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The following is an enumeration of the events and violations surrounding my gift to America:
If the crates with the works I had given to America had arrived with me in Vienna, Mrs. Koob assured me, she would have dispatched them on to America with no problem. 4. In December 1987, in Vienna, all the IRC documents confirming my status as a political refugee were suddenly "lost." With no explanation to me of a change in my status, the IRC "resurrected" the allegedly lost documents and - having detained me in Vienna for three months instead of the expected three weeks --7sent me off to Washington, via New York, on February 22, 1988. 5. In December 1987, in Washington, D.C., my daughter was hurriedly awarded the status of American citizen and was then required to sign a guarantee, along with a $1,000 payment to, the IRC in Vienna, with the threat that my wife and I would not be allowed to leave Vienna if she declined. No one paid any attention to the fact that she did not have such money and was not in a position materially to help her parents, in spite of her appeal to Congress. I only learned of this after my arrival in Washington. Had I known of this while still in Vienna I would never have left, in protest of such policies. 6. My protest in Washington over the sudden and unexplained change of my status as a political refugee was never considered. 7. In the three and one half years in Moscow when I was fighting to emigrate to the United States, I was never specifically interviewed as an emigre by the American Embassy. 8. In Washington, on 23 February 1988, 1 turned to the State Department's Office of Soviet Affairs, through my wife, to clarify both my status and the fate of my gift to America. I gave Bill Bremer a written request, in Russian. Our conversation was also conducted in Russian. Mr. Bremer promised to call me soon with answers. The call did not come, so I went to the State Department a second time. Mr. Bremer referred me to Mr. Guroff, and offered me the use of his office telephone. I tried in vain to reach Mr. Guroff. His secretary consistently replied that Guroff was not in his office. I was given the distinct impression that Mr. Guroff was avoiding having to speak with me. As yet unaware that Mr. Guroff worked not for the State Department but for the United States Information Agency, I turned for a third time to Mr. Bremer. On this occasion he refused to speak Russian, brusquely suggesting we converse in English. In this initial period after our arrival in America neither my wife nor I could speak or understand English. Mr. Bremer knew that perfectly well. Nevertheless, in the place of the normal tenor of our first meeting, Mr. Bremer now spoke to me in English, in an unmistakably rude tone, and at my request to explain it all to me briefly in Russian, he hung up the phone. I could not accept this as anything but what it seemed to be: a complete disregard for my situation and discrimination against my person by a State Department official in the course of carrying out his official duties. 9. In March 1988 our daughter finally managed to reach Mr. Guroff by phone, at the number Mr. Bremer had given me. Not long after that Guroff, accompanied by his daughter and by John Barley, visited me in our daughter's Arlington apartment. John Barley brought me the packet of my drawings which he had received from me in Moscow in 1985, in the embassy residence, promising to transport them to my daughter in America. Guroff told me that he had gone to Moscow in December 1987, but no one in the embassy there had said anything to him about the crates of my work, given to America, sitting ready for shipment and waiting for him in my Moscow studio under the eye of my proxy. Guroff did not say that the American diplomats could not take my gift. On the contrary - he confirmed that he, along with Barley and Hartman, had promised to pick up the gift because they were fully confident that my wife and I would never be allowed to leave the Soviet Union. Guroff said to me: "Forget about everything you left behind in Moscow, and start a new life here." Then, seeing my naturally angry reaction, he quickly added: "We didn't believe you would make it out, but here I am, sitting with you and seeing you again. Maybe the same thing will happen with your gift. I'm going to Moscow soon, and I'll see what I can do." John Barley, in his own turn, promised to help too, since in March-April 1988 he would be traveling to Moscow several times in preparation for the Reagan-Gorbachev summit. Both Barley and Guroff were given the names and addresses of people in Moscow who could help them find out where the crates containing my gift to America - my life's work - had ended up. In Moscow, Barley passed on the letter I had given him to the Consulate in the American Embassy. Guroff claims to have gone to my former studio in Moscow, but found the doors locked. After our meeting in Arlington and his promises to me, Guroff then began to avoid me, instructing his secretary not to take my calls. Meeting Barley near his home, in April 1988, he expressed a strained indignation to me: "Do you think that State Department employees in the Office of Soviet Affairs are cooperating with the KGB in this matter of your gift? Well, I am also a State Department employee, though not in that office. I could take that to apply tome as well. I could take you to court for that." We suggested that he do so, in order to clear up just what had happened to my gift to America in Moscow after our departure and Max Robinson's guarantee to pick up the gift -from the studio and get it