Relaxed Soviet Emigration Policy Proves Easier Said Than Done, Travelers Find : Bureaucracy: For this year’s 400,000 emigres and 4 million short-term visitors abroad, leaving the country remains a king-sized headache.

By now, Lena will have waited in line all night outside the bank on Leningradsky Prospekt and knows whether she can change her near-worthless rubles for dollars in time for her train to Helsinki this evening.

On Thursday afternoon, she was still wondering whether she would have to turn in her ticket, pay a penalty and buy a new ticket for a later date, putting off her trip until she could pocket the measly $200 the state will exchange for her.

One thing she knew for certain, however: The law guaranteeing the freedom of emigration that the Soviet legislature passed Monday to loud political fanfare has not made travel for her one bit easier.

“It’s just getting more complex,” she said, huddled in a telephone booth next to the state bank office for protection from the spattering rain. “They passed the law, but they didn’t solve any of the problems. You can’t get passports, you can’t get money or tickets.”

Although hailed by politicians as a step away from the totalitarian past and cautiously welcomed by Western leaders, the new emigration law drew nothing but shrugs Thursday in the places where would-be Soviet travelers gather.

Outside the U.S. Embassy, amid the anti-terrorist concrete blocks still tumbled around the shabby yellow building, several applicants for immigration gave the measure lukewarm praise but said they do not expect it to ease their struggle to leave.

“It doesn’t come into effect until 1993 anyway,” said Igor, a young worker in a gray suit who said he has waited almost two years for permission to emigrate. Like many people in line, he did not want to give his last name.

“Everything is just the same as it was,” he went on. “It doesn’t influence anyone. We may have the right to leave, but we still need permission to get into another country. We can get permission here, but we still need permission there.”

In fact, the law, which is to be implemented in stages by January, 1993, does lift some restrictions immediately for those who already have entry visas to foreign countries. It also decrees that, as of this July, Jews leaving for Israel are no longer to be stripped of their Soviet citizenship.

But for the mass of Soviet travelers--this year’s estimated 400,000 emigrants and 4 million short-term visitors to foreign destinations--leaving the country remains a bureaucratic and financial headache of migraine proportions.

“The main thing for us is this immigration interview,” said Gennady, a computer programmer cradling his 4-month-old son in his arms as he waited outside the U.S. Embassy for his meeting with consular officials. “It’s not so much an obstacle as a great anxiety.”

Kremlin officials have emphasized their belief that emigration will not mushroom because during the three years that the law was being worked out, Western countries set toughened quotas in place to protect themselves from a flood of hungry, shabby Soviet invaders.

Only Israel, which took in 200,000 Soviet Jews last year; the United States, which maintains a 50,000-person-per-year Soviet refugee program, and Germany, which still repatriates ethnic Germans, are letting in Soviet emigres in any numbers.

Along with the cold reception from foreign embassies, Soviet travelers must cope with red tape, lines and long waits at every step of the way out.

Lena, the 30ish engineer waiting nervously outside the bank Thursday, calculated that she will have expended six months of effort and anxiety for one two-week vacation in Finland. If she gets there, that is.

Friends in Finland sent her an invitation Jan 2. It reached her in early February because of the snail-like Soviet mail system, and she applied to UVIR, the Soviet visa-issuing agency, for permission to leave.

It came a month later, but the Finnish Embassy, frightened at the thought of the Soviet hordes, had slowed visa processing, and she could not even get an appointment until April 4, when she was allotted May 5 as her date to come back to the embassy for her visa.

A week later, visa in hand, she spent several hours in line for her train ticket. By Thursday, she had been waiting two weeks to exchange money at the state bank, showing up for roll call to reclaim her place in line daily.

“It’s so nerve-wracking to be going tomorrow and without a kopeck,” she said. “I think I’ll have to stand in line all night.”

And all that to change more than 5,000 rubles, the equivalent of an average Soviet salary for a year and a half--for just $200.

The exchange rate for rubles has worsened steadily over the last year for strapped citizens, from nearly $2 to the ruble to six rubles to the dollar, to a whopping 28 rubles to the dollar.

Plane tickets, too, have tripled and quadrupled in price. Even so, people routinely wait well over a year in line for tickets to the United States, showing up for roll call weekly or even more frequently.

“The government has decided to rob us, that’s all,” Gennady Taratut, a communications engineer, said in the line outside the bank. “The old grandmother who has a son who has invited her, but is not rich enough to pay for her ticket, won’t be able to go--you’d have to work your whole life just to travel one time.”

Human rights activists, too, said that the new law falls far short of what is needed to bring Soviet emigration and travel practices in line with international standards.

“I don’t see what help it will bring people before 1993,” said Vika Shakhet, co-chairwoman of the Public Council on Problems of Entry, Exit and Other Human Rights. “Just so long as it doesn’t bring any harm.”

Two issues, she said, worry activists most: that the law could be used to keep most draft-age men from leaving, and that it allows the indefinite extension of the period that a worker who has had access to classified information can be barred from leaving the country, although it sets the basic limit at five years.

Despite the remaining obstacles, Soviet emigration officials are expecting heavy new pressure on UVIR and border posts. The law is due to come into effect only in 1993 to give them time to beef up their personnel and facilities.

Rudolf Kuznetsov, head of UVIR, said Thursday that if more than 6 million Soviet citizens tried to travel next year, his office would simply run out of passport forms, and the people would be stuck at home.

“Everyone has the right to ask for one,” he said of the forms, “but we won’t be able to satisfy them because we just don’t have them.”