Dissident Russian’s Arrest Reported

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31983, 9 May 1969, Page 11

Dissident Russian’s Arrest Reported

I (N Z. Press Assn—Copyright) ; MOSCOW, May 8. A retired majorgeneral, Pyotr G. Grigoryenko, a leader of Moscow’s outspoken dissident intellectual group, was arrested in the central Asian city of Tashkent today, according to reports reaching his friends last night. They said Moscow police had simultaneously searched a number of flats in which members of the group live.. One version of the general’s arrest sajd he had been charged with violating article 190-1 of the criminal code of Uzbekistan, of which Tash-

kent is the capital. The article deals with anti-Soviet fabrication and slanders. The friends said the general—a tall, balding man in his late sixties, had gone to attend the trial of a group of Crimean Tartars, charged under the same article in Tashkent.

The Tartars are a minority people, some of whose members claim they are being persecuted by the Soviet authorities for their alleged war-time collaboration with the Germans. General Grigoryenko has championed their cause. The friends said that General Grigoryenko’s flat had been searched last night and that police had also searched the fiats of four other members of the dissident community.