Word: sverdlovsk
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...Department spokesman announced that there were "disturbing indications" that the Soviets might have violated the terms of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, which bans the production and stockpiling of germ-warfare weapons. As evidence, the spokesman cited a mysterious epidemic last spring that apparently killed hundreds of people in Sverdlovsk, a city of 1.2 million some 850 miles from Moscow. The rapid spread of the infection led U.S. intelligence analysts to suspect that the cause was anthrax, a deadly bacterial disease, and that the contamination could not have come from natural sources. Thus, according to State, the epidemic "may have...
...telephone rang. I picked up the receiver, and the voice on the other end said, "Minister of Defense Marshal Rodion Malinovsky reporting." He went on to tell me that an American U-2 reconnaissance plane had crossed the border of Afghanistan into Soviet airspace and was flying toward Sverdlovsk. I replied that it was up to him to shoot down the plane by whatever means he could. Malinovsky said he'd already given the order, adding "If our antiaircraft units can just keep their eyes open and stop yawning long enough, I'm sure we'll knock...
...When I was writing my books," Andrei Amalric said last February, "I realized I was risking prison." Risk became reality last week. In Sverdlovsk, 850 miles from Amalric's home in Moscow and well out of bounds to nosy Western correspondents, the Russian social critic, 32, was sentenced to three years at hard labor for having "distributed fabrications defaming the Soviet state." Among his "fabrications" were two books published only in the West: Involuntary Journey to Siberia, an account of the 18 months he served in exile, and Will The Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?, a grim, apocalyptic view...
Suffering for Truth. On the day of Amalric's trial in Sverdlovsk, the voice of another brave and gifted Russian was heard in Moscow. In a 1,000-word open letter, the world-renowned cellist Mstislav Rostropovich asked: "Is it really possible that the past has not taught us to be careful not to crush talented peopleor anyone for that matter?" Rostropovich continued: "Every man should have the right to think and express himself independently, and without fear, about the things he knows, believes personally and has lived through." The cellist was speaking of his beleaguered friend...
...examine the credentials of each of the KGB officers. He also studied the arrest warrant, and when he detected an incorrect date for his birthday, he said jokingly: "You see, you have the wrong man." Amalric learned that half of the agents were from the Siberian border city of Sverdlovsk, where a copy of his book, which was circulating in typed form via the Samizdat underground press, had been confiscated by the authorities...