to the embassy as soon as Gregory Guroff arrived on 12 December 1987. Barley, from April 1988 on, beg an to hide from me, just as Guroff had. 10. In June 1988 1 finally got through to Moscow by phone. I spoke with my proxy, Vladimir Skvirsky, and learned that in December 1987 he had repeatedly called the American embassy, but the diplomats had refused to come collect my gift to America, in violation of the obligation they had taken for it. Another young friend, it tamed out, had moved the crates to his placeor an undetermined time. The notarized term of agreement between myself and my proxy regarding his safeguarding of the crates ran out in November 1988. In June 1988 1 had a conversation with Mr. Peterson at the State Department, in the Office of Soviet Affairs, regarding this problem. I left with him a statement, written in Russian. On the following day, in a second meeting with Peterson, he promised to help us and to inform me by letter of the steps that had been taken. At the same time, I wrote to several senators and members of Congress, to the Secretary of State and to his assistants, to the Vice President, and to the President, asking them for their help in resolving this problem. Autumn came, and I had still not received a single answer from anyone. All this was, to me, very reminiscent of Soviet tactics of discrimination. I began to understand that the deception perpetrated on me by American diplomats in Moscow was not simply some misunderstanding that would be cleared up by the bureaucratic hierarchy of the State Department, but quite possibly - a crime committed by certain individuals, acting on their own. 11. In early November 1988 1 once again pleaded with the State Department. Time for saving my gift was running out. Upon the termination of the agreement between me and my proxy in Moscow, my life's work - my gift to America - would be left to be plundered and sold off. Mr. Callow, from the Office of Soviet Affairs, told me that I would have to get my answers from Guroff, since he had been at the source of the problem and final responsibility for my gift to America rested with him. During that period between February and November 1988 - nine months of persistent petitioning on my part - not one of the officials at the Office of Soviet Affairs ever displayed the slightest doubt in the fact that the gift had been made and was legal. They placed responsibility for the gift on Guroff. And Guroff hid. 12. During those same nine months in 1988 1 sent several letters and telegrams to Moscow: to Jack Matlock personally, and to Hartman, Guroff, and Matlock when Hartman and Guroff traveled to the Soviet Union for the Conference on Human Rights (Moscow- Tbilisi-Moscow). None of my letters or telegrams were answered. 13. The letter to me from Alexander Vershbow, Director of the Office of Soviet Affairs, dated 9 November 1988, proved to be a cynical distortion of the situation surrounding my gift to America. It was sent around by the Office of Soviet Affairs to various State Department offices, senators, and members of Congress. My protest went unnoticed. Vershbow's advice - that I go to the Soviet authorities for help - I considered and still consider a provocation, one which I can now substantiate with documents. In place of the most rudimentary apology to me, and working with me to correct the situation, Alexander Vershbow preferred to lie. And by means of that lie he caused a deliberate delay that allowed my works - American property - to be stolen and sold off. The chain of lies wrought by Joyce from the American Embassy in Moscow and Vershbow and Taft from the Office of Soviet Affairs - added to 1989 by Edward Fox and Janet Mullins from the State Department's Office of Legislative Affairs - was irrefutably broken on December 4, 1989, when, in response to Sen. Helms' letter to Secretary of State Baker, my documents were delivered to the State Department from the. American Embassy in Moscow, and among them were the legal documents of deed and the catalogues of the 1,500 works of art. A legal gift had been made by me to America, in Moscow, with specific obligations on the American side. No request for the illegal transport of my life's work in art from Moscow to Washington by American diplomatic channels had been made by me. 14. The documents from Moscow proved that officials of the consular and political sections of the American Embassy had been negligent in their most basic official function: to maintain all documents collected from emigres in lots and in order. 'They had no right to take my Soviet documents from me in the first place, let alone illegally to send them to Washington, since our civil documents had not passed from Soviet governmental control. Among the civil and political files, regularly collected on me in the embassy's consular section between 1984 and 1987, many important items were missing. The items which either had been lost or removed included: my wife's and my legal last will and testament in the event of our deaths; the originals of the legal documents of deed to Hartman, Matlock, and Schultz; the document assigning legal power of attorney to my proxy to safeguard and then release to the American diplomats in Moscow in December 1988 what was now American property - 20 large crates containing 1,500 packed works (oil paintings, drawings, water colors, collages, sculptures, and drawings), with 7,500 black-and-white photographs of the works to be presented to the experts of the Soviet government's commission on the exporting of art and valuables from the USSR. Among the documents which arrived in my name, however, were an icon, a cross, and many