HOW THE KREMLIN MADE MOSCOW SAFE FOR NIXON

When President Nixon visited Moscow in May this year the Soviet leaders were at great pains to ensure that nothing should mar his trip.

They brought out the finest wines and foods for banquets in his honour and he and his suite were given the best accommodation.

All this was duly noted in the western Press, where the visit was pictured as the beginning of a new era of USSoviet harmony.

But it was not the limit of the Soviet leaders' care : for their imperialist guest. The latest issue of the underground Soviet opposition journal 'Chronicle of Current Events' details 'some curious activities on the part of the authorities' during Nixon's stay.

Their article, headed_ironically 'In Honour of Nixon' describes how a number of leaders of various opposition groups were subjected to strong-arm treatment by. the secret police.

The police precautions began 11 days before Nixon's plane touched down at Mossow Airport.

T. S. Khodorovich, a member of the Action Group for Defence of Human Rights, A. S. Volpin, one of the group's consultants, and 15 activists of the Movement for the Right of Jews to Leave for Israel were summoned to Moscow district police stations.

They were required to promise that during Nixon's visit they would not commit 'anti-social acts'. They all declared that they had not intended and did not intend to commit unlawful actions.

Volpin and another Action Group member, G. S. Podyapolsky, were sent away from Moscow on urgent business trips for the duration of Nixon's visit.

Then the KGB got to work in earnest.

On May 19, three days before Nixon's arrival, they began disconnecting opposiionists' telephones. In Moscow the telephones of Pyotr Yakir, Academician A. D. Sakharov and V. N. Chalidze, all prominent oppositionists, were cut off.

So were those of 13 members of the Movement for the Right of Jews to Leave for Israel. When Chalidze asked the telephone service when his phone would be mended he was told:

"There has been some complicated damage to the cable. It will be repaired on May 29: That was the day of Nixon's departure!

Several telephones were disconnected in Kiev, and in Riga Professor Branover's telephone was cut off until after the beginning of June.

In case anyone should insult-or worse still throw something-at the archbutcher of Indo-China, special precautions were taken along the route of his limousine.

'In Moscow and Leningrad,' "The Chronicle' reports, 'citizens living in houses which overlooked streets along which Nixon was due to pass were forbidden to go near their windows on the relevant days.' The wife of one oppositionist in Kiev was ordered by the police to sign an undertaking that she would not visit the city centre and public places for a period of four days.

She was threatened with proceedings for 'breach of the peace' if she broke the undertaking. In cities off Nixon's route, including Minsk, Riga, Vilnius and Kishinyov, several Jews were required to give written undertakings that they would not leave the cities for the duration of the visit.

Some Jews were forced off planes and aircraft bound for Moscow by the police. In one case the husband, a Russian, was allowed onto a plane while his wife, a Jewess, was stopped.

Ticket offices of the state airline Aeroflot in some cases refused to sell tickets to Moscow-bound Jews.

Since 1970, nobody • has ›een able to buy an airline Oppositionist Yakir - -telephon cut off. Right: Chalidze. Below: Volpin-sent out of Moscow. ticket without producing his internal passport-which contains details of 'nationality'.

The harassment did not end there. Five activists in the Jewish Movement to Leave were arrested on the morning of May 21 with another man and driven off to various prisons outside Moscow. The whatever for this action unde Three more people were imprisoned in the same way and for the same reason over the rext two days. They were all held in prison until May 31 without any charge being brought against them.

At police stations their relatives were told that the reason for the arrest was 'breaches of the peace in the past and intended breaches in the future'. 'The Chronicle' adds:

'Their wives were con'stantly, openly and crudely shadowed; the police agents burst into telephone booths, got into lifts and sometimes tried to enter the apartment to which their prey had gone.' The prisoners were taken to their local police stations on May 31 where KGB employees told them they had been isolated to prevent possible breaches of the peace during Nixon's visit.

Like so many other KGB actions, this was illegalSoviet law does not provide for preventive detention. There were similar arrests in Leningrad and Kiev while Nixon was visiting those cities.

One Moscow oppositionist, Alexei Tumerman, was held throughout the Nixon visit at a psychiatric hospital. He went on hunger strike and on May 24 wrote a letter to Nixon requesting him to 'raise the question of civil right in the USSR' with his hosts.

He might just as well not have bothered. Nixon had no intention of raising any such issue with the Soviet leaders, though he has based his entire political career on denunciations of the evils of Soviet rule.

All that is strictly for home consumption. He has no disagreements with the way the Stalinist bureaucracy treats its opponents and does the same to American oppositionists when he is at home.

The question of the bureaucracy's flagrant anti-Semitic campaign was never raised by the Americans during Nixon's visit. George McGovern afterwards claimed that Nixon had missed a 'golden opportunity' to do something concrete for people on whose misfortunes he had touted for votes.

BOY TO ress, TORY