Russians plan alert for ‘subversive’ literature

Press, 4 December 1979, Page 9

Russians plan alert for ‘subversive’ literature

NZPA-Reuter Moscow A senior Soviet immigration official has hinted strongly that the Soviet Union is preparing tough new measures to prevent banned literature being smuggled into the country during next year’s Olympic Games. Vasily Terekhov, head of immigration screening in Moscow, suggested in a newspaper interview that the Soviet Union was ready for an offensive by Western and other intelligence forces during the two weeks of the Games.

He said the Western press had already carried frank admissions by the special services of the United States, Israel, and other States, and by antiSoviet organisations that they intended to use the 1980 Games to mount hostile actions against the Soviet Union. The country’s ideological enemies were expected to use the occasion to try to smuggle subversive material into the Soviet Union, he said in the newspaper, “Sovietskaya Rossiyaa.” But screening devices

would be used at airports, he added, naming specifically Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport which is expected to receive most of the 300,000 foreign Olympic visitors. Mr Terekhov said that every week about 1500 copies of a “anti-Soviet” literature were seized from foreigners entering Moscow. The term “anti-Soviet” literature includes books by banned authors, Bibles, and news magazines carrying articles critical of the Soviet system.