strange documents having nothing at all to do with me. 15. From January through August 1989, Mr. Vershbow's secretary refused my requests for an. appointment with him, deflecting me instead to Guroff in the USIA. 16. In August 1989 Guroff met with me in his office at the USIA, in the presence of Mr. Suslov. He consistently repeated that the three oil paintings he had received from me in my Moscow studio in 1984 had been returned to my daughter in 1987, and that he had taken nothing at all in February 1985, in the Moscow residence of Ambassador Hartman, when Hartman had selected 12 drawings for himself. This situation upset him more than the 1,500 works of my art, belonging to me and to America, which were being lost in Moscow. "Why are you afraid of having taken them or not? You'd be better to set straight what has happened to me and to my gift," I answered. Guroff promised to address the problem to the Soviet authorities. He and Hartman repeated that promise to me on November 9, 1989, at the entrance to the Soviet Embassy, where I was standing in demonstration of protest against the Soviets who had seized and were selling off my and America's property, in Moscow. Hartman and Guroff were on their way to a reception in the embassy. 17. For seven months - from January through July 1990 1 waited for the further help promised me by Sen. Helms' office, but it was not forthcoming. In place of further letters of inquiry from Sen. Helms, Mr. Glassman, of the Office of Soviet Affairs, had lunch with Sen. Helms' assistant on the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs. I cannot help but to view as a breach of promise the fact that the resolving of my problem - which Sen. Helms himself called a tragedy demanding an urgent investigation was abandoned in mid-stream. 18. In May 1990 1 sent open letters to President Gorbachev and President Bush, timed to coincide with Gorbachev's arrival in Washington. There were no answers. Bush, in this, differed not at all from Gorbachev. Or - more accurately not Bush, but his. assistants responsible for such matters. 19. In August 1990, having exhausted all possibilities of addressing my problem to the President of the United States and the Secretary of State - who are answerable for their subordinates in the State Department and the American Embassy in Moscow - 1, in accordance with the United States Constitution and my status as a U.S. resident, turned to the Congress of the United States and to President of the Senate Dan Quayle with a request for an investigation into the matter of my gift to America, of the culpability of those civil servants involved in the matter, of the impeachment of Gregory Guroff, of the retrieval from the Soviet art mafia in Moscow of my and America's property, of delivery of that property to America, and of restitution for the losses I had endured. These included:
20. In October-November 1991 1 sent letters of firm protest and a demand for the restitution of losses to the White House, the Department of State, the Department of Justice, Congress (to leaders of both major parties and the related committees), and to various other federal organizations. The continued lack of response from these members of the government now, in early 1992, can not be taken as anything but discrimination. 21. The answer received from the Assistant Inspector General, Department of State, received in December 1991, stated as fact that American diplomats did not have the right to receive gifts from a Soviet citizen. However, on November 30, 1987, when Max Robinson gave me his guarantee that the my gift would be picked up, I was not a Soviet citizen. I was stripped of my citizenship in connection with my deportation. They did not have the right, but they did it anyway: made the guarantee, in accordance with the agreement they had made with me earlier. 22. The answer from the U.S. Department of Justice on January 31, 1992, reiterated that, as an arm of the President's Cabinet, the Department of Justice could not give me any advice, as a private citizen suffering at the hands of responsible State Department officials (see attached letter). 23. The advice of District of Columbia Delegate to Congress Eleanor H. Norton to take the matter to the FBI, in early January 1992, also was without results. The FBI, in the person of Roger Evans, informed us on January 7, 1992, that his boss had forbidden an investigation. Norton's assistants (Mr. Cartwright and Mrs. Johnson) suggested on January 17, 1992, that we take the matter up with Interpol and the CIA. 24. In November 1991 1 sent, through the Executive Office, all the materials relating to the matter of my gift to Robert Gates, newly confirmed director of the CIA. No reply has been received. In November, 1991, 1 also sent all the material to the White House, to President Bush and Vice President Quayle personally and to their appropriate assistants, and also to Secretary of State Baker and his senior assistants (see attached material, including the signatures of receipt of the offices receiving the documents). 25. In the end of 1991 all related material and a plea for help were sent by me not only to the Director of the Library of Congress - the leading cultural center of the United States - but also to the Department of Health and President Bush's personal physician, who should understand better than anyone that the addition of these four years of stress in America to the five years of stress in the Soviet Union may prove fatal to me. And then the tragedy surrounding my gift to America will turn into a premeditated political murder. |
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