Soviet Poet Sees Thatcher; She’ll Remain in West

LONDON â€”  Dissident Soviet poet Irina Ratushinskaya, allowed to leave the Soviet Union last week, met with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher today, and her husband said she intends to remain in the West.

Ratushinskaya, who arrived in London last Thursday on a three-month visa to seek medical help, said she discussed Soviet problems during her 35-minute meeting with Thatcher.

Earlier, the 32-year-old poet’s husband, Igor Geraschenko, a physicist and human rights activist, told reporters at the couple’s first news conference that they have decided to remain in the West.

Human Rights Problem

“Irina and I intend to live in the West. . . . I consider the possibility of a return to the Soviet Union will only become a reality when respect for human rights will become something real not only in words but in deeds,� he said through an interpreter.

Ratushinskaya, who describes herself as a Christian, spoke of her ordeal in a labor camp where she served four years of a seven-year sentence for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda� at the time of her unexpected release in October.

She looked tired and talked quietly.

“The regime in the women’s political camp was adapted specifically . . . to create such conditions that we would not want to continue human rights activities in the future. Frequently measures applied to us were senseless humiliations,� she said in faltering English, sometimes resorting to an interpreter.

Filth, Cold, Hunger

“As a rule, actual physical blows were not used. They did not need this. They refined it down to extreme cold, extreme filth, extreme hunger. . . . Conditions were geared to ensure that you died when you left the camp,� she said.

“I went into prison as a healthy young woman and three years later I was certain I would not live out this year.�

Ratushinskaya said that she was repeatedly told her husband would be executed if she did not renounce her dissident beliefs and that he was told she would be shot if he did not do the same.

Ratushinskaya said she believed that her release and the freeing from internal exile last week of leading dissident Andrei D. Sakharov, were part of an effort by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to improve his country’s image in the West.