Defection fears

Press, 1 October 1979, Page 8

Defection fears

NZPA-Reuter Moscow |j 1 The Soviet authorities had : I [demanded that the Unitedh I States promise to return any \ musician who defected during a United States tour by \ the Soviet State Symphony t Orchestra. Western diplo- ( matic sources said in Mos- c cow yesterday. The sources said the So- v viet demand was impossible I to meet, and last Thursday:! the Soviets cancelled the f six-week tour that was to [I have opened on Wednesday I v at Carnegie Hall in New it York. The Soviet demand was |! made to the tour’s organ-:' isers, Columbia Artists Man-[t agement, after the recent de-[> | fections of five prominent [1 [Soviet artists in a month, [ I | according to the diplomats. I ■ They said Columbia had 11

passed the demand to the[ United States Embassy,! which had. relayed it to[ Washington. [, “Columbia Artists had no[ way of guaranteeing any-1 thing and the United States; Government certainly[, couldn’t” one source said.j “That’s what made the,, whole thing so ludicrous.” [ Alexander Godunov, the ' Bolshoi ballet star, was the first to make the leap when he left the troupe during its visit to New York on August 23. Three weeks later other Bolshoi dancers, Leonid and Valentina Kozlov, abandoned the dance company in Los! Angeles. Last week two leading Soviet figure skaters,: Ludmilla Belousova and Oleg t Protopopov, defected in Gen-; eva, Switzerland.