SOVIET DEFECTOR BACK ON THE JOB AT MOSCOW PAPER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100580002-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 24, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: November 22, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100580002-7
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NEW YORK TIMES
22 November 1984
Soviet Defector Back on the Job
at Moscow Paper.
By SETH MYDANS
Spedai to The New York Times
MOSCOW, Nov. 21- Oleg G. Bitov, a
Soviet journalist who returned to Mos-
cow three months ago after defecting to
the West, reappeared in print today in
his former newspaper with an admir-
ing critique o. an article by Norman
Mailer about Russia.
Mr. Bitov, who said after his return
that be had been kidnapped while on as-
signment in Italy and was forced to
write anti-Soviet articles in Britain,
has published detailed accounts of his
year in the West in the pages of Litera-
turnaya Gazeta.
Today's article marked his return to
normal publication in the newspaper. A
spokesman for the paper said Mr.
Bitov, who was foreign culture editor
before his defection at the Venice Film
Festival in September 1983, was now a
columnist for the newspaper.
Defectors are rarely accepted back
to the Soviet Union and even more
rarely treated gently if they return.
Mr. Bitov's treatment, and that of Svet-
lana Allilu yeva, the daughter of Stalin,
who returned two months ago after 17
years as a defector, indicate a new
Soviet approach.
Change in Policy Hinted
Both were put on display at news con-
ferences after their return, and made
statements denigrating the West and
praising the humanity of their home-
land. Western diplomats saw this treat-
ment as indicating that the Soviet
Union might want to tempt other defec-
tors and emigres to return home.
The official press agency, Tass, car-
ried an item today on its foreign-lan-
guage service pointing out the article
by Mr. Bitov.
Last week two Soviet soldiers who
had defected in Afghanistan returned
to Russia from England, apparently
voluntarily, after visiting their em-
bassy in London. Their return has not
been publicized here, and there has
been no word on their fate.
Mr. Bitov, taking the sarcastic tone
that is common in his newspaper and
which he employed in his accounts of
lii lea; in the West, prr':,ed M .
Mailer for having tried, in what he
called a naive way, to overcome his ac-
knowledged prejudices about Russia.
Mr. Mailer's article, titled "A Coun-
try, Not a Scenario" and published in
the Aug. 19 issue of Parade magazine,
was an account of a 15-day visit to the
Soviet Union in which Mr. Mailer com-
pared his observations with his precon-
ceptions.
Not Quite What Was Expected
"You walk the streets of Moscow
thinking: Is the Soviet Unioc as we
have painted it, or have we painted our-
selves into a corner?" Mr. Mailer
wrote. "After 40 years of reading news-
paper accounts about Russia, the trou-
ble is that the country is not quite the
way one expected it to be."
He then described his Leningrad
hotel room, "not too unlike a high-rise
Holiday Inn in such a place as Norman,
Okla.," listed his breakfast menu, dis-
coursed on relative prices and salaries
and was struck by the architectural
similarity of Soviet and Western high-
rise apartment buildings.
Mr. Bitov noted the author's surprise
at such observations, and added, "and
he was altogether flabbergasted by the
fact that he, an American, could walk
wherever and whenever he wanted in
Soviet cities and, no matter how hand
he tried, could see no one following
hits n.I "I list the naive discoveries of the aa-
thor not to laugh at him, nor in re-
proach," Mr. Bitov said. On the con-._
trary, he said, he respected Mr. Mail-
er's attempt to see and understand
what he could without prejudice.
"It is not the fault, but the misfortune
of Mailer," Mr. Bitov wrote, if his visit
"was too short to overcome the stereo-
types embedded in his consciousness
and memory."
The Horrors of Central Park
Mr. Bitov appeared to draw on his
own sojourn in the West, including a
visit to the United States, when he de-
picted in standard Soviet stereotype
the horrors of a carriage ride through
Central Park in New York.
"On the coach-box, side by side with
the arnied driver, sits, in the required
style, a plainclothes detective who is
undoubtedly also not empty-handed: in
the dark time of day, Central Park be-
comes the domain of hooligans and
gangsters," he wrote.
In this context, Mr. Bitov mocked
one of Mr. Mailer's central images, of a
peaceful Leningrad Park where a
young couple sat on a bench at night
with a baby carriage beside them.
"That simple fact of life over-
whelmed the venerable author," the
Soviet journalist wrote.
Mr. Bitov, who is 52 years old, has
presented as strong an indictment of,
the West in his recent articles about his
year abroad as he did of the Soviet
Union in the articles he wrote during
that time.
He described himself as having been
beaten and drugged in Venice, then
bribed and intimidated into defecting
and into writing and speaking against
the Soviet Union. He said he was con-
stantly under the eye of Western secret
services and had to play for time before
he could make his break for home.
Differing-versions of his story are of-
fered in the West, and a degree of mys-
tery still surrounds a number of
aspects of his adventure. Most Western
analysts tend to agree in their belief
that his defection was genuine. They
say the statements he is making now
are the price of his return.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100580002-7
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