SOVIET SPY CASE ANGERS MANY RUSSIAN EMIGRES LIVING IN AMERICA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000404280013-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 22, 2010
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: October 10, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000404280013-1
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
10 October 1984
Soviet spy case angers many Russian emigres
living in America
!3y Linda Feldmann
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
New York
When the news broke last week that
two Soviet emigres had been arrested in
;cos Angeles for alleged espionage against
the United States, Helen Ostashevsky of
Brooklyn was outraged.
What they did was terrible, regardless
of the r nationality, she said. But "be-
cause they gave up their Soviet citizen-
ship and accepted all the benefits of
American life, and then betrayed it," their
crime was even more terrible.
"And, of course, we're very worried
that the American public will now be sus-
picious of the emigre population in gen-
era.l."
The reaction of Mrs.
Ostashevsky, a Leningrad
native who emigrated five
years ago, is typical of other
Soviet Jews who have set-
tled here - many after hav-
ing waited several months
around the world.
"It is possible that every anticommu-
nist organization in this country has an in-
former," said Andrei Sedykh, editor of
the New York-based Russian-language
newspaper Novoe Russkoye Slovo, who
came to the US in 1943.
One aspect of the Los Angeles case
that puzzled some emigres was the activi-
ties of the Ogorodnikovs themselves, who
had a reputation for being openly pro-So-
viet. Mrs. Ogorodnikov sold Soviet maga-
zines and showed Soviet films. Such ac- 1
tivity, emigres said, would certainly not
have given the Ogorodnikovs the low pro-
file they would need to conduct espionage.
Perhaps the Soviet government, some
Russians suggested, wanted these people
. to be caught spying so the
All the emigres
interviewed said
they were quite
certain that the
accused spies were
or years for an exit visa.
Acknowledging that they P
had no evidence to support country by the KGB
their feelings, all emigres in- (the Soviet secret
the weekend were quite cer- police),
tain that Svetlana and
Nikolai Ogorodnikov, the accused spies
arrested Oct. 2 in Los Angeles along with
FBI agent Richard Miller, were planted in
this country by the KGB (the 'Soviet se-
cret police).
"They [the KGB] would have been
complete idiots if they hadn't used the
big emigration for their purposes," said
one Manhattan emigre, referring to the
decade ending in 1981 which saw some
250,000 Soviets (mostly Jewish) come to
this country. The Ogorodnikovs arrived
in 1983. "The arrests were not surprising.
What did surprise me was that the US
government wasn't more careful about let-
ting such people in in the first place."
Many emigres contacted in New York
City said they think KGB informers have
infiltrated much of the emigre community
emigre community would
be discredited in the eyes of
the American public.
Many emigres do seem
genuinely concerned about
the image of their commu-
nity. They say they felt anger and bitterness from
some Americans last year
after the Soviets shot down
the Korean airliner. But it is
cases like the murder last
year of Tanis Zelensky in
Pittsfield, Vt., that make many emigres
shudder. The woman, who wasn't even
Ogorodnikovs. Volodya, an artist whose
cramped, gray apartment in Far
Rockaway, Queens, looks a lot like what
he left behind in Moscow three years ago,
shrugged off the news. He is more upset
by the Russians who, he says, come to the
US just to make money.
"Some take on the worst practices of
this country - prostitution, counterfeit-
ing, smuggling," says Volodya. The FBI
acknowledges that a few years ago the be-
ginnings of a "Russian mafia" emerged in
this country, centered in Brooklyn's
Brighton Beach area, which is heavily
populated by working-class Soviet
immigrants.
But newspaper editor Sedykh main-
tains that despite the appearance of the
organized crime network, the vast major-
ity of emigres are hardworking, law-abid-
ing people. And because many Soviet
Jews had waited so long for their exit vi-
sas, they tend to value their freedom all
the more. This is especially so since the
Soviet government slowed emigration to a
trickle.
"The Russians who came here hate the
Soviet regime ... because of its anti-Sem-
itism," Mr. Sedykh explained. "They
want to become Americans and be decent
people in this country. Then they discover
a few rotten apples among them."
herself an emigree but bom here to Rus-
sian parents, was shot by a man who re-
portedly thought she was conducting espi-
onage activities in her convenience store.
The news about the Ogorodnikov spy
case has been especially hard on older im-
who remember the Stalin era,
migrants,
"They lived through awful years in the
Soviet Union," said one emigre, whose el-
derly mother also lives in the US. "They
know what kind of harm can come from a
national obsession. They exaggerate ev-
erything now. They worry that there may
be a witch hunt for Soviet spies" in the
US.
Not all emigres interviewed, however,
were upset about the arrest of the
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000404280013-1