Former Political Prisoner Finally Meets ‘Rescuers’

About 30 members of the human rights group Amnesty International gathered Saturday evening at a Laguna Hills home for a potluck dinner that included a special treat.

It was the first meeting, for most, with Nikolai Bobarykin, a former Soviet political prisoner whose release was secured, many believe, through the efforts of this local branch of the international rights group.

Bobarykin, speaking through an interpreter, expressed gratitude for the group’s support.

“It is very exciting meeting the people that have been able to rescue you from danger and trouble. I am very grateful,” he said.

The group learned in June, 1987, that Bobarykin had been freed, after nearly 10 years’ exile in Soviet prisons in eastern Siberia.

“It was absolutely unbelievable when we found out,” said Sandy Gardner, coordinator of Amnesty’s Irvine branch. “Most groups have never even heard from prisoners they have adopted, much less met them. So few groups have been able to achieve that.”

Pentecostal Leader

Bobarykin, 58, a leader of the Pentecostal movement in the Soviet Union, has been in the United States for about 6 months, living with his wife and seven of his 10 children in Alhambra. Two grown children remain in the Soviet Union and another is in Rome. All are seeking to join the family in the United States, said interpreter Eugene Bresenden, a Soviet emigre who lives in Whittier.

Bobarykin is currently a pastor for a group of Pentecostal emigres recently arrived from the Soviet Union.

Bobarykin said that since his arrival in the United States, he has been most impressed with the freedom of movement and thought in his adopted country.

“The freedom of expression is almost a shock,” he said. “And the abundance of food is great.”

Bobarykin said that conditions in his native country have improved somewhat since the inception of glasnost under Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev but that religious activists are still arrested. “But there are fewer arrests than there were under previous regimes,” he said. “Under Russian standards it is a great improvement, but compared to Western standards we have far to go.”

For those who gathered to welcome him Saturday it was like a reunion of old friends. The Irvine group had first come to know him nearly 4 years ago when it was assigned his case by Amnesty’s London headquarters.

Throughout those years, the group had sent letters, post cards and packages to the family, never knowing if their missives were received.

They had also written more than 1,100 letters to Soviet officials, including prison wardens, judges, military officials and Gorbachev, pleading that Bobarykin be released. They never received any replies.

“We met every month and mapped our strategy of who we were going to hit with a mass mailing,” said Mitsuye Yamada, an Amnesty member in charge of Bobarykin’s case. “We had been told that Christian leaders have a pretty tough time getting out, so we were elated when it actually happened.”

Yamada said the group sometimes became discouraged over the years at the lack of response. But they were all thrilled when celebrated Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky wrote to them offering encouragement, she said.

Yamada said she had learned that Sharansky had met Bobarykin in prison. The group wrote to him in 1986, after he had immigrated to Israel, and he replied with a “beautiful letter,” Yamada said.

“He wrote and told us that because the Pentecostal cause was constantly repressed, many had decided to leave as a community. Bobarykin was one of the leaders of the movement for the right to immigrate in the south of Russia,” she said. “He offered us a lot of encouragement in our cause. It was very touching.”

Bobarykin said that once his case was taken up by the amnesty group, his treatment in exile improved. He was allowed to regularly send letters to his family and to receive visits and food packages from his family, privileges that other prisoners did not have.

Since the Irvine group was established in 1979, it has taken up the cause of six “prisoners of conscience” around the world. All of them have subsequently been released, Yamada said.

“We have a 100% success rate,” she said. “It’s unusual. Mr. Bobarykin’s case has taken the longest. But it has certainly turned out well.”