Anti-Soviet Writer Allowed To Leave

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30979, 8 February 1966, Page 17

Anti-Soviet Writer Allowed To Leave

l (N.Z.P A -Reuter—Copyright) MOSCOW, February 7. A writer who published violently antiSoviet fiction abroad has been allowed to leave the country while two others charged with the same offence will be tried this week and probably receive long gaol sentences, United Press International reported. Valeris Tarsis, author of the best-selling novel, “Ward Seven” published in the West, has been granted a passport to visit Britain. He expects to leave within a few days to lecture at Leicester University. A literary critic, Andrei Sinyavsky, and a reportertranslator, Yuli Daniel, will go on trial before a people’s court on Thursday charged with “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” They, face maximum sen-

tences of seven years' gaol or banishment to remote areas for five years. Tarsis’s "Ward Seven,” exploiting a theme made famous by the Russian writer, Anton Chekhov, in his short story, “Ward Six,” suggests that Russia is a madhouse. Tarsis himself has reportedly been treated for schizophrenia and his book is purported to be based on his own experience in mental homes. Sinyavsky, a highlyrespected literary scholar and critic writing under the name of Abram Tertz wrote “The Trial Begins” and “The Makepeace Experiment,” both bitterly critical satires on Soviet reality. Daniel, whose foreign pseudonym was Nikolai Arzhak. is best known abroad for his short story “Moscow Calling.” a strange fantasy on what happens when the Government declared “A Day of