Soviet Defector Shevchenko Dies A Recluse

WASHINGTON - A top Soviet diplomat whose defection 20 years ago created an international sensation - Arkady Shevchenko - died as a virtual recluse, said the head of a group that once helped Eastern European asylum-seekers.

"It's really a shame that someone who contributed so much to this country and to the West in general had such an unfortunate and lonely end here," said Bill Geimer of the Jamestown Foundation, which promoted high-level defections from the Soviet Union and provided career counseling and other help to asylum-seekers in the U.S.

Shevchenko was undersecretary general of the United Nations in 1975 when he began working secretly for the Central Intelligence Agency. Before taking his U.N. post, he was secretary in Moscow to Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.

Considered the CIA's catch of the decade, he defected in April 1978. When he announced he would not go home, Soviet officials said he was being held under duress and tried to get him to return home.

Shevchenko died Feb. 28 at home in Bethesda, Md., of an apparent heart attack. He was 67. His death received little public attention, except for a brief announcement from his church, the St. John the Baptist Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Washington. He was buried Saturday.

"It appears to be a natural death; no foul play was involved," said Ann Evans, a spokeswoman for Montgomery County police. Shevchenko's body was discovered after his family tried unsuccessfully to reach him by phone, she said.

After his defection, Shevchenko wrote a best-selling book, "Breaking with Moscow," commanded lucrative lecture fees and lived in an affluent neighborhood.

His book said his CIA handlers proved insensitive to the trauma of defection.

The KGB whisked his wife back to Moscow, where she reportedly committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.

In the fall of 1978, Shevchenko was involved in a bizarre kiss-and-tell security scandal when a Washington call-girl named Judy Chavez charged publicly that the CIA was paying her to provide sex for him.

When the Soviet Union dissolved, Shevchenko disappeared from public view.

"When `Breaking with Moscow' was published, interest in the Soviet Union and Soviet-U.S. relations was at a peak, but the breakup of the U.S.S.R. dissipated a great deal of that interest," Geimer said. "He just went quiet after a while, becoming almost a recluse, in contrast to many other former defectors who remain active."