Word: vlasova
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...Linowitz and Ambassador to China Leonard Woodcock. But McHenry had the advantage of being a black as well as having the support of Young. His main disadvantage was that he was not well known. Then the Soviets came to his assistance when they tried to rush Ballerina Ludmila Vlasova out of the U.S. McHenry was put in charge of the laborious negotiations with the Soviets at Kennedy Airport. Deputy White House Press Secretary Rex Granum said that the President was impressed with Mc-Henry's "toughness and coolness under fire and strong, forceful negotiating techniques." The appointment, said Young...
Whether Ballerina Ludmila Vlasova of the Bolshoi Ballet really wanted to go home or to defect with her husband, Dancer Alexander Godunov, may never be known in full. When Godunov, one of the most brilliant of Soviet ballet stars, made his rush to freedom, he did not-or could not-take her with him. Upholding U.S. law prohibiting forced repatriation, the State Department insisted on interviewing Vlasova to see if she wanted to join her husband. Belatedly, the State Department moved to keep her in the country by preventing her Aeroflot jetliner from taking off until, in the words...
Negotiations over the proper meeting place dragged on for three days, while the Soviet passengers camped out in the plane. There was an exchange between Presidents Carter and Brezhnev. Finally, an agreement was reached: a mobile lounge was rolled up to the plane, and Vlasova entered in the company of six representatives from each nation. She calmly assured the Americans that she wanted to go home...
...Vlasova had needed pressuring to return to the U.S.S.R., there was ample time to persuade her. When she arrived in Moscow, Vlasova was quoted as denouncing the U.S. for trying to compel her to stay, and was hailed hi the Soviet press as a heroine "who took a position of dignity and lofty civic duty" in the face of the "bourgeois brigands" of the U.S. If nothing else, the manner of her exit has probably saved her from what otherwise would have been her fate: the stigma of being the wife of a "traitor" with consequent loss of status...
...Americans were unconvinced. Determined to talk to Vlasova in a place "where she could see for herself that she is free to go or stay," as McHenry put it, the State Department proposed that she be interviewed in a room adjacent to the plane. This request was also refused. "Such strong-arm tactics," said Schell, would hardly be necessary if Vlasova were genuinely willing to leave...