Moscow Pray-In

Holing up in the U.S. embassy

They came seeking help, rushing past surprised Soviet guards and bursting into the U.S. embassy in Moscow last June 27. The seven Soviet citizens are now holed up as unwelcome guests in a 20-ft. by 12-ft. basement room (plus kitchen and bath). They are permitted no mail through diplomatic channels, cannot meet with reporters in the embassy building, and live in relative isolation. But they are adequately fed, at U.S. expense. Sympathizers have sent them books, and even a game of Russian Scrabble.

What they do mostly, though, is hold prayer meetings and silently hope they will eventually win the right to emigrate to the West. All of them-Pyotr and Augustina Vashchenko, their three adult daughters, and a mother and son, Mariya and Timofei Chmykhalov-are Pentecostalists, a handful of the millions of Christians who have suffered religious persecution in the Soviet Union. For the Vashchenkos, the struggle to emigrate began 16 years ago in the grim mining town of Chernogorsk after the government seized children from supposedly "unfit" Pentecostal parents and sent them to be reared by state agencies. As a result, five of the Vashchenkos, attempting to leave the Soviet Union, joined a much publicized U.S. embassy sit-in. After trying to enter the embassy again in 1968, two members of the family were sentenced to three years in a labor camp.

This time, distrustful of Soviet promises that they will not be arrested, all seven are holding out for guaranteed emigration for their entire families. For the Vashchenkos, that means 13 children. As a further complication, one son is already in prison for pacifist defiance of the army draft. Another will reach draft age next month and faces possible imprisonment.

All this presents American Ambassador Malcolm Toon with a seemingly insoluble problem. He hopes the seven will leave voluntarily, but that appears as likely as the prospect that the Soviets will let the son out of prison and the families emigrate. On the other hand, the U.S. can hardly turn these refugees out into the street. The plight of the Vashchenkos and Chmykhalovs dramatically illustrates the condition of thousands of dissenting Protestants who want to quit the U.S.S.R. so they can practice their faith without government restrictions, most notably on the religious education of their children. In Kiev last month, newly released Baptist Prisoner Pyotr Vins was twice assaulted by police thugs after trying to arrange his family's emigration. His father Georgi, national leader of dissident Baptists, was due for release from a labor camp March 31 but still faces five years of Siberian "exile."

Though the Soviets allowed about 30,000 Jews to emigrate last year and are now increasing that rate, there is minimal support from Western Christians for Protestants who want to leave. That may change. Amnesty International has launched a major campaign on behalf of imprisoned Protestants, calling for protest letters to Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev at the Kremlin. Among the many prisoners: the oft-jailed leader of a breakaway Seventh-day Adventist group, who has just been sentenced to five years of hard labor-at age 83.

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