New York, Sept. 1—Are we the dumbest people in the world? It is inconceivable that there aren’t millions who reached that conclusion on hearing from the executive director of the American tour organized for the Bolshoi Ballet that she viewed with “great regret” the defection of Godunov. It is impossible to understand this as meaning anything less than that we view with great regret any decision by an important Russian figure to choose freedom. The strangest things embarrass the United States. If the entire Presidium of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were tomorrow to announce the renunciation of imperialism, autonomy for the Soviet states, and unilateral disarmament, one has the feeling that our leaders would huddle in the situation room in utter panic at an event so . . . disequilibrating, is perhaps the word Jody Powell would vouchsafe us.
Then there was the episode involving Lyudmila Vlasova, the wife of Godunov. At least U.S. Immigration, no doubt on the authority of the White House itself, refused to permit her airplane to depart right away. But consider the circumstances. Over a period of 72 hours, Madame Vlasova was detained, by force, by Russian agents on U.S. soil, and not permitted to consult with U.S. authorities. By the time she was finally exposed to our negotiator, the Russians had had enough time to extract from her virtually any commitment they wanted. Imagine a United States court of law accepting as valid a plea of guilty or not guilty uttered by an individual who had been held 72 hours incommunicado by people who exercised total authority over that person’s family and friends. Why did no one in New York, that mecca of civil-rights litigators, do the obvious thing? What was the obvious thing?
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