Soviet Union

By Jill Smolowe

When Artists Valeri and Lidya Klever left Leningrad for the U.S. ten years ago, they left in anger. Soviet authorities had shut down exhibits of the couple's abstract paintings, which convinced the Klevers that they had to head for the West in search of artistic freedom. Last week the Klevers returned to the Soviet Union, sounding angrier than ever. While Valeri had at last been free to create, he had also managed to sell few works. That forced his wife to take menial jobs during an odyssey that led the Klevers from New York City to Maine to California and back to New York. "You have to worry about your life, your apartment, monthly bills, everything," Valeri said. "Every month, every day, I was waiting for the next dollar to pay bills. It's not freedom."

The Klevers were among some 50 disillusioned emigres who last week returned from the U.S. to the Soviet Union. Some spoke earnestly of homesickness. Others denounced capitalist competition, crime in the streets and public and private corruption. Most seemed eager to swap the hazards of American freedom for the gray certitudes of Soviet life. "I was afraid to go out in the street after 4 in the afternoon," said Rebecca Katsap, 67, who was headed for Odessa from New York City. "I kiss my native soil with happiness. Eight years of life in a strange land are behind."

Soviet leaders could not have said it better. Indeed, the returning emigres put a fine cap on the public relations success that the Kremlin scored last month when it allowed Dissident Physicist Andrei Sakharov to return to Moscow after seven years of internal exile in the city of Gorky. The Soviets lost little time in trumpeting the prodigals' homecoming. Their arrival at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport was prominently shown on the nightly TV news program Vremya. The TASS news agency gravely intoned, "Many former Soviet citizens, duped by Western propaganda into leaving for capitalist countries, have been allowed to return home." Taras Kordonsky, 39, a musician who could not find work in the U.S., was quoted by TASS as saying, "Ruthlessness and violence and the feeling that you could be kicked out of work or out of your home were depressing."

Ironically, most of those who were welcomed back to the Soviet Union last week had tried vainly to return for years. But they had been denounced as traitors for leaving their homeland, and many had all but abandoned hope of seeing it again. Under the liberalizing influence of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, however, Moscow has had a change of heart. Last week's returnees were the third group in the past three months to flock home. According to Foreign Ministry Spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov, 1,000 more emigres are awaiting permission to make the same journey. "Now that we are opening our borders for them," Gerasimov said, "the number of such requests is growing."

Those returning are hardly representative of the majority of Soviet emigres who have settled in the West. During the 1970s, some 400,000 Soviet citizens, / most of them Jews, left their homeland, primarily for the U.S. or Israel. "The majority adjusted," said Mira Wolf, executive director of the Russian Immigrant Adjustment and Service Center. "They have happy families here and jobs," added Wolf, whose center is in a Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood that is home to more than 12,000 Soviet families. She feared that the current focus on the trickle of returnees will divert attention from the "thousands who want to come here and to Israel." The Soviets last week imposed a new set of regulations on emigration that U.S. officials say could result in the tightest clampdown on emigration in nearly two decades.

When they were not talking to the Soviet press last week, the emigres tended to cite personal reasons for their return. Many felt isolated from American society and frustrated by their rudimentary command of English. Some Soviet professionals found themselves driving cabs or performing menial tasks. Others were attracted home by siren calls from Moscow. "There will be a big change in status for some," said Alex Goldfarb, a Soviet-born assistant professor of microbiology at Columbia University, whose father recently joined him in New York City. The younger Goldfarb said that returning emigres would be able to buy elite apartments with their U.S. dollars. Officials have guaranteed them jobs and promised that any emigres who wish may later return to the West. Such solicitude may have been spurred by the embarrassing case of the four-member Gonta family, which returned to Moscow last fall after a ten- year U.S. sojourn. Three days later, the Gontas changed their minds and went right back to New Jersey.

Even if special treatment is denied them, the emigres seem determined to make the best of their new lives. "A lot of people make a mistake in thinking they can run away from problems," said Lidya Klever. The children of some returnees appeared particularly stoic. Said Olga Sinyavina, 15, who spent the past nine years in New York City: "Yeah, it will be difficult at first, but I'll get used to it."

Moscow's newfound concern for its wayward citizens could have unforeseen consequences. By welcoming the emigres back, the Kremlin has eliminated one of the strongest deterrents to applying to leave the country: the utter finality of emigration. With that policy changing, more Soviet citizens may be eager to gamble on the West. Now, if the experience proves disappointing, the Soviet safety net may still be there to catch them.

With reporting by Joseph N. Boyce/New York and Ken Olsen/Moscow