Ethnic Russian Family Wins Rare Exit Visa

After nearly 10 years of struggle, the Yevsukov family has achieved a remarkable victory--the right to live abroad.

The odds against them had been considered overwhelming, for they are ethnic Russians--as contrasted with Jews, Armenians and ethnic Germans, who have a tradition of emigration from the Soviet Union.

Emigrating is often viewed by the Soviet state as a form of treason and is actively discouraged, especially among the Russians, who make up a slim majority of the multi-ethnic population of the Soviet Union and have traditionally dominated the government.

It is extremely rare for any ordinary Soviet citizen to travel abroad, much less get government blessing to take up residence in the West. In addition, before issuing an exit visa, the Soviet Union normally requires an invitation from relatives abroad, and the Yevsukovs have no such relatives.

What they did have was determination, courage and a way of dramatizing their difficulties that brought their case to international attention.

Help From VIPs

The family also had the help and friendship of Andrei D. Sakharov, the noted physicist and champion of human rights causes, as well as intervention by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French Premier Jacques Chirac.

Chirac issued an invitation to the Yevsukovs to live in France. And finally, last Thursday, the Soviet authorities relented and decided to let them go. They have 30 days in which to leave.

Although stressing that they are not political dissidents in the traditional sense, the Yevsukovs have not been explicit about their reasons for wanting to emigrate. Implicit in their statements about themselves, though, is the desire for a better life.

“We are terribly used to the Soviet style of life--having nothing--so I don’t think we’ll have less anywhere,” brown-haired Ludmilla Yevsukova, 26, said in an interview.

“We are freaks, in a way,” she acknowledged as she recalled her family’s unique story. During their battle to leave the country, her brother, Serafim, spent two terms in prison camp, and her father, also named Serafim, was drugged into a stupor in a psychiatric hospital for seven months.

Once a week for almost a year, Ludmilla and her mother boldly demonstrated for the right to emigrate at some of Moscow’s celebrated landmarks--Pushkin Square, the Bolshoi Theater, the Lenin Library. They were harassed by the KGB, and police occasionally dragged the two women away by the hair and detained them for several hours.

The younger Serafim, who is known as Sima, explained that he went to prison camp twice because he refused to serve in the army. If he did an army tour, he felt, the authorities would claim that he knew military secrets and thus could be barred from moving abroad.

North of Arctic Circle

His last sentence was spent mainly in a camp north of the Arctic Circle where many of the prisoners were serving the maximum 15-year term for murder, Sima said. Many of them also had tuberculosis, he added, but were not segregated from the others.

When Sima was pardoned in early July after serving 15 months of his term, however, the Yevsukovs’ hopes began to rise.

The family first applied to emigrate in January, 1978, after the elder Serafim retired as a navigator for Aeroflot, the Soviet airline. They were refused, steadily, for the next 9 1/2 years, and were told to forget about leaving.

Unexpectedly, about a year ago, Serafim was arrested and taken to a psychiatric clinic. His doctors told him to change his attitude toward emigration. Eventually, with Sakharov’s help, he was released last January, weakened and shaken by the experience.

At each stage of the family’s difficulties, Ludmilla made sure the Western news organizations were kept informed. One correspondent told her she had a natural flair for public relations.

A Change of Heart

After Sima’s release, however, the Soviet officials who had rebuffed every request by the Yevsukovs suddenly demonstrated a change of heart.

The four members of the family were issued Soviet passports for international travel--an extremely rare document in this nation of 280 million people.

“Why, it’s almost like being a foreigner,” a Russian friend told Ludmilla, fingering the bright red document that is her ticket to another life.

Ludmilla, who has skills in weaving tapestries and sewing clothes and who worked as a professional driver, is not sure what she will do when the family gets to France in a week or two. Sima, who also was a driver, is in the same quandary.

“We want to learn French, and the best place to study is France, of course,” Ludmilla told a reporter.

Then, with the thought of being there in two weeks’ time, she closed her eyes and said: “I just can’t imagine how it will be. . . . I am like a baby who’s going to be born in a couple of days. . . . “