Soviet Pentecostalists try to win freedom with a hunger strike
There are seven of them. For the past 3½ years they have lived as uninvited guests in a grubby 12-ft. by 20-ft. room in the basement of the U.S. embassy on Moscow's bustling Tchaikovsky Street. They share two beds. They earn small change around the embassy washing cars, knitting garments, cleaning rooms.
Known to the outside world as "the Siberian Seven," they are Russian Pentecostalists, revivalist worshipers who want to emigrate to the U.S. with the rest of their families. Thus far, the Soviet Union has blocked their efforts. Last week, in the most dramatic in their 20-year battle, two of the seven, Augustina Vashchenko, 52, and her daughter Lidiya, 30, were on a hunger strike and failing fast. "Lidiya is down to her last reserves," said visiting Pennsylvania Congressman Bud Shuster. "It could become a life-threatening situation any day."
Back in June 1978 the seven crashed past Soviet guards and into the U.S. embassy, seeking to go to the U.S. Pyotr Vashchenko, now 55, Augustina, and their three daughters, Lidiya, Lyubov, 29, and Liliya, 24, along with Fellow Believers Mariya Chmykhalov, 59, and her son Timofei, 19, had traveled 2,000 miles by rail from the Siberian town of Cherno-gorsk. Thwarted by Soviet intransigence since then, the dispirited Augustina and Lidiya have now stopped eating in a desperate bid to win world attention and shame the Soviets into relenting.
Their plan was inspired by Soviet Dissident Andrei Sakharov's successful hunger strike late last year. Augustina started taking only juice and water on Dec 25, despite the opposition of Pyotr and the Christian teaching against suicide. Lidiya joined her three days later. When Historian Kent Hill of Seattle Pacific University flew to Moscow, Lidiya told him, "Here I am with no end in sight. I can't bear it. If I can't have a normal life, I'd sooner die."
If death nears, U.S. Ambassador Arthur Hartman presumably will be forced to order the women out of the embassy for hospitalization—and into a dangerous reunion with Soviet authorities. If either woman is taken away, or dies, Liliya has vowed to start her own hunger strike.
While in the embassy, the group completed a 225,000-word account of their heart-rending saga, reworked by John Pollock as The Siberian Seven (Word; $8.95). During a harsh anti-Christian campaign, starting in 1961, worship services were routinely broken up and many Pentecostal leaders were jailed. When their children faced cruel harassment at school—ridicule, ostracism and beatings—the Vashchenkos decided to educate them at home. The state then ruled them unfit parents, seized Lidiya and two sisters in 1962, and sent them to be raised in institutions until they turned 16.
In January 1963, while Pyotr was in prison, Augustina was among 32 church members who won headlines around the world by barging into the U.S. embassy and begging for asylum. They left when the Soviets promised better treatment. Instead, Pyotr and Augustina lost their home and jobs, Pyotr was confined temporarily to a psychiatric hospital, and both went to prison for several years.