Dumping a Dissident

"The right to leave and return to his country is a fundamental right of man," declared Soviet Physicist Valery Chalidze on his arrival in the U.S. last month. In a highly unusual and seemingly liberal action, the Soviets had allowed Chalidze, an eloquent spokesman for the Russian civil rights movement, to travel to the U.S. for a monthlong lecture tour (TIME, Dec. 18). But early one morning last week, a consular official from the Soviet embassy in Washington, Yuri Galishnikov, called on Chalidze at his Manhattan hotel and amiably asked him to identify himself. When Chalidze handed over his passport, Galishnikov deftly passed it to an aide, who pocketed it. Chalidze was then told that he had been stripped of his citizenship by order of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet two days earlier, and was now forbidden to return home.

Galishnikov claimed that Chalidze had been guilty of "acts discrediting a Soviet citizen" while in America. A spokesman from the Soviet Mission at the United Nations offered the explanation that "Chalidze is not a Soviet citizen in his soul." Chalidze pointed out that the substance of his lectures at U.S. colleges had been precisely the same as his earlier statements in Russia, when he appealed for amnesty for Soviet political prisoners and free emigration.

Chalidze, who was recently threatened with arrest in Russia for such statements, is now both bemused and bewildered. "Why didn't they simply imprison me at home instead of waiting to take away my citizenship while I am abroad?" he asked. He intends to appeal the decision. If he fails, the highly trained scientist expects to stay in the U.S. with his wife Vera--and to ask the Kremlin for a bill for his higher education in a gesture of solidarity with Soviet Jews, who are often required to pay exorbitant "education taxes" when allowed to emigrate (TIME, Sept. 25).

Some Western observers speculate that the Soviets preferred to let Chalidze out of Russia in order to dump an embarrassing dissident. The next step, Sovietologists believe, will be a Soviet press campaign calculated to discredit him with followers in Russia by claiming that he acted disloyally in the U.S.

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