It Started with Stamps

Berlin's ugly wall is not the only barrier that Communism's inmates try to breach. Soviet authorities are concerned at the increasing number of Soviet youths trying to sneak illegally out of Russia itself. Recently two young Russians tried to leave the country by swimming out to a foreign tanker in the Black Sea port of Batum; they were picked up by a Soviet harbor patrol boat. One was sentenced to six years in prison, the other to ten. One of the men, said Soviet officials, had been influenced by modern, Western-style poetry--"bad verse that had been rejected by all editorial offices."

Izvestia, which occasionally prints revealing news for its cautionary effect, last week told the story of a defector named Aleksandr ("Sasha") Mirilenko. Sasha was the 18-year-old son of a Ukrainian cultural worker and his teacher wife, both Communists. Always daydreaming about life outside Russia, Sasha started collecting foreign stamps and writing to collectors in other countries. As his pen pals began telling him about the good things on the other side of the Iron Curtain, Sasha's allegiance to the Young Communist League began to falter. He went to the Black Sea resort of Yalta, where he buttonholed foreign tourists for more information and begged for fountain pens and cigarette lighters.

Soon Sasha was fed up with his homeland. From his technical school he stole 35 rubles, some stamps, and a pair of wire-cutters, headed for the frontier between Russia and Turkey. He got within a few yards of his goal. One night last November, as Sasha tried to clip his way through the barbed-wire frontier fence, a flare shot into the sky, alarm bells began to jangle, and border guards grabbed Sasha. Moralized Izvestia: "This character, a quite exceptional phenomenon in our country, has become a renegade, betrayed his friends, parents and country. Let him answer before Soviet justice."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.