On 23 July 1970 Leonid Rigerman (b. 1940), visited the US embassy in Moscow.
He was born in the USA [1] into an American family, which gives him and his mother Esther Rigerman grounds for taking American citizenship.
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EMBASSY
On 8 September 1970, after completing the documents necessary for the registration of their American citizenship and telephoning the consul to arrange a visit, Rigerman and his mother set off for the embassy.
At the entrance they were stopped by three policemen and sent to Police Station 11. There Rigerman was searched and all he had with him was confiscated: documents, money and his wristwatch. Then First-Lieutenant (police) Nikolai Andreyevich Balakirev conducted a conversation with him. Balakirev refused to explain why he had been apprehended, for the most part discussing with him the normalisation of the situation in the Middle East and the problem of emigration.
Rigerman and his mother were released, having been told to collect their things and documents the following day. On 14 September 1970, the Rigermans handed in their applications at the embassy.
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Leonid Rigerman, 1971
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JAIL
On 9 November 1970, again bound for the embassy, Rigerman was stopped about a hundred yards from the entrance by three policemen, who demanded his documents [2].
The American consul came up to them, greeted Rigerman and started to explain to the policemen that Rigerman was coming to the embassy at his invitation. A car then drove up, and Rigerman was dragged into it and taken, again, to Police Station 11. There he was searched and subjected to an informal (unrecorded) conversation or ‘chat’, this time with Nikolai Ivanovich Sokolov, a KGB official.
When Rigerman was released he telephoned the US consul. At the entrance to the embassy he was once more seized, the consul trying to explain to the policemen that Rigerman had a claim to American citizenship, and that under Article 12 of the Consular Convention he had the right to enter the embassy.
Rigerman was taken back to Police Station 11, held there until 2 pm the following afternoon. A document was drawn up about his infringement of a decree of the USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium (15 February 1962): “On liability for maliciously disobeying the lawful demands of the police or the people’s vigilantes [druzhinniki]”.
On 12 November 1970, the Krasnaya Presnya district court under Judge Gorovets sentenced Leonid Rigerman to seven days in jail.
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WHITE HOUSE
On 19 December 1970, at a press-conference in the White House (Washington DC), it was announced that the government of the USA regarded Leonid Rigerman and Esther Rigerman as American citizens. They had been officially informed of this by the US embassy.
On 29 December 1970, the Rigermans submitted a request to the Visa & Registration Department (OVIR) for permission to leave for the USA.
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NOTES
As the Chronicle regularly noted, Rigerman’s unpleasant experiences and arbitrary mistreatment were repeated many times over in succeeding years.
This affected individuals, entire families, and persecuted Christian denominations (e.g., CCE 51.16), wishing to leave the USSR.
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- This would be important, much later, in the pressure brought on post-Soviet Russia following the 2006 murder (on Vladimir Putin’s birthday) of US-born journalist Anna Politkvoskaya.
↩︎ - Internal ID document = ‘passport’. After 1927 all Soviet citizens were obliged to carry this ID document with them at all times. It was purely for the purposes of identification, and gave no right to travel abroad: for that a separate document was required.
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