From Gulag to Gotham

Washington trades two Soviet spies for five dissidents

From distant points in the vast Gulag archipelago, five bone-weary men were rounded up and taken to Moscow. At 4 a.m. on Friday of last week, they were abruptly awakened, handed suits in exchange for prison garb, curtly informed that they were being stripped of their Soviet citizenship, and rushed to Sheremetyevo Airport. There they boarded Aeroflot Flight 315 for New York City. At Kennedy Airport in the foggy afternoon, the ex-prisoners of conscience--Dissidents Alexander Ginzburg, Georgi Vins, Mark Dymshits, Eduard Kuznetsov and Valentyn Moroz--were released into American hands, while two convicted Soviet spies were hustled aboard the plane for the return flight to Moscow. It was one of the largest, most surprising swaps in the history of U.S.-Soviet relations, and the first in which Soviet spies had been exchanged for Soviet citizens.

After arriving at their posh hotel near the United Nations, the newly liberated men wandered in and out of one another's rooms, exclaiming: "Prekrasnaya! Prekrasnaya!" (wonderful! wonderful!). At a press conference Kuznetsov declared: "This is just as incredible as if we found ourselves on the moon. It is difficult to get this through our heads. We still have not grown accustomed to free faces expressing good will." Two of the dissidents, Kuznetsov and Dymshits, then left for Israel; the other three are expected to remain in the U.S. Moroz went to a parade in his honor in Philadelphia. Ukrainian groups, noted an Administration official, "looked at Moroz like some kind of icon, since they have been working for him so long."

The trade had been made possible by a pair of bungling KGB agents, Valdik Enger and Rudolf Chernyayev, who were arrested last May for trying to buy secret information from a U.S. naval officer; in October they were sentenced to 50 years in prison for espionage. Even before the trial ended, negotiations for a swap began. President Carter directed National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to conduct the talks with Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin. The discussions went on for months in the offices of both negotiators, occasionally in Brzezinski's house in McLean, Va., where his daughter and Dobrynin's granddaughter sometimes rode horses together.

"We had our ups and downs," says a U.S. official, "but it finally congealed." Moscow promised that the dissidents would soon be joined in the West by members of their immediate families. The Americans, however, failed to win the release of Anatoli Shcharansky, the leading Jewish dissident who was jailed for treason last summer. He was apparently too much of a symbol of resistance to the Soviet regime to be allowed to go free.

The five prisoners who were released are major figures in their own right and an undeniable windfall for the West:

P: Ginzburg, 42, was constantly harassed and finally imprisoned for writings critical of Communist life. He further antagonized authorities by becoming a self-appointed monitor of Moscow's compliance with the human rights provisions of the 1975 Helsinki accord. He was brought to trial once again last summer for his role in helping political prisoners with a fund set up by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Defiant as ever, he was sentenced to eight years of hard labor.

P: Vins, 50, a leader of the independent Soviet Baptists, who are as hounded by Moscow as the country's Jews, comes from a family with a tradition of defiance. His father died in a labor camp, and his mother and his son were also imprisoned for their religious activities. Vins served three years in prison for violating the laws on the separation of church and state. A few years after his release, he was arrested again, for "infringing on the rights of citizens under the guise of performing religious ceremonies."

P: Dymshits, 52, a former Soviet air force pilot who kept being turned down when he asked to emigrate to Israel, plotted with ten other dissidents in 1970 to hijack a plane from Leningrad to Sweden. Arrested and charged with treason, Dymshits was condemned to death, but after protests abroad, his sentence was commuted to 15 years at hard labor.

P: Kuznetsov, 40, a Jewish activist from Riga who had served a seven-year sentence for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda," also participated in the aborted hijacking and received the same sentence as Dymshits.

P: Moroz, 43, a historian and the leading symbol of resistance in the Ukraine, was imprisoned for four years for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda," then jailed again for writing about his prison experiences. When he completed his term, he was threatened, as many dissidents are, with permanent psychiatric confinement. But after widespread protests abroad, he was judged sane and committed to a labor camp.

Both nations expect to benefit from the human swap. On the day of the exchange, trade talks began in Washington; the Soviets desperately want to be granted most-favored-nation status.

The Carter Administration can tout the deal as a successful illustration of its human rights policy.

At the same time, Brzezinski can claim that his more hard-boiled approach to the Soviet Union pays off. "It shows how to deal with these guys and get results," said an Administration official. "Realism and self-interest are better than vague good intentions." The swap also perceptibly brightens the atmosphere at a time when the SALT II treaty is about to be signed, and it revives, however momentarily, the pleasant prospects of detente.

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