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Besides Oksana Kosenkina, another teacher, Mikhail Samarin, had run out on his employers and refused to return to Russia. He had already told both the FBI and the press that he wanted to renounce his Soviet citizenship, that he wanted to tell the full story of "the totalitarian technique and practices of the Soviet dictatorship." After an appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee last week, he repeated to reporters in an interview that he hoped to stay in the U.S. with his wife and three children.
"So Much Trouble." But Oksana Kosenkina had made it even plainer than Samarin that nothing seemed worse to her than a return to Russia. Not only did that give the U.S. a chance to extend to her the same right of asylum; it also publicly branded the Russians' whole story as a brazen falsehood.
No one doubted that the Russians had their own ways of making someone pay for such embarrassment. When the House Un-American Activities Committee put Oksana Kosenkina under the protection of a congressional subpoena at week's end, most newsmen speculated, with a certain grim humor, that blundering Consul Lomakin would be the next to need sanctuary somewhere. Vice Consul Chepurnykh, who was due for recall to Russia himself, had already let it be known that he had no desire to be the goat.
"It's Lomakin's business now," he said. "The situation is quite clear to me. Nothing can be done without the high bosses." Later he added reflectively: "There has been so much trouble. Things have not gone well. Possibly we have made some mistakes."