Defecting in the 1980s (Eastern bloc to USA)

[knowledgequeen]

Googled: procedure for defection ussr, how did soviets defect, embassy accepting defector ussr, papers needed for defector ussr, asylum for defectors 1980s, and other various permutations

Comments

[lolmac]

FWIW, on the subject of walk-ins: when I was in graduate school in the mid-eighties, I got to know a man who had defected from what was then Czechoslovakia. I don't know the exact year of his defection, but it must have been in the mid to late seventies.

He had been a walk-in: he planned the defection for years, and waited until he was allowed to leave the country for a vacation in Switzerland. On the last day of his vacation, instead of going home, he sat on a park bench for several hours, getting himself ready to take the plunge, and then walked into the embassy.

I assume he had his passport, but I doubt he had any other papers. He said it was as simple as saying "I want to defect", but that it was the most terrifying thing he'd ever said. Before the moment of saying it at the embassy, he hadn't even been able to speak the word out loud, for fear of what might happen.

He had no particular political status or social importance; he was a tailor. He had always had strong political opinions, and his life had been a dead end as a result. He was not arrested; he was simply sent to the appropriate office for defectors from Czechoslovakia. He was then sent to a refugee camp, and eventually ended up in the US, after several months of waiting to find out which countries might take him. He became a citizen in about 1985.

There was more to the story, but those are the basic elements of the defection itself.