Zarubin's Tough Week

The State Department last week called in beetle-browed Soviet Ambassador Georgy Zarubin to complain because New York-based Russian diplomats had browbeaten five refugee Russian sailors into abruptly going back home (TIME, April 23). Top-ranking offender, said State in its properly diplomatic memorandum, was Arkady A. Sobolev, Russia's chief U.N. delegate. Sobolev could stay in the U.S. if he tended to his U.N. business, but the U.S. was firmly booting out of the country his two aides and principal agents in the redefection case, Aleksandr Guryanov and Nikolai Tuakin. When Zarubin had heard all this, he drew himself up and replied: "The facts alleged are without foundation."

Zarubin reported the meeting to Moscow, where the five redefecting sailors (of 49 crewmen aboard the Russian tanker Tuapse, captured by the Chinese Nationalists in 1954) were trotted out before U.S. newsmen to read a long, mimeographed statement. Principal point: the Russians never wanted to stay in the U.S., but were so bulldozed and threatened into accepting "the so-called free way of life" that they had to plot their escape with cunning care. Back in Washington Zarubin apparently believed the Moscow version, for he suddenly demanded to see four of the redefectors' comrades, who happened to be in town for a "routine hearing" at the U.S. Immigration Service. "He wanted to influence our sentiments," one of these refugee sailors said of their talk with Zarubin. "He said our relatives were begging for our return and would forgive us, but the expression on his face contrasted completely with what he said." One of the refugees told Zarubin he would return only when Russia was "free"; another simply told him, in Russian, "Go to hell."

Invited to testify (through a translator) before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, Michael Ivankov-Nikolov, 35, summed up his reaction to the Moscow propaganda statement: "From beginning to end this statement is a lie. There is not a drop of truth in it." Crewcut Viktor Tatarnikov, 20, was asked what he thought about staying on in the U.S. It put him, he replied, "in a very good and merry mood."

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