On the Outs

Moscow expels a U.S. reporter

It was not entirely a surprise to Newsweek 's Moscow Bureau Chief Andrew Nagorski, 35, when he was summoned to the Foreign Ministry press office early last week. Nagorski, a veteran Asia hand, speaks Russian with ease, unlike most of the other 25 U.S. correspondents in the U.S.S.R., and has shown a flair for finding stories that irk the sensibilities of the Kremlin. This month, for instance, Newsweek carried Nagorski's report on the anxieties of draft-age youths in Tajikistan, a republic bordering the Soviet client government of parlous Afghanistan. Earlier he had detailed the fondness of ranking bureaucrats for racy Western films that are banned for the Soviet masses, and had exposed the bribes extracted by a circus director who chose which performers traveled abroad. More consequential, in April Newsweek nettled the Soviets with a decidedly premature cover story, to which Nagorski contributed, depicting Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev as a dying man who was losing political control. But Nagorski got more than a routine dressing down. Press Office Deputy Director Yuri Viktorov brusquely foreclosed all discussion: Your accreditation as the Newsweek correspondent in Moscow, he began, is being withdrawn.

The action came as a shock. Though American reporters have always faced official harassments, none had been expelled since 1977, when George Krimsky of the Associated Press was forced out after giving extensive coverage to Soviet dissidents. The "charges" against Nagorski, which he denied, included impersonating a Soviet deputy editor on one occasion and a Polish tourist on another, and violating travel restrictions. Colleagues in Moscow insist that his real crime was diligence. Says Nagorski: "The authorities especially dislike a reporter who zeroes in on the feelings of ordinary people." Washington officials view the expulsion as a warning to the Western press corps. "The Soviets decided to create an object lesson," says one State Department aide.

As is its custom, the State Department retaliated for the ouster. Last week it barred re-entry to the U.S. by Melor Sturua, the vacationing chief Washington correspondent for the Soviet newspaper Izvestiya. In theory Sturua could return if the Soviets reinstate Nagorski's credentials, but that prospect is considered unlikely. Indeed, Newsweek has already reassigned Nagorski to Rome.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.