How Did People Leave the Soviet Union to Go Abroad?

Could Soviet citizens travel to other countries after the Second World War? Yes — but only after a so-called “foreign-travel file” had been opened on them. To begin with, people travelling to capitalist or developing countries were asked to fill out numerous questionnaires. In this way, the institutions sending a Soviet citizen abroad gathered detailed information about the person’s entire background.

The next stage belonged to the KGB. After checking everything through its own channels, it would draw up a reasoned assessment of whether the person could be allowed to leave the country.

But even this was not the final stage. Once the KGB assessment had been received, the file of the person being sent abroad was reviewed by special party “commissions on foreign travel.” In cases of private travel, it was reviewed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Only after a person had passed through all these stages of verification was the “foreign-travel file” sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where a foreign passport was prepared for the applicant and a visa was requested from the relevant embassy.

Even then, however, the ordeals of someone leaving the USSR did not necessarily come to an end. If a person had every legal reason to leave the country for permanent residence abroad, plain blackmail and provocations could still be brought into play. From the point of view of the Soviet security services, such methods served as a deterrent: a person who had left the country was supposed to think twice before making any anti-Soviet statement in the Western press — and to keep quiet instead.

One example of this practice is the foreign-travel file of the Englishman Albert Thompson and his wife, Olga Bunelik, a citizen of the USSR. Having no grounds to refuse a British subject permission to leave, officers of the KGB Directorate for Lviv Oblast decided to put pressure on the family through the wife’s relatives, who were staying behind in Ukraine. In addition to threats concerning the “position” of relatives and loved ones, and conversations at OVIR, the Chekists planned to ask Thompson for a favour — one that the foreigner was expected to perform for the agency after his arrival in the United Kingdom.

You can find out what operation the officers of the Lviv KGB decided to carry out, and how it all ended, on our website.

Freddy Rotman