Speech #980260641

Latvians. including Ints Calitis. Lithuanians and Estonians. including Mart Niklus. press for Soviet renunciation of the secret terms of the infamous MolotovRibbentrop Pact which consigned their three countries to the U.S.S.R. The record is similarly bleak in the area of family reunification. which the Soviet Union pledged to facilitate under the Helsinki accords. Emigration has come to a virtual standstill for the three ethnic groupsJews. Germans and Armenianswhich had earlier been allowed to leave the Soviet Union. There are over 100 longstanding unresolved United StatesSoviet family reunification cases. including those of Galina Michelson of Moscow who has sought to rejoin her husband in the United States since 1956. Lithuanians Maria Jurgutis and Petras Pakenas have repeatedly been denied exit visas to join their Lithuanianborn spouses in the United States. and Grigory Gimpelson has been trying to get permission to rejoin his wife and son in New York since 1977. Other Americans. such as Prof. Woodford McClellan of the University of Virginia. have unsuccessfully tried for many years to have their Soviet spouses join them in America.