Soviet feminist trio abruptly expelled

Press, 22 July 1980, Page 8

Soviet feminist trio abruptly expelled

NZPA Vienna Three Leningrad feminist movement leaders, have been deprived. of their Soviet citizenship and expelled from the Soviet Union. They arrived in Vienna yesterday on a regular Austrian airline flight, according to reliable sources in Vienna. They were Tatiana Mamonova, . Natalia. Malakowskaya, and Tatiana Gorrichyeva, all aged 32. Mrs Mamonova, a painter, was warned by Soviet officials about two weeks ago that she would suffer grave difficulties if she did not voluntarily leave the Soviet Union. According to dissident sources in Moscow, K.G.B. agents went to her home at the week-end and told her that she, her husband, and their four-year-old son had 24 hours in which to leave the country.

The sources also said that Mrs Mamonova was not authorised to take along her collection of paintings, and was told she only had the right to exchange a few roubles for foreign currency. All three were editors of clandestine “samizdat” feminist publications. They were all stripped of their Soviet citizenship on July 10, the sources said. Mrs Mamonova was the editor-in-chief of the magazine, the “Woman in the U.5.5.R.,” the first edition of which was seized by Soviet security services shortly after it appeared in December last year. Mrs Malakowskaya and Mrs Gorrichyeva were edi-tors-in-chief of the feminist magazine, “Maria,” whose two editions appeared in Leningrad with-

out, up until now, being seized by the authorities. According to reports from Moscow the three were expelled after one of the feminist magazines urged young Russian men not to go to fight in Afghanistan and urged women to encourage their husbands to resist the call-up for Afghanistan. The three feminists said that they were the leaders of the Soviet dissident movement because so many men had been jailed. The three feminists said that they want to continue their activities in exile. Mrs Gorrichyeva and Mrs Mamonova intend to go to Paris after a brief stay in Vienna. Mrs Malakowskaya hopes to stay in Austria where she wants to establish a link between, the Austrian and Soviet feminist movements.