Exiles hint at K.G.B. role in writer’s death

Press, 16 June 1979, Page 8

Exiles hint at K.G.B. role in writer’s death

i NZPA-Reuter Monterey, California I A Soviet defector, Anatoly i Kuznetsov, who died in LonI don last Wednesday, believed somebody “helped him” have a heart attack, 'the daughter of a Russian teacher has said in California. The woman, Irina Korotyukov, who lives in Monterey, said in a telephone interview that her mother, who arrived in California in 1974, had taught Kuznetsov in the Soviet Union when he was a youth. Kuznetsov, who defected to England in 1969, collapsed and died suddenly in London on Wednesday night. The cause of his death has not yet been established. i Mrs Korotyukov said KuzInetsov, who was 49, had I written to her mother last I March, saying he had sufifered a heart attack a few i months earlier. Mrs Korotyukov said that in the letter, which was in Russian, Kuznetsov wrote: “They ‘helped’ me have a heart attack.” Mrs Korotyukov said the word “they” was written in capital letters and she believed Kuznetsov was referring to the Soviet K.G.B. I intelligence service. | She said the letter stated: '“One thing puzzles me. My heart attack. It shouldn’t be ... I made a very fast rei covery. ! “I am like I was before the disease. As healthy as a boar. This puzzles my phys-

icians. They' say' it is a mirlacle. After my heart attack 'this couldn't happen. After jsuch a heart attack as mine, (when 1 was clinically dead, how could this be? “This time it passed by. | It’s a failure. But what i about the next time?” | Mrs Korotyukov said Kuzinetsov, who had broadcast | to the Soviet Union about Ibis life in London, was a .close friend of Georgi j Markov, a Bulgarian broadI caster, who died last September after he was stabbed I with a poison-tipped umibrella in a London street. ■ Author of the best-selling j and widely-translated novels i such as “Babi Yar,” KuznetIsov was granted asylum in ! July, 1969, when he arrived I in Britain on a trip financed

by the Soviet Writers’ Union. "Babi Yar" recounted the Nazi massacre of thousands of Russian Jews near Kiev, an event the Soviet Government. presumably because of anti-semitism. was not anxious to publicise. He said that among his reasons for deciding to defect was that his writings were distorted by Soviet censors. Kuznetsov's detect.on came as a surprise in Soviet literary circles, where it had been assumed he was a loyal, if a bit testy, member of the Soviet establishment. He was given permission to. travel to England in 1969 to research a hook on the life of Lenin. But the real purpose was to defect — a icarefully planned defection for which Kuznetsov prepared by sewing 35mm negatives of his writings into the lining of the clothing he brought with him 'Five days after Kuznetsov’s arrival in London on July 25, he and his official companion headed to Soho to take a look, at a strip joint. He told his companion he wanted to find a prostitute. and the official made a decision that was to open the gate to freedom for Kuznetsov. He left the writer to his search. Kuznetsov headed for the Home Office. The then Home Secretary. James Callaghan, and Prime Minister. Harold Wilson, decided to give the writer an unlimited residence visa.