Union, enlisting the help of congressmen, diplomats, the Secretary of State, the Speaker of the House, the Voice of America and Armand Hammer, to name a few.

On Friday morning, word finally came. When the telephone rang at 10:30 a.m. in Weintraub’s Tierrasanta home and a voice pierced the static from halfway around the globe, Naum Kogan was calling his 35-year-old sister to say he and his family were on their way.

It had been a long, difficult struggle.

“We wanted to live in a free country,” Weintraub explained Friday, when asked about her family’s decision to emigrate. “You know, it’s really hard to answer this question. It’s like if you’re in prison and they ask you why you’d like to leave, it’s hard to say.”

Naum Kogan’s case had become something of a national priority.

It appeared recently on a list of 10 Soviet Jewish “refuseniks” on which U.S. officials made a special appeal to Soviet officials. And it arose recently in talks between U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

Letter From House Speaker

It was the subject of a letter sent by Speaker of the House Jim Wright to former Soviet Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin. Richard Cheney, a congressman and former White House chief of staff, also appealed personally to Dobrynin.

It was the topic of a lengthy interview broadcast repeatedly by Voice of America into the Soviet Union. In the interview, Weintraub and U.S. Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego) challenged Gorbachev to grant Kogan and his wife and two children permission to emigrate.

“This has been a real victory for the Kogan family, a real victory for the thousands of citizens of San Diego who signed petitions on (Kogan’s) behalf,” Lowery said late Friday. “I think you have to take (these cases) one at a time. And they certainly all add up.”

It is unclear precisely why Kogan had been denied permission for so long.

Kogan, now 40, was an engineer and his wife Zhanna, now 39, was a communications specialist when they first applied in 1977. Weintraub, now 35, had emigrated six months earlier with her husband, Gregory, and her parents.

According to Weintraub, Kogan was initially turned down on the grounds that his wife worked in a sensitive field. Although the Institute of Communications did some classified work, Zhanna Kogan did not, according to Lowery, who has championed the case.

Over the next 10 years, the Kogans, who live with their two children in Moscow, applied again and again and were repeatedly denied permission. Lowery speculated that the initial ruling on the case somehow stuck in the file, making it impossible to get a fair hearing.

In the meantime, the Kogans were fired from their jobs.

“It’s hard to know why the Soviets hold some and release others,” mused Lowery, who has worked on other emigre cases and whose wife, Katie, works with a group of congressional wives on refusenik cases as well. “In fact, it’s probably one of the greatest mysteries on this Earth.”

In Kogan’s case, there was an added urgency.

Four years ago, he developed a serious kidney problem in which over-production of uric acid was creating kidney stones. According to Weintraub, last year the blockage became so severe that it appeared he would need a kidney transplant.

Problem Diagnosed

However, a San Diego urologist was able to diagnose the problem over the phone and by mail. He prescribed medication unavailable in the Soviet Union. U.S. tourists carried the medicine to Kogan, whose condition has since stabilized.

But the seriousness of that condition, and Weintraub’s efforts, brought Kogan’s name to the attention of U.S. officials, who placed it on their list of 10 refuseniks on whose behalf they made a special appeal this spring on humanitarian grounds.

“I think (the refusenik cases) are all important,” said Lowery. “This case has been particularly critical because of Naum Kogan’s medical ailments.”

Initially, Weintraub’s campaign consisted of relentless letter-writing. There were letters to Soviet officials, U.S. officials, the State Department, the White House. At Weintraub’s urging, numerous organizations that support Soviet emigres took up the case.

Then in March, 1986, Weintraub, who works as a travel agent in La Jolla, appeared at Lowery’s annual St. Patrick’s Day party at the Town and Country Hotel. Introducing herself, she explained her brother’s case and enlisted the Lowerys’ help.

“She is, I’d say, basically a shy woman who has overcome that shyness because of her total commitment to freeing her brother and reunifying the family,” Lowery said Friday. A staff member said: “She’s just an incredible little dynamo. You don’t not talk to Inessa.”

There followed a letter to Gorbachev signed by 67 members of Congress and increasing pressure on Soviet and U.S. officials. When the Kogans received yet another denial of permission last February, Lowery and Weintraub turned up the heat.

Radio Interview

Weintraub flew to Washington in April for the interview on Voice of America, arranged by a former San Diegan and constituent of Lowery’s who now runs the broadcasting operation. Then Weintraub and the Lowerys met with the consul general at the Soviet Embassy.

Arrangements were made for the Kogans to receive sponsorship from families in Israel--a more acceptable point of emigration than the United States to Soviet officials. U.S. legislators traveling to the Soviet Union carried the sponsorship documents with them, delivering them to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

Last month, about 700 people held a rally on the Kogans’ behalf at a Jewish community center in La Jolla.

Even Armand Hammer, the U.S. industrialist with close ties to Soviet officials, recently delivered a letter of appeal on the Kogan case, Lowery said.

Last month, the Kogans met with a top Soviet official who Weintraub said has been assigned to hear the appeals of refuseniks. The official agreed to look into the case. Then several weeks elapsed.

On Tuesday, Weintraub called her brother to find out if some medication she had sent him last week had arrived. When Kogan mentioned the meeting, Weintraub said she urged him, “Call and go back. Keep calling. Don’t rest.”

On Friday, the word came.

The Soviet official had said the Kogans had already received permission to go. They went immediately to the emigration office, where they received their papers. Weintraub said she expects that the Kogans will fly to Vienna within a month.

From there, they hope to arrange to proceed to the United States, where Weintraub and her father are both U.S. citizens and therefore eligible to serve as sponsors. If and when that is approved, the Kogans are to come to San Diego.

On Friday, the telephone at the Weintraub home rang incessantly with calls of congratulations from friends in Dallas, where the Weintraubs lived before coming to San Diego. Finally at 4:45 p.m., still taking calls, Weintraub sat down to breakfast--scrambled eggs.

“I’m just so happy,” she told a curious caller. “That’s all I can think